Seen at Kevin's was this blurb from CNN:
James Cameron's completely immersive spectacle "Avatar" may have been a little too real for some fans who say they have experienced depression and suicidal thoughts after seeing the film because they long to enjoy the beauty of the alien world Pandora.You know, I got all torn up that I couldn't go to Middle Earth, too... when I was twelve.
On the fan forum site "Avatar Forums," a topic thread entitled "Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible," has received more than 1,000 posts from people experiencing depression and fans trying to help them cope.
We need to spread a meme that if you kill yourself, especially in a humorous and public fashion, you'll go to Pandora and become a Na'Vi.
42 comments:
I'll be happy to jump in with the first comment...
... of WTF?!?!
Now, if you'll excuse me I'm going to tell the guys in my office about this so they can laugh their arses off.
Hehehe... suicidal over a friggin movie. Just remember how Corriea handled elves in MHI;)
tweaker
We need to spread a meme that if you kill yourself, especially in a public and humorous fashion, you'll go to Pandora and become a Na'Vi.
There's a number of fantasy worlds I'd love to go to. This joins the ranks, but my top contender would be Ian M Banks' Culture. However I'm not going suicidal over it...
There's plenty of places here on earth I'd also love to go, like Japan and New Zealand. In the mean time, I'm heading off to Thailand for three months, it's going to be great to avoid the rest of this winter; and as a bonus, I'll be spending two of those months diving to my heart's content(visiting the world beneath the waves, so to speak).
People wanting to off themselves because of an animated movie?.....what the hell?
Well...it could be worse, they could be obsessing over that crappy Twilight BS as well...
People need to get a clue, hopefully one that leads to a life.ph
The sad thing is that the people getting depressed probably have never set food into the mundane woods a few hundred yards from their door. After all, there aren't any blue women in them and they'd have to wear a jacket.
Maybe they need to buy some self-help books and watch more Oprah.
That's worked for bazillions of others.
That article was just about the first thing I saw on the Intarwebs this morning. All I could think was, "Oh, get a friggin' life." It's not just the childishness wanting to visit a fantasy world that bothers me, it's the "ahhh somebody make it better" hand-flapping helplessness oozing from these people. The world sucks? Deal. Go make it better if it's that important to you. Crying into your latte never solved anything.
Can you tell I saw Fight Club for the first time this weekend?
I just wanna go to Glocca Mora and see Sharon.
Pity Pandora isn't real. If it was they could all go there and both destroy the environment (too many aliens with no real clue how to live like the locals, and would they really be willing to live like the locals anyway or would they try to create the nice home environment with things like houses with air conditioning...) and get killed by the local wildlife, and then the survivors could demand a free trip back to where it's safe and complain how they were misled by the movie which left out things like the bugs and the parasites, and that the local wildlife really will eat them if it gets the change. And that they can't get a decent latte anywhere... and then they would be denied that free trip back home.
One can dream.
It solved the problem of an insufficiently saline latte!
I'm still surprised that no one appears to have generated any content based on the Na"vi / Navy name similarity. Recruiting materials, the old Village People song...
Yeah, it's almost as dumb as offing yourself in hopes of 72 Virgins, but maybe they wouldn't harm anyone else when they did it. In which case, it would be a win/win situation wouldn't it?
All The Best,
Frank W. James
I'm bummed I can't join Scooby and the Gang and ride around in the Mystery Machine solving ghostly mysteries and such. Where's my razor blades...
Oh yeah, let em. We'd have the utopia here. Providing we can get the Pelosi crew to join them.
I like what Fatale said about the hero-dude: more Na'vi than Na'vi, "Wow, it took a white guy to show those ignunt folks how to really take care of themselves!"
Maybe Harry Reid could have said it better, but that's how Liberals see themselves - superior to the indigenous po'brain folks - whether it's sponsoring a starving child in or Latino Africania, or a polar bear on foodstamps who needs an xtra-large ice floe. Liberals have THE solutions that the Locals just don't...
NJT for the WIN!!!
Well, I'm still kind of pissed that I can't go to Klendathu, shoot me some bugs, and maybe get in bed with Dina Meyer - is that bad?
I wanna go to Zarathustra and shoot damnthings with Jack Holloway.
On the other hand, I'm grown-up enough to know that's just a fantasy :)
wv: waloaxie. Where liberals need to go: to a wa-loaxie far, far away.
Depressed over Avatar*? That's even dumber than thinking philosophy is good for anything but wine.
I mean, there are people out there who have trouble accepting wave-particle duality(or some of the even less sensible aspects of quantum mechanics), because obviously something that's everywhere must be wrong because their brand of philosophy** says so.
