Science fiction gives us the opportunity to imagine the most spectacular scenarios. But if there is a story that gives us sublime images, it is James Cameron’s Avatar, which tells us the story of a civilization outside of our Earth, with landscapes that enchant anyone. However, the nature of our own planet is not far behind and, in fact, has been the inspiration for many of these narratives.
To the north of Hunan province, there is one of the natural places that holds the most magic within it. A forest that rises in tall columns and inspired the famous forest landscapes in the Avatar movie. Called Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, it extends for around 12 thousand acres, in which you can see a work of art of nature.
Amazing natural formations
In the middle of the forested region, rock formations that seem to come from another world rise from the ground level and are covered by arboreal beings that give them the appearance of giants thousands of meters high. There are hundreds of forest columns that measure up to a kilometer in height.
And precisely these characteristics were what inspired director James Cameron to create his famous floating Hallelujah Mountains of Pandora where Avatar’s dragons fly. In particular there is a pillar in the China Forest that park officials say inspired Cameron to create the sublime landscapes of it. It is a pillar named the Column of the Southern Sky that rises almost one thousand one hundred meters above the surface of the earth. But its main characteristic that influenced the imagination of the film director is that it is narrow at its base and wider at the tip. Therefore, it gives the sensation of floating in the air, covered with hundreds of tree and plant beings that further elevate the experience of admiring it.
After the success of Avatar, millions of nature explorers discovered Cameron’s inspiration. Consequently, visits to the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park have increased the number of tourists who come there to admire the beauty of our Mother Earth.
An unexpected turn
Strangely, the film has a curious history in China, which is a country characterized by its constant censorship of films coming from abroad. Avatar was one of the 20 films that the Chinese government allowed to be shown in theaters in 2010. Two weeks after the overwhelming success of the film, the government finally decided to withdraw it from theaters and the theory of many is that it was for fear of that the story of the Na’vi, who rose up to recover the lands from which they were displaced, would have a full impact on the populations of that country who are going through difficult situations.
What was not expected is that the success of the film would bring large numbers of tourists and locals, who come to the Asian giant to admire the beauty of the forested columns of Zhangjiajie, which has received an average of 30 million visitors.