Avatar Shmavatar

Do you remember when Avatar came out? It was the GREATEST MOVIE EVER MADE! That was, right up until the point people actually saw it. Yes, it was gorgeous to look at and the soundtrack was truly thrilling. But let’s face facts; the plot was written by a 4 year old and the dialog was hammered out by his idiot cousin. Worse yet, the basic science behind the film was completely flawed. All of the creatures on Pandora were sextopeds and the Na-Vi were bipedal. Since the latter can not evolve from the former, where the hell did they come from? Of course, logic and rational went out the window the second you saw people walking around, bare armed, in a toxic atmosphere, so what’s one more little thing?

That being said, there nevertheless must be a market for abysmally acted soulless slabs of cinema. That’s the only explanation I can come up with for the success of the last three Star Wars films.

Granted, Avatar’s eco-friendly message resonated with the world, but so did Captain Planet’s in its day. And that actually had better scripts.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I saw Avatar if for no other reason than it allowed me to participate in the pop culture gestalt of the time. Even so, on the list of things I’d like to do before I shed this mortal coil, getting married by an imitation Na-Vi never crossed my mind.

Nor yours, I would imagine.

Sadly, we do not rule the world. According to Eco Razzi, there are people who’ve paid big bucks to go to a forest in China to do just that. And because these people are incredibly stupid, they were stunned, STUNNED I TELL YOU, to discover there were no real 10 foot tall Na-Vi performing the ceremonies.

After James Cameron’s “Avatar” exploded worldwide, forestry officials in the southern China region of Wulingyuan saw an opportunity to cash in on the film. Turns out that producers had used the park’s unusual 3,100ft tall quartzite sandstone pillars as inspiration for Pandora’s “floating mountains”. So, in a an effort to drum up tourism, they started offering “Pandora Tours” — and, unfortunately, Pandora themed-weddings.

Really, really bad Pandora themed weddings.

“The Navi were a couple of forestry workers dressed up in long underwear dyed blue wearing some very unconvincing masks,” Bride Xiao Tsao told the site Metro, one of five couples recently married in a joint service. “It was really pathetic.”

Ah — but think of the memories! And ruined wedding day photos!

For their part, the forestry service in charge of organizing the weddings defended their nightmare-inducing costumes with a basic sentiment of “what the hell did you expect?”

“We are not professional special effects experts but we do our best,” they told Metro. “What we are really highlighting is the beauty of our landscape.”

Exactly. So look beyond those creepy blue guys surrounding your gorgeous (and less than thrilled to have paid for this) new bride. Pandora awaits — as well as a possible annulment.

I’m really baffled by this. At what point in your life are you so disconnected from reality that you think the Chinese government, which screwed up a foot race, is capable of handling something like this? Or, to be more direct, when’s the last time you said “Gosh! I’m getting married. I really hope there’s a forestry official available.”?

All of this could have easily been prevented if anyone over there had seen an episode of Bridezilla. Or asked me.