Avatar

I saw the new movie Avatar this morning. Wow. This blog is about Contemplation, and those of us who practice it have a tendency to find deep connections and meanings in the most everyday sorts of things. So, pop culture is as rich a trove as ancient books.

Avatar is destined to be one of those gems. No doubt it will take it's place alongside LOTR, the Matrix, and Star Wars. Not only for the ground-breaking movie-making, but for the rich story and the boundless new world it has created. I'm sure there will be fans and games and all the customary goofiness to go with it, but amongst it all is a deep resonating truth.

Perhaps best of all for me was that the movie didn't attempt to explain everything. It created a world nearly as full of history and life as Middle Earth and set the story against it. But the whole time I kept feelinglike there was so much I just didn't know yet. Just like Middle Earth's ruins and dialects are full of well-crafted backstory, if only in the imagination of the creator, so is Pandora and the Na'vi. They didn't bother to explain every detail, and becasue of it, I'm sure the fans will gladly take the leaps and develop the world into something far bigger than it started out. It will become an alternate universe of it's own.

As an Environmental Scientist, I also have a certain way of viewing the world just like any professional develops. In that right, it is easy to disappoint me in movies because of simple flaws. For example, Reign of Fire, which had potential to be an excellent world fell short in that dragons burned wholesome food to make into far less valuable ash, which they ate...Not ecologically possible. Better to make them full-on magic creatures than try to scientificize them and do it poorly. But Pandora did not disappoint. From the design of the creatures, to the plant life and even the more mystic elements. This treads the lines enough to be fantastic but without violating any of the veils necessary to suspend disbelief. In short, I bought it.

The story, while certainly applicable to many current events, and certainly full of homage to great works in the past, has a philosophy and a truth that I am still absorbing and processing, applying to my worlds. Without this, it would simply be a good movie. But with it, it has power. It can change people. Affect them. I am not naive enough to think a movie will revolutionize the world, but just as the Matrix has already entered popular thought in ways that many don't even realize, Avatar will do so, I believe. At least it has already for me and likely will for those who think along my lines.

It's too early for me to express it just yet. But it has grabbed my imagination and the webs are forming. Go see it and let's talk about it.