My friends are completely divided about Avatar. It seems to be a litmus test for how much of a bleeding heart hippie you are — which apparently I am, as I totally loved it. Yeah, it was Pocahontas meets Fern Gully meets Dances With Wolves, but I was floored — and heartened — that the blockbuster movie grossing more money than any other was, above all, about deepening one’s own connection with nature and becoming more spiritual.

It helped that the movie was stunningly beautiful, depicting the natural world in a phosphorescent, impressively imaginative otherworldliness. It also helped that the interconnectedness of life in this world was more than metaphoric — it was biological, even botanical, as all things were connected by a nervous system that could interact, including the flora. (Zahelu!)

The ironic part, of course, is that it took the most cutting edge effects and enormous budget to tell this story, and it’s one packing hordes into $20/seat IMAX 3-D theaters.

But if it takes beautiful blockbusters with ham-fisted love stories and predictable plot lines to make environmental themes appeal to the masses, so be it. But I want to see more movies like Avatar and Wall-E, which give me hope that popular attitudes towards superficial consumption — and our love affair with material wealth — will one day shift.