Some Avatar fans are reportedly feeling as blue as Na'vi aliens once the movie ends. According to CNN, online forums have sprung up to support people experiencing depressed, even suicidal thoughts "because they long to enjoy the beauty of the alien world Pandora," the film's intricately rendered 3-D setting. Despondent fans have unleashed over 1,000 posts on one site, Avatar Forums, expressing their disgust with the relatively non-idyllic planet Earth and the human race. Has a new kind of filmmaking triggered a new kind of audience response? (Watch a report about the "Avatar Blues")
Have the movies changed — or have I? I can remember being strongly affected by films when I was younger, says Ann Althouse at the Althouse blog. But "when I walked out into the light after a great movie, my experience was that things seemed sharpened, intensified, and refreshed. The real world felt newly real." The effect was "the opposite of depression." One wonders: "Is it something about the movies that has changed? Is our relationship to film different now?"
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