Over the last 4 years I have turned my former beach bunny wife turned accountant into a full on geek. She loves the Star Wars movies, LoTR, and has even started playing D&D. She jokes that I have corrupted her.
Yet as with any relationship she has rubbed off on me as well, and she has encouraged me to watch movies I otherwise might never have watched, and in so doing I occaisionaly find inspiration, encouragement and new reasons to not be anything but what I am.
This past weekend she encouraged me to watch Finding Neverland, and it is just such a movie.
I had heard it was a tear jerking girlie film, so I had steered well clear of it. While it did turn out to be a bit of a tear jerker, the movie left me something else as well. It showed me there was nothing wrong with my wild imagination, and it gave me some new ways to envision things. Most of all though it encouraged me to write, even if they were just scribbles in a journal, random notes and thoughts, it doesnt matter, just write.
The movie has another virtue as well. Johnny Depp gives us a suberb performance as the author of Peter Pan.
I think all of us gamers are looking for our own Neverland, perhaps this movie will help you find it.
Not only does this movie show us that there is nothing wrong with our wild imaginations... it also encourages imagination... it somewhat even justifies that imagination is needed and appreciated.
In the scene that follows the opening of Peter Pan, one elderly woman sees past the flying children, the mermaids, and all, and recognizes the significance of a ticking clock always chasing after Captain Hook.
And, at the end of the movie, as a greiving family is encouraged to believe in fairies... they are really believing in somthing else. Hope? Love? Maybe through a flight of fancy, they were able to cope with realities that affected their family.
I think the movie almost makes me nostalgic of my own childhood imagination... and it makes me happy as I watch my four year-old daughter playing her games as I once did. Um... Not that I was ever a little girl. You know what I mean. :)