Can Avatar drive you to suicide?

Avatar' may have enthralled worldwide audiences with its imagery of an utopian alien world but movie-goers have complained of
depression and even suicidal thoughts after watching the sci-fi hit.

Fans of James Cameron's 3D magnum opus are seemingly finding it hard to separate fact from fiction and Internet forums have been flooded with posts by movie-goers plagued with suicidal thoughts about not being able to visit the planet Pandora, reported CNN online.

North American fan site 'Avatar Forums' has received 2,000 posts under a thread entitled 'Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible'.

Forum administrator Philippe Baghdassarian said, "The movie was so beautiful and it showed something we don't have here on earth. I think people saw we could be living in a completely different world and that caused them to be depressed."

The blockbuster movie, which has already taken more than USD 1 billion at the box office, tells the story of a disabled marine sent on a mission to a planet called Pandora, home to a race of giant blue aliens.

Humans are intent on exploiting the planet for its resources but clash with the native Na'vi, who inhabit their world in perfect harmony with nature.

Forum user 'Okoi' writes, "After I watched 'Avatar' at the first time, I truly felt depressed as I 'wake' up in this world again."

I saw this earlier too. Im not surprised. The movie moved me to tears at how gorgeous the world was.

I definitely agree that i would rather live in that world than this.
But i dont find myself suicidal over it.
We could make our world beautiful again if wed all just work together or at the very least we could go to other worlds and make them green.

While Avatar made me want to crazy glue those 3d glass to my face because of its sheer beauty, but to go as far as suicide because of it thats a bit silly. That's like wanting to die so the next life i could be a movie star... While the internet can do good, it makes me realise how a bunch of human brought together can act so damn foolishly. As for the media, especially cnn, to pay attention to such rubbish shows how sensationalist they are. I wouldnt be surprise to see people killing themself if mcdonald was to removed their chicken mc nuggets from their menu...

Wouldnt it be great if those same people that feel suicidal because they dont have this utopian place to live, could change the thought pattern around to wanting to try and work towards making this world beautiful again? It would be a start to creating their own utopia! Maybe having a real concrete thing to work towards instead of depressing over something "make belief" would give them a reason to want to live. Why do we as a race always seem to find the bad in everything?

I havent seen the movie but from everything I've heard about it, I tend to think that the exact opposite of what seems to be happening is what the movie was trying to convey. We try to exploit rather than learn and use the knowledge to improve our own plight. At one point this planet was utopian as well. Man has destroyed that but isnt willing to make a major effort to fix what we have destroyed. Easier to just keep passing the buck, bitch and complain. And we dont learn from our mistakes. If we were given a whole new planet. An utopian existance, we'd fuck that up too.

Personally I think people getting depressed over the movie Avatar is slightly silly. Although I haven't seen it of course :laugh:. But I guess they feel what they feel. If us humans were given such a planet as Pandora we'd easily transform it into what ours is today. If were were to keep a world pictured like the one in Avatar beautiful and all we would have to change our ways massively. That means practically the entire scheme of making weaponry out of local metals and material(wholesale that is) would have to stop - along with other sometimes seemingly undestructive things. Even though that's practically impossible. We've come to this point in time like this because we are 'humans'. We are constantly thinking or inventing ways to do something differently so we can make our day easier or more enjoyable. It has taken an awfully long time to become how we are today. Having cars and planes and large ships made out of metal. For all we know the Na'vi could have extremely different mind sets to us.(I'm probly going way off topic :laugh. So maybe the way their mind is structured doesn't require them to be constantly thinking about different things and inventing things besides basic tools and survival skills. Then again, they were using bows and arrows and spears etc. So that 'could' be compaired to early human behaviour where they made axes out of flint and basic arrows and spears blah blah blah.

Avatar wasnt depressing for me, i was glad that the marine found somewhere to belong, even if it was with blue furries. Interestingly there are sequels on the way, how will james cameron afford them, HOW?

When I got out of the movie theater I knew I had seen this movie somewhere before.

I realized that the plot and themes were very much like "Dances With Wolves" which deals with the plight of the American Indians and the battle of conscience that the protaganist must deal with as an officer from the Civil War and who must go west to find out about the Native American Indians.

The character has a change of heart and decides to help them.

This theme is not limited to the U.S.

So, people may be subconsciously affected by the similarties between what happened in the film and what has happened and IS HAPPENING right here on earth.

I think these individuals had a problem in the first place, and Avatar is just bringing it too light. There have been a lot of cases of already depression and disturbed individuals becoming worse when subjected to a delightful fantasy world (Harry Potter, Star Wars, and Star Trek are among the type of escapist works that have done this in the past).

Chances are, if it wasn't Avatar it would've been something else. I think the ground-breaking sense of emersion is what's made these people seemingly more affected than usual.