The Prompt: Andrew Eaton

I'M GOING to see Avatar this week. I appreciate this means I'm very late at the party, given that a lot of people are already on their fourth viewing, while a lot of other people dismissed the whole thing weeks ago as too much fuss over freakishly tall smurfs. I have an excuse though. I wanted to see it at the IMAX, there's only one of them in Scotland, and tickets were booked up weeks in advance.

The plus side is that, as I arrive at the cinema, I will already know numerous things which will surely enhance my experience of James Cameron's multi-million dollar smurf movie.

1. What the Vatican thinks of it. "Bland," apparently, but, more pertinently, that the film "cleverly winks at all those pseudo-doctrines that turn ecology into the religion of the millennium". The Pope, evidently, is worried that films like Avatar will have us abandoning proper religions like Catholicism for dubious faiths like paganism.

2. That it bears a striking resemblance to Pocahontas. I may not have seen Avatar yet, but I have seen the various YouTube videos that splice footage from Avatar with footage from the famous Disney cartoon. Choose from Pocahontas recut as a sci-fi thriller, Avatar to the theme tune from Pocahontas, and more. A double bill in the making, surely.

3. That it has made hundreds of people depressed, bordering on suicidal. This has probably been overplayed for the sake of a good story (as experts on depression have been keen to point out this week), but the postings on www.avatar-forums.com do suggest a lot of people are finding it difficult to return to the real world after being immersed in the world of Avatar. "I contemplate suicide thinking that if I do I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora," writes one. So if this column is by someone else next week, it may be because I'm at home, crying, wishing I was an alien smurf instead of an arts journalist.

Why has Avatar affected people so deeply? Perhaps it's that its ecological message is in tune with the times. Perhaps it's that the fully immersive 3D experience Cameron promised really is a "game-changer" – audience reaction suggests Avatar might really be a new kind of movie experience, a place you can get lost in, in the same way you can in Second Life. Or perhaps it's simply that, as a new year begins and the recession continues to bite, planet Pandora is far more appealing than trudging through the drizzle back to a job you told yourself you'd quit this year, but know you won't. I'm a bit anxious about going now.

• This article first appeared in Scotland on Sunday, 17 January, 2010