I love this post about the movie Avatar and why I love social media. Here we have a chance to appreciate the eloquent and insightful opinion of your average citizen about the movie Avatar.
The thing about Avatar, the reason for its runaway success, is that it’s NOT just being seen by sci-fi fantasy geeks and fan boys and girls. Like LOTR way back when, its appeal is so much broader (and more female)–it’s being seen repeatedly by people who normally don’t go in for sci-fi/fantasy action, and it’s being seen on 3D screens, with their higher ticket prices. (And of course, like I said before, there’s the word-of-mouth pop-culture wave that says you MUST see Avatar and MUST see it on as big a screen as possible.)
Like Titanic and Twilight, people are forming Na’vi cults and seeing it three, four, five times because they are getting completely into the deep Romantic escapism of Avatar, and some of that is due to the 3D technology that is giving them an immersive experience that goes far beyond the story and characters. Cameron was right: all that time, money and effort put into developing his new equipment paid off. It’s not just that Avatar is something they’ve never seen before–it’s being seen in a way they’ve never experienced a film before.
And when I say ‘romantic,’ I mean in the broader sense–not just in terms of a love story, but a grander Romantic worldview fueled by the film’s idealism about leaving all this real-world crap behind and going to live on Pandora with the perfect, natural Na’vi and their flying mounts and tails that plug into things. In the midst of this cold winter and this lingering economic hardship (remember, movie ticket sales first skyrocketed during the Great Depression), people are buying into Avatar on a very deep emotional level that goes beyond and deeper than just blue lovey dovey and save-the-Earth platitudes.
So no, something like The Book of Eli, that peddles in the usual gritty post-Apocalyptic cynicism is not going to TOUCH Avatar this weekend. It’s not just action Avatar-junkies are craving, it’s the heart and hope of an entirely new, different, and better LIFE lived out in 3D on the very big screen.
Posted by: Locke Peterseim | January 11, 2010 at 11:29 AM
Tags: avatar, Blog, great writing
