Avatar

Soooooo pretty.

Caught Avatar last night with Dad. He's in town for the weekend, basically a last minute jaunt over to see myself and my younger brother. This is like the most difficult time in the world to travel to Kansas - snowfall happens randomly and heavily affects flight schedules - so just our luck that his flight into KC was only delayed an hour. Lucky for him, as my flight to KC from Vegas for work earlier this year was cancelled entirely! Thankfully, that time I still made it home in time to meet up with Kel when she drove back from Colorado. Talk about great timing!

The fictional world of Pandora featured in the movie (actually, it's a moon of a gas giant planet - but we're not gonna nitpick ;-) ) was a lush jungle world that nearly was a living being all by itself - the moss on the ground lit up wherever people stepped; whole mountains were floating in air, tethered by vines; and gigantic trees taller than the Empire State Building ruled the skyline. The whole message of the native peoples living there was a bond with nature; when the natives hunted, they apologized for killing their prey.

I can absolutely see why people have said they would be depressed after seeing the movie. Here is this perfect world, full of harmony, that completely exists only in the mind. There's no place to visit - I bet not even a virtual reality simulator of the place would be enough to satisfy someone's thinking that they were born in the wrong reality.

I'm hoping this isn't a trend towards creating more ways to make of reality-escaping pasttimes. The real world is hard enough with people who have a tenuous grasp on reality at best. What will happen when more and more people start confusing virtual reality with meatspace?