Saw Avatar the other day.  In one word:  Amazing.   So imaginative and creative.  It certainly has it’s moral flaws and pantheistic theology which is unfortunate and concerning, but not shocking for a movie coming out of Hollywood.

Here’s a insightful commentary I found from PreachingToday.com– who states that “Avatar stirs longing for another world.”  (PreachingToday gives credit to Sam O’Neal, Geneva, Illinois; sources: Joe Piazza, “Audiences Experience ‘Avatar’ Blues” (CNN.com, 1-11-2010); www.avatar-forums.com).  (Spoiler Alert)

The story takes place in a far away planet called Pandora, which is inhabited by a race of 7-feet-tall, peace-loving natives known as the Na’vi. Human beings from Earth have occupied parts of the planet in search of a rare and valuable mineral, which leads to skirmishes with the Na’vi, and ultimately to war. Caught up in the middle of these machinations are Jake Sully (a marine who “drives” an artificially created alien body) and Neytiri (a Na’vi princess). Those two characters fall in love and ultimately join forces to save Pandora. The movie was released in December of 2009, and in less than a month it raked in more than $1.3 billion worldwide—second only to Titanic in total revenue.

What is surprising, however, is the way that Cameron’s fictional world impacted the perception of our own world for many of the film’s viewers. Within a week of Avatar’s debut, websites dedicated to the movie were filled with comments from people lamenting the fact that Avatar’s people and places could not be reached in any real way. In fact, an entire thread on a popular forum website was called “Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible.”

“When I woke up this morning after watching Avatar for the first time yesterday, the world seemed gray,” wrote one fan. “It was like my whole life, everything I’ve done and worked for, lost its meaning.”

Another wrote something similar: “The day after I saw Avatar, I was completely depressed. I looked at my hands and thought, What I wouldn’t give …. Going and seeing [it] again and again makes me feel good. I love Pandora, not just a spur of the moment feeling; I legitimately love all of Pandora and ‘waking up’ afterwards is extremely hard to do.”

These comments are just a sample among thousands of posts that appeared on dozens of fansites. Most expressed a longing to somehow transport themselves into the world of Pandora, and most expressed an accompanying sense of depression because of the impossibility of such a transfer. For others, the movie seemed to intensify a deep dissatisfaction with their everyday lives—and a desire for a fresh chance someplace new.

Responding to several fans’ plan to establish a Na’vi way of living on Earth, a forum moderator named Elequin said the following: “Thats the problem, even if you wanted to strive to be more like the Na’vi, you would be eaten alive in this world. It really hurts thinking that, you know? It really would take a complete, new fresh start somewhere un-corrupted.”

“I know!” wrote another fan in response to Elequin. “But there’s no chance of moving somewhere else—to a ‘fresh place.’ Shall we just live with the fact that we can’t begin [again]? Do we really have to deal with that?”

Thank God that the answer is no. We don’t have to deal with that, we all have the opportunity for a fresh start, and we can find a home that is un-corrupted. Not on Pandora, of course, but through the Kingdom of God.