Team Earth’s Movie Week is highlighting classic and/or notable environmental films in preparation for Earth Day. This post takes a look at the phenomenon that is “Avatar” and talks about how the movie is spurring people to take action.
It would be weird to get through Team Earth Movie Week without mentioning Avatar. It’s one of the most successful movies in history. It comes out on video today, Earth Day. And it has an environmental message that’s spurred people around the world to take action for the planet.
If you’ve somehow missed this over the last six months, Avatar is the story of the Na’vi – a race of tall, blue-skinned, human-like beings who live on a beautiful world named Pandora (and, by the way, it really does look beautiful on screen – Avatar is a gorgeous flick). The Na’vi live in harmony with nature, and – dun dun dun – that harmony eventually comes under pressure from human beings.
It sounds touchy-feely, but the box-office numbers say otherwise. Avatar fits in solidly with the classic, popcorn-flick style of its director, James Cameron, who’s made other entertaining movies you’ve probably heard of: Terminator 2, Aliens, and, of course, Titanic. It has action, high drama, a love story.
Still, Cameron has been upfront about the fact that he hopes his fictional world of Pandora gets people to think about the beauty of Earth – and inspires them to take action.
To that end, Avatar is teaming up with Earth Day Network for a project that aims to plant 1 million trees in 15 countries by the end of 2010. It sounds like a big task, but it’s really lots of little actions rolled into one big goal – kind of like what we’re doing here at Team Earth.
Read a little more about that project here. You can also read more here about how why planting trees is good for the Earth – and how you can take action on your own.