That's boneheaded..
*CGI Pocahontas with action scenes. Meh.
No, it's actually Ferngully.
And I expect that most of the folks on "Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible" desire Pandora because they would fail in this fantasy world too. Or here - it says so right at 0.51.
Starik Igolkin:
Just an Geek FYI, in the book (and Starship Troopers should be more important than your bible) Dizzy was a guy, and he died before the first battle of Klendathu.
Michael,
There was a movie? Huh.
;)
Yes, but I didn't want to meet Old Man Willow in Middle Earth.
Stranger
Michael,
Just a blog post FYI - we're talking about movie worlds here. It is quite frequent that when a good director makes a movie, based on a good book, you end up with two different good imaginary worlds. And even so, you might have noticed that I wrote Dina Meyer, not Dizzy. I wonder why ...
:)
Sheeeeit. If we're picking places to go, I shall hie me hence to Doc Smith's Lensman future. Death rays, tough-as-nails damsels, and throwing planets at the Bad Guys.
Sign me up for the Galatic Patrol!
Ahhh! Auuughhh!
Starik! Enough with the blasphemy already! ;)
[SIGH]
Just remember kids, it's down the river, not across it. Please make sure to put down some newspaper, too. Although I'm pretty sure these failpiles will manage to foul that up, too, leaving us with a bunch of dumbasses with slit wrists getting free healthcare.
Hmmm...I think I missed the intended point of the movie.
I was just kinda depressed that I don't live in a world with naturally occuring superconducters and all the kick ass technology that could entail. I'll take flying cars over that hippy shit any day.
Tam,
An admiration for beauty, combined with desire to shoot some bugs, incapable of said admiration, is a blasphemy???
Stop this plane, I want out :)
Starik: I think she was referring to the fact that the movie, as a movie, sucked ye olde hind tit.
Ah. Well, I may be partial to Verhoeven.
Also, it's always difficult, when watching a movie based on a good book to judge it independently. As screen version of the book, I completely agree, the movie sucked.
However, I have zero expectation that any movie will be a good screen version of the book it's based on, that's a path to disappointment.
Instead, I viewed it as a sci-fi movie, not based on anything. As such, I rather liked it.
Unlike this Dances with Pokahontas crap ...
In 10 years, when movies are visual feasts and relentless market forces have long since integrated these tricks with fullest effect and surpassed them, I look forward to people renting this movie and getting hit with "Not only were the effects cheesy, but the plot is completely cringeworthy! Mom, you liked this?"
I haven't heard any quotable lines out of it that'll even keep it alive as a kid's movie or a fan favorite. Just another summer blockbuster, doomed to gather dust in the netflicks warehouse.
I get depressed when I read the US Constitution, because I can't live in a country that operates on such principles.
"I get depressed when I read the US Constitution, because I can't live in a country that operates on such principles."
That's ok, the way things are going in Congress, we won't be able to live in a country like that, either.
@I'll take flying cars
You have any idea how energy expensive helicopter-style flight is.. ?
Not gonna happen for anyone under senior mismanager level..
Schmidt - See here. The whole dream will die when one of these gets damaged in a collision, gets repaired incorrectly, and then falls apart mid-air, but it'll be fun til then.
Jim
I guess I'm kimd of pathetic for wanting to live in Harry Potter's world. LOL
But yes, these ppl are pathetic and immature.
If I'm going to fantasize about living in a hackneyed, contrived, Manichean scifi universe riddled with plot holes, it'll be Serenity, where at least the lines are quotable when you're at the range:
How much ammo we got left?
Three full mags, and my swingin' cod!
It seems to me that the people who are so depressed that they can't live in Pandora are the very people who would least likely be able to survive there.
It takes a realistic assessment of a situation and decisive action to survive in that kind of situation and for people who are depressed because something they saw in a movie isn't real, realistic assessments aren't their strong point.
s
"Not only were the effects cheesy, but the plot is completely cringeworthy! Mom, you liked this?"
Just like Star Wars!
One reason that the original Star Wars has aged better than any of its sequels will is that it is utterly devoid of Message. "Underdog Good Guy defeats Evil Bad King and gets Girl" is the oldest plot in the human race. Avatar uses it, too, but buries under so much preachy hokum that is directly tied to Current Events that it will look as cheesily dated in 20 years as Return Of The Jedi does now.
It will forever be a cinema buff trivia question answer, but then so's The Jazz Singer, and who rents Al Jolson DVDs these days?
That may be the second oldest.
"Wise king rules fairly and protects you, give him your stuff" is the oldest.
Still fresh enough to use on the networks every night, though.
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