WARNING: THIS BLOG CONTAINS SPOILERS

Have you heard about the new James Cameron movie? If you haven't, you clearly do not live on this planet. Which is, in fact, a real planet. Knock him all you want, but Cameron is a creative genius. The man can turn a flammable reel of single-frame images into a big, fat pile of shiny gold.

Terminator (times three, or four, or is it five?) >> ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching.
Titanic (just the one, but it felt like three) >> ka-ching.
Avatar >> ka-(still waiting for full results, but likely to be yet another resounding)-ching.

In short, Avatar is a movie set on a planet called Pandora. On Pandora there is a material called "unobtainium". Everyone wants to obtain this stuff, because as the name so cryptically states, it's not very easy to come by. The planet is inhabited by a race called Na'vi. These are giant, blue alien-type people. This info can be gleaned from the trailers alone, and from what I've heard there's not actually much more to the movie (which I have not seen). But I feel the need to share something anyway. This is where the gigantic spoiler comes in. Look away now if you don't want to know...

....James Cameron made it all up.

He created this world in his imagination and then he turned it into a movie. Apparently, the portrayal of the planet and the creatures on it is breathtakingly spectacular - so he must've run out of creative juice when it came to names for everything (Pandora? Unobtainium? Excuse me, I just threw up a little on the cheese factor). But back to my point, this planet does not exist. It is a setting for a movie, created by human imagination and computer graphics. Otherwise known as "science fiction". Or more simply put... "play-play", "pretend" or "make believe".

So anyone who complains about post-delusional depression and suicidal tendencies because "they long to enjoy the beauty of the alien world Pandora" deserves to be stripped naked, doused with a bucket of water (or better yet hosed down with fire fighting equipment) and shoved head first into the snow. We will call it ICE BUCKET / WELCOME TO REALITY treatment. If you find anybody suffering from similar delusions in the warmer southern hemisphere, please feel free to strip them naked, douse with hot oil and then shove them head first into a nest of fire ants.

One sufferer, called Mike, "even contemplated suicide, thinking that he will be rebirthed [sic] in a world similar to Pandora and everything will be the same as in Avatar." Do us all a Darwinian favour, Mikey. Please. I hope you haven't reproduced yet, but judging by that comment alone I would guess that you are probably still waiting for your Klingon mail-order bride anyway.

Pssst... Star Trek is made up too.

And while we're on the subject of Avatar, since when are we supposed to care what the Vatican thinks about a movie? It's been centuries since humanity shrugged out of the dark ages and the Roman Catholic Church no longer dictates what books can or can't be seen (weeeeell... unless you buy into the Da Vinci Code, but let's put that down before it leads to another tangle in this already bewildered blog). So why should we suddenly care what they think about a secular movie? How does a Vatican movie review hold any weight in the news? Is this their way of trying to 'stay in touch with the popular culture'? Surely they should stick to how the Bible is being interpretted (yes, interpretted - because it is not a factual textbook) or more pressing issues, like the attempted firebombings of churches in Malayasia (another point I'm going to put down before I go on yet another rampaging tangent).

The only way the Vatican should be sharing a headline with Avatar is if the Pope was suffering from post-Pandora delusional depression. Now that would be newsworthy.

I haven't seen the movie yet, but I do intend to. I'm a sucker for big action in 3D. And I'm sure Mills will be happy to oblige with an ice bucket if my grip on reality starts to slip... any further.