Posted on 01/31/2010 3:44:36 PM PST by DogByte6RER
Avatar Gives Film Fans the Blues
By Stephen Jones
Epoch Times Staff
A luminescent, idyllic world populated by peace-loving aliens may have captivated cinema audiences across the world, but for some the 'immersive' experience of watching the film Avatar has threatened to overshadow their own lives.
Hundreds of fans of James Cameron's blockbuster 3-D epic have complained that they feel despair after leaving the cinema that they can never live in a world like the mythical Pandora, in the film.
An online discussion board, titled Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible, has received more than 2,000 posts from fans beating their breasts over their relatively more pallid life on Earth.
After I watched Avatar for the first time, I truly felt depressed that I was awake in this world again, one post reads.
Another says, Its so hard, I cant force myself to think that its just a movie, and to get over it, and that living like the Navi will never happen.
On a separate forum, on the Web site Naviblue.com, fans have even considered more extreme action.
I even contemplated suicide, thinking that if I do it I will be reborn in a world similar to Pandora, and that everything will be the same as in Avatar," one post read.
In the James Cameron film Avatar, Jake (Sam Worthington) meets his avatar, a genetically engineered hybrid of human DNA mixed with DNA from the natives of Pandora. (Mark Fellman / WETA) It has been speculated that the reason behind the widespread depression may have been due to the release of the bright and visually stunning film during the middle of one of Europe's bleakest winters on record.
But U.K. psychiatrist, Dr. Jacqueline Scott, said that it was unlikely that a film could trigger seasonal affective disorder.
"I think that the people who are feeling depressed may have already had a predisposition toward this," says Dr. Scott.
The film is based around the story of how humans wage war on eco-friendly aliens of an idyllic planet called Pandora, for a rare mineral substance called unobtainium.
Avatar, which took 14 years to make, has been lauded as a revolution in filmmakingnot least because of its presentation in 3-D.
However, some say that the effect of 3-D cinema on audiences has not been fully accounted for.
In his latest book, The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life Makes it Hard to be Happy, Michael Foley argues for a reappraisal of the effect of film on our emotional state.
Director James Cameron at the premiere of 'Avatar,' at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre, in the Hollywood. (Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images) With Avatar, the technology has become so highly sophisticated that it makes the screen world seem more vivid than reality can ever be, he told the Times Online.
"What youre absorbing is so stimulating, and what it offers is so frenetic, giving you a new stimulus every second, that it makes real life feel sluggish, slow, and impossibly dead in comparison.
In a bid to recapture the same emotions of the film, a group of fans in Florida have announced that they will create a commune inspired by the ecological principles of the Na'vi.
The bizarre fall out from the film has even prompted the eccentric London Mayor Boris Johnson to pen an opinion column in a U.K. newspaper titled 'Stop pining for life on Pandora and come back to planet Earth.'
He predicts that in 10 years time the U.K. census will show more adherents of Eywa, the earth goddess of the Na'vi, than there are of Jedi.
"I can't believe that many of these gloomy post-Avatar Westerners, when they really think about it, would want to up sticks to Pandora and take part in Na'vi society, with its obstinate illiteracy, undemocratic adherence to a monarchy based on male primogeniture, and complete absence of restaurants," he said.
"The final irony, of course, is that this entrancing vision of prelapsarian innocence is the product of the most ruthless and sophisticated money-machine the world has ever seen. With a budget of $237 million and with takings already at £1 billion [$1.6 billion], this exquisite capitalist guilt trip represents one of the great triumphs of capitalism."
What a bunch of idiots. I guess Cameron left out the brutish and short aspects of living like a savage. I love Period Pieces but I do not pine for the days of using a chamber pot, lack of basic hygenie that we all take for granted, and knowing drinking a glass of water could be a death sentence
People who didn’t read “Rainbow Six” to the end.
In this case, we should call it the dribble down effect.
And don’t stay in that friggin’ hot lodge to long!
Class-action lawsuit against James Cameron, his production company, the studio, and the distribution companies involved seems appropriate.
Perhaps you can find a wholesale deal on books of Vogon poetry.
Bet they won't come close to the number of Trekers.
what animals? Weird scary creatures chased our hero around until that blue girl saved him ... but we never saw them again until the mean military/capitalist junta started a war and for some reason they re-appeared to fight for Pandora???
I recommend it for visual beauty and effects, but the stupid stuff was too much to count.
Reality struck real close when I began working in the corporate world. Anyone who sits for hours in endless meetings knows full well the gulf between dreams and real egos.
Heck, try getting 3 people to decide where they want to go for lunch.
It is a quality all good uncles strive to perfect when dealing with the [evil] nephews and nieces.
I wish!
Oh Freddled gruntbuggly!
What was that term that Hillary used?
Suspension of disbelief?
Might be the reason it is classified as 'fiction'.
Did you find the crater jumping limo scenes in 2012 to be just a wee bit ridiculous????
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