Avatar

Every one of us will have dreams, but how many of us will fulfill them, quite few. And why is that, because it is extremely hard and as everybody knows it requires immense dedication and a Never-say-Die attitude, even if it takes years to achieve what is required to complete the dream. And when you watch the movie Avatar, this is what you realize, that efforts never go waste.

James Cameron once again proved that anything can be achieved if it is truly felt at heart. And he did it extremely good, and by doing so he proved many wrong. Even before its release, many said that it doesn’t look natural at all and kept complaining that its looks artificial and more like animation, I never believed even in a single word that I heard. I blindly believed in his work, my belief is so strong that I have prepared myself and couple of other guys to travel more than 500 KMs just to watch it in IMAX 3D, even before the movie ever got released.

And what is that we got after watching it in IMAX 3D, a Breathtaking Experience. Period.

Every now and then you come across Sci-Fi Movies, but nothing like this one. If you ask me, is Avatar the best picture ever, no, but it’s the best movie viewing experience I ever had in my entire life, I have seen numerous movies, but catching this flick in IMAX is unforgettable which remains etched in my memory for times to come.

In the Trailer that was released, there is a dialogue where the protagonist was asked, “Haven’t got lost in the woods, have you??” well, I’m certainly lost, the jungles of Pandora will leave such a long lasting impression. And as Ram Gopal Varma said, James Cameron looked powerful than GOD in creating such a wonderful world. He painstakingly created Pandora so beautiful that we wish we can ever be there, at least once in our life time. The use of vibrant colors, unbelievable life forms, giant trees, a whole new world which looks like a distant cousin of our Earth, but more natural in many ways, all these things will leave you nostalgic and wanting for more. If there is a real Pandora, they will definitely bestow James Cameron with their highest civilian honors for showing their world so beautifully.

If one thinks that this is a pure action flick, you are completely wrong, Avatar is a movie with Anti War overtones and a “Go Green” message in pulsating blue color. The villains in the movie are none other than humans from Earth who are trying to colonize Pandora and establish a mining colony there to extract a metal, which is aptly named “Unobtainium”, it truly is. While watching the movie it constantly reminds us the lack of respect that we have towards our nature, and it indirectly gives us the message that ultimately if we continue to be the same, we will fail.

These phrases from the movie will explain what James Cameron is trying to emphasize through Avatar:

“I’m a warrior who is dreaming to bring peace. Sooner or Later we all have to wake up.”

“The aliens were sent back to their dying world”. Here the aliens are us and the dying world is Earth. The movie catches us off guard with lot of philosophical messages, which continuously reminds us to respect what we have and protect nature. It shows the cruelty that we have for each other and to what extent the greed will make us go in pursuit of something which is not even ours.

End of the day James Cameron successfully showed us what he intended to show, and it is up to the individuals to learn from the lesson or not.

Note: Watch it in IMAX 3D if you can, it is meant to be seen on the huge screen, and it’s very rare a movie like Avatar plays at IMAX. They just can’t come up with one every year.

Pale Blue Dot

Take a good look at the picture. It is taken by NASA's Voyager 1 on 14th Feb 1990, to capture how the planet we call "HOME" looks, from 6 Billion Kilometers. At the time the picture was taken, the spacecraft Voyager 1 didn't even cross our very Solar System. See how tiny and lost our Earth looks in the picture, it didn't even occupy 1 pixel (actually its 0.12 pixel), and it took 5 1/2hrs for the each pixel of the picture to reach Earth even while travelling at the speed of Light. It’s not even as big as a speck of dust we see every day. But that’s where we all are, on that small speck. After seeing this picture it makes very hard for everyone to imagine our place in the Universe, when compared with the space and time frame at which the Universe operates we don't even stand a chance. But still this is where it all happens.

Even though the tiny dot looks so insignificant in the picture, it is very important to our existence, because that is all we have got. The entire human History will be equivalent to a picosecond for this Universe and even for Earth too, I hope there comes one day on which everybody respect these facts.

The man behind this photograph is the visionary scientist and astronomer Carl Sagan. And this is what he said about the picture,

"Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

-Carl Sagan

Now if you can, please read what Carl said once again.