January 17, 2010

surprised by Avatar

(warning: this contains spoilers)

when i first watched Avatar, i knew i wanted to watch it again. the visually stunning fantasy (or science fiction - take your pick) has romance and adventure and battle. the characters have to overcome great odds. the broken man turns out to be the hero and gets a new life.

but there's more. watching it a second time showed me what that was. evil has invaded the world of Pandora. someone from the outside takes on a new body (his avatar) and becomes one of the native people. he lives with them, learns their ways, and falls in love with one of them. in the end, he has to make the choice to risk everything so he can help them drive the evil that threatens their existence.

i know James Cameron didn't intend it to put Jesus into Avatar. neither did the writers of The Matrix or The Lord of the Rings movies. it happened anyway. i love it when God does that.

1 comment:

Margo Berendsen said...

Thanks for finding me on the web! I noticed the tag "Avatar" on your blog and read the two posts. I always hesitate to tell Christians I love Avatar, because of the false worship in it (my kids and I have had some good discussions about this). But I found some Christian themes in it, too, like the Nav'i ceremony of second birth, and Jake needing to pray for help to win the battle (I have a post on it too).

What I didn't notice, and it's so neat to see that you discovered it, was that Jake was a type of Christ - becoming one of the people to help them defeat evil. Very cool!