Avatar Theme Park! (sorry, the one with blue people, not the airbending one)

     Show of hands, people, who is excited to see the four sequels to the 2009 box office hit, Avatar? Hmm... nobody? Interesting. Why is James Cameron teaming with Disney to tell everyone to be excited for those sequels with a really cool themed land in Animal Kingdom? Why, it's simple! They needed to have a cool theme park land to compete with Harry Potter World across town. Unfortunately, it seems that they didn't think about the fact that no one really cared about Avatar once it left the theater. After Disney announced that they were making a land based on Avatar, people were asking themselves, "Why?" and, "Why is this not Star Wars instead?" The answer to that is mainly because Disney hadn't purchased the rights to Star Wars at that point. They had already jumped in with both feet on what the 20th Century Fox Marketing had been trying to sell, that 2009's fantasy smash hit was a new way of life. In this case, this area came long after people had lost interest in it. 

    Avatar was an amazing spectacle when it came out in 2009, mainly due to the amazing lengths that 3D technology had come in the terms of making movies. When it came out, everyone told me that I needed to see it in IMAX 3D and that it would change my life. I did not take that advice and actually didn't see the movie until I was on a bus with my high school band on our way to Washington DC. I was not a huge fan, and I'm sure you wouldn't have liked it either if a giant blue Zoe Saldana started screaming at 3 A.M. because the chaperones fell asleep before turning off the movie. My gripes about it aside, people loved it for the special effects, but unfortunately they weren't able to pull off the same 3D magic in people's homes, revealing the plot of the film to be very similar to Dances with Wolves, or Pocahontas. It was a weird plot, and it ended with Jake Sulley being reincarnated as a Na'vi, so it was definitely setting up a sequel, though four sequels seems a bit excessive. James Cameron apparently has enough directorial clout to get that sort of line up pushed through, which makes sense, he's made at least two of the best grossing films of all time with Titanic and Avatar, but it's still a big idea, especially for a director known for jumping around to so many different ideas. Unfortunately for us, as I stated before, Disney also bought into this idea.

    Now, before I get into this, I have to say that Pandora is a super well themed and put together area at Animal Kingdom. The forced perspective in the background does a fantastic job of creating the illusion of floating islands, even the touch of having a waterfall flowing through the islands. The plant life and little creatures such as the giant alien pod thing at the entrance of the land are excellent touches to make you feel as if you've just stepped onto the alien planet. The whole land glows at night, all of the plants emulate bioluminescence as well as some of the artificial creatures, which is beautiful, even if all you do is just walk around. I haven't tried any of the food there, so I can't speak for that, but Flight of Passage was like a really cool version of Soarin' where I somehow feel safer, even though there's a portion where a fire-breathing dragon-esque character is chasing you, I truly enjoyed the ride all around. Navi River Journey I have not ridden yet, but I have heard that it's truly not worth whatever time you're standing in line for, unless there's no one in line. I say all this to show that I really do like this land and all of the theming, but it could have been something far more impressive, such as the fantasy area that was originally supposed to be in the park when it opened, complete with a dragon themed roller coaster.

    Avatar is a fine property on its own, and it's a fine movie, but when you consider the themes of the film, it's a pretty messed up property to use for a theme park. In Avatar, a morally grey human corporation is focused the on mining this rare resource, Unobtainium (one of the funniest and most on the nose names for a Macguffin that I'm aware of). The greed and rage within the army colonel who was on the expedition, he set the Na'vi people's holy tree on fire, and killed lots of the indigenous people with his Prius-mech robot. The whole plot of the movie is that the human population comes close to ending the entire way of life on the planet of Pandora, so it's really strange that the plot of this themed area of Animal Kingdom is that the Na'vi people have accepted a new group of humans to come and walk around and experience their sacred traditions just as tourists. There are little touches around the area that show how the Na'vi and Alpha Centuri Expeditions (ACE for short) have worked together with the Animal Kingdom to take all these visitors to Pandora, and they've established that this is ten years after the events of the movie. It's just strange that they are so willing to trust that population again so soon after their way of life was almost destroyed by them. Perhaps they're just more forgiving than humans... and let humans sell their goods and services in gift shops.

    Fortunately, Disney did make Star Wars land eventually, opening several years after Pandora which I can't talk about since I haven't been there, but I have seen ride throughs of those rides and Rise of the Resistance looks amazing. Even though I have been kind of down on the area in this post, Pandora is a really cool and well themed area of the Animal Kingdom park, and hopefully the lines will be slightly shorter by the next time that I'm able to go. Thanks so much for reading this, I hope you do enjoy Pandora if you go there, and I hope that you're all doing well and staying safe. I'll talk to you next Friday!