When I was a teenager, my favorite television series was Star Trek: The Next Generation. I still love it, and I’m thrilled whenever it plays on television. One of my single most favorite moments in Las Vegas came during my first visit, when in my first free moment, I beelined for the Star Trek Experience.  (I only hesitate to call myself a Trekkie since I have never once donned Vulcan ears, cannot arrange my fingers into the “live long and prosper” salute, have never attempted to speak Klingon, and own no Star Fleet memorabilia.)

“Space opera”, this genre of sci fi is called, and it’s always struck me as a subset of fictional travel writing. My favorite parts of these stories aren’t the technological gee gaws, or the intergalactic politics, but the part where you get to “explore strange new worlds”. I love the idea of looking up into the sky and seeing four or five moons instead of just one.

James Cameron’s movie Avatar falls into this category, which at its best is a travelogue to the planet of Pandora.  In fact, I’d argue that it would have been better without the silly plot and God help us, the infantile dialogue, better if it was simply that: a travelogue.

If you haven’t seen this new 3D technology, it’s pretty amazing. Things don’t really jump out at you, it’s more like the screen has a depth of field that’s similar to what you see when you’re looking out of the window. And so in the beginning, as the characters first explore Pandora, I thought, wow, this is a lot like my life — traveling around and seeing new, beautiful, amazing and sometimes disturbing things.  I wondered whether it would inspire travel here in the real world.

I’m not sure that it will though — first of all, some people are apparently crashingly depressed that they can’t actually go visit Pandora.  So okay, they’re carried away by the fantasy, but it’s not only this fantastic place that they want to visit, it’s the way that the characters in the movie travle that I think is also very compelling, and taps into a fantasy that people have about real-world travels on earth: that you can travel with any real personal involvement or risk.

In case you’re unfamiliar with the movie’s conceit, humans are somehow mentally joined with Avatars, essentially alien mannequins, so while the human lies asleep in a special chamber, they’re out cavorting in Pandora in their alien puppet costume.  In other words, the part of you that’s real slumbers safely, while your traveling persona is out learning about a new environment, culture, way of life.  (Bonus: in Avatar, your travel persona is taller, better looking, and more physically skilled.)

Of course, that safe remove is a fiction — even in the movie, the characters really begin to care about Pandora and its people, in the same way that travelers who really immerse begin to care about the places they visit and its people.  But that creates a conflict for the characters in the movie, whose allegiances are now divided, as it does for actual travelers.

The movie solves this neatly — the characters move to Pandora and through some magic are able to abandon their human form. (The movies is filled with pat solutions like this.) And it should be said,  it happens with some travelers too — they fall in love with a place and a way of life, and they never come home again. But most of us do return home, and want to, and the conflicting allegiances that travel can create are not at all easy to deal with. It’s an interesting conundrum, and not one that the movie takes up at all.  (Star Trek, in all its many movies and series, often does, ahem.)

But should Avatar inspire deep real-world , on Earth travels, it will be an issue the inspired will certainly have to consider.

I realize I’m going against the tide with what I have to say about Up in the Air, George Clooney’s new movie. It’s been well-received, not only in the film community, where it was just nominated for several Golden Globes, but also in the travel community.  There are many things I enjoyed about the movie, similar to what other frequent-traveler reviewers have pointed out: the portrayal of the rituals of travel — the practiced sweep of the eye while selecting a security line, the glory of bypassing a crowded line with an elite status card, the sure knowledge that comes with knowing how to pack a suitcase, and of course, the beautiful view of multiple cities as seen from the air.

We frequent, passionate travelers live an alternative lifestyle. As for anyone who lives outside the mainstream, it’s always something of a relief to see life portrayed with some measure of accuracy, on a screen of any size.

The situation is this: Ryan Bingham plays a corporate downsizing consultant who flies around the country laying people off.  He loves his life on the road — particularly the flying part, he’s avidly collecting frequent flier miles — plus, he’s good at his job. Along comes Natalie Keener, a brash, bright Cornell graduate who wants to replace the in-person firing process with video chat, thus threatening his entire lifestyle.  She ends up traveling with Bingham to see how the job is done, in the meantime, Bingham launches a relationship with fellow road warrior, Alex Goran, who says, alluringly: “Just think of me as yourself, only with a vagina.”

Bingham is portrayed as someone who gleefully escapes all responsibility. He hates his home (a totally empty apartment in Omaha that lacks the charm of a no-tell motel), he finds his family annoying. He has a side business as a motivational speaker, and while we never hear the entire speech, it seems to be about avoiding all responsibility. But all is not what it seems: while Bingham’s task of laying people off is odious, he obviously grasps its implications, and takes that responsibility seriously. Moreover, at the movie’s outset, he is living a life that he has selected, on his own terms, and — uh oh — he’s happy.

In comes the hectoring voice of family values and traditional society, our plucky bright young thing, Natalie. She blasts him for not pursuing a relationship with Alex, for not wanting to own a home, to get married and to have children. She deems him immature, and scorns him for having the temerity to select and enjoy a life of his own choosing.While the movie portrays Natalie sympathetically, I found her the most horrifying of all: “For the love of god will you let me fire someone”, she says at one point to Bingham. What’s more, the voice that speak for society, the voice espousing home and hearth, also sees no conflict in replacing a face-to-face interaction with a computer screen, denying those to be fired the comfort of human contact.

Beware: major spoilers coming after the jump.

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