After our time at the Nature Research Center and The Daily Planet Café Raleigh, we went to the Wells Fargo IMAX Theatre to watch a showing of To The Arctic 3D. The movie theater was so cool (temperature-wise), clean and comfortable that it was hard for me to stay awake. Fortunately, the movie that we went to see was less than an hour!
I was pleasantly surprised regarding how immersed the boys became in the movie. “It was a very good movie. The mother (polar bear) caring for her babies and not letting the guy (male polar bear) eat them…” was the best part according to Michael. Sean liked learning that the polar bears were originally brown bears that had adapted to the Arctic environment over time. Overall, it was interesting to see how the animals had to adapt due to environmental challenges. (For example, male polar bears sometimes try to eat polar bear cubs because there are not enough seals to eat.) Another thing that stood out was that audience sympathy was tied to the version of the story that is being told. (For instance, the audience was so scared that the male polar bear was going to catch up with the mother and her cubs and kill one of them. However, when the mother polar bear killed a seal to provide food for her cubs, the audience was just happy that the cubs were being fed! While both bears were simply fighting for survival, the audience simply got caught up in the mother/child love story of the polar bear family.) In any event, the movie can really prompt some great discussions regarding how to help One World One Ocean Foundation (who worked to help create this film) reach their top three goals:
GOAL #1: Change the way we eat sea-life.
GOAL #2: Refuse, reduce, reuse and recycle plastic.
GOAL #3 : Support efforts to increase the area of marine sanctuaries and reserves worldwide to 10% of the ocean by the year 2020.
In any event, To The Arctic was a visually stunning, educational film that was shown in a great theater. Thanks to The Greater Raleigh Convention and Visitors Bureau for including this outing in our itinerary for the weekend!