Thanks for posting this. I was looking forward to his take on the movie. Haven't seen it, yet, and don't know when I will. I haven't watched a movie in a theater for years (family life makes that tough–and very expensive, if it's a family viewing), and this sounds like a movie that really needs to be viewed in a theater–and definitely with the 3D glasses, too.
That, and I wouldn't want to blink. This movie looks like crack for the eyes. Maybe I should bring some Visine with me to keep my eyeballs from drying out.
I just can't see paying money for yet another movie where the American Military are cast as the bad guys… in a time of war. No eye candy could induce me. Oh, yeah, and Oprah loves it and featured James Cameron on her show, drooling over him for about 20 minutes… So, double no.
It has been pointed out before by someone smarter than me that the end of the secularization of society is not the perfected and sterilized atheist dream worlds of science fiction such as Star Trek but rather a return to paganism. Some people are atheistic but most people, the mass of humanity is spiritual, something will be found to fill the void.
I'm uncertain as to whether you have studied South Asian theology in depth, but my sense is that you have not. I say this only because you missed the most obvious, if not explicitly stated, personalist theology embodied in Jake Sully as an avatar of God, as a hero-savior, quite in keeping with the character of Vishnu-avataras. As a Vaishnava theologian, this was perhaps easier for me to recognize, and I suppose it was not easy for everyone to recognize, given the tendencies of Western theology to interpret everything in accord with familiar categories. Yet there you have it, personalist theology (embedded in a natural pantheism).
January 16, 2010 at 9:26 pm
Thanks for posting this. I was looking forward to his take on the movie. Haven't seen it, yet, and don't know when I will. I haven't watched a movie in a theater for years (family life makes that tough–and very expensive, if it's a family viewing), and this sounds like a movie that really needs to be viewed in a theater–and definitely with the 3D glasses, too.
That, and I wouldn't want to blink. This movie looks like crack for the eyes. Maybe I should bring some Visine with me to keep my eyeballs from drying out.
January 17, 2010 at 1:53 am
I just can't see paying money for yet another movie where the American Military are cast as the bad guys… in a time of war. No eye candy could induce me. Oh, yeah, and Oprah loves it and featured James Cameron on her show, drooling over him for about 20 minutes… So, double no.
January 18, 2010 at 6:51 pm
It has been pointed out before by someone smarter than me that the end of the secularization of society is not the perfected and sterilized atheist dream worlds of science fiction such as Star Trek but rather a return to paganism. Some people are atheistic but most people, the mass of humanity is spiritual, something will be found to fill the void.
January 19, 2010 at 11:29 pm
Fr. Barron,
I'm uncertain as to whether you have studied South Asian theology in depth, but my sense is that you have not. I say this only because you missed the most obvious, if not explicitly stated, personalist theology embodied in Jake Sully as an avatar of God, as a hero-savior, quite in keeping with the character of Vishnu-avataras. As a Vaishnava theologian, this was perhaps easier for me to recognize, and I suppose it was not easy for everyone to recognize, given the tendencies of Western theology to interpret everything in accord with familiar categories. Yet there you have it, personalist theology (embedded in a natural pantheism).