Avatar celebrates Earth Day with ill-conceived waste of power

 

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Posted on 22 Apr 2010 at 11:34

Most companies and people try and celebrate Earth Day by trying to conserve power and save our planet's finite resources. Not, Avatar the film, though. Instead, it will be responsible for a shocking waste of power, as a replica Tree of Souls that uses 20 miles of fibre optic cabling is installed in London's Hyde Park.

From Saturday 24th to Monday 26th April, the Tree of Life will be sucking precious electricity to highlight the plight of our planet. The loose connection to Earth Day is that the film (in a hugely simplistic way) is about how nature is good and living in harmony with the world is better than mining and weapons.

For the cynical out there, it should come as no surprise that this is basically one massive marketing campaign aimed at shifting Blu-ray and DVD copies of the movie, which are released on 26 April. It's somewhat ironic that the promotion of the film should do the opposite of the message in it, don't you think?

As well as a light show the tree will have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth built-in so that people can interact and send social media messages. Presumably, people can tweet messages, such as, "Turn this obnoxious waste of power off."

The only ray of light in all of this mess is that for each person that interacts with the tree, 20th Century Fox will plant a real life tree up to a target of one-million. We think the film makers would have just been better off actually planting one million trees rather than staging a massive advertising stunt.

If that doesn't put you off, you can head over to the park this weekend to watch this live-action irony take place. The tree will be unveiled by Stephen Lang, who played Colonel Miles Quaritch (another bit of irony: a two-dimensional character in a three-dimensional film). Sadly, he won't be flying overhead trying to bomb this monstrosity out of existence.

Author: David Ludlow