Avatar (again)

[ysengrin]

A few (non-spoiler) things to think about ... and a warning that comments may well *be* spoilery, so avoid this thread unless you've seen the film.

The environment of Pandora has been worked out in great detail for the film. All the 'higher' life is based off of a hexapod (six limbed) base. With a very notable exception - the Na'vi.

The avatars are supposed to be a hybrid mix of human and Na'vi. Aside from the interesting point that life on Earth and Pandora must have a lot of similarities for that to work (and that Earth biotech is really, really advanced), the film offers a lot of details that show the avatars are *not* Na'vi -- they smell different, have a different number of fingers and possibly other gross differences as well.

Pandora seems to be the only source of Unobtainium (which is supposedly a room-temp superconductor, though I'm not sure that's stated in the film). Is it possibly biological in origin?

There's also a big chunk of ecological speculation that *is* spoilery, so I'll leave it for later.

Comments

Re: This comment contains a minor spoiler.

[ysengrin.livejournal.com]

Oh, the "weird stuff" certainly works with the Na'vi; but I wonder if the "weird stuff" on the avatars was not properly functional as the folks who made the hybrids would have no idea what it was for -- or because of the density of (assumed) sensory endings it was assumed to be a secondary sexual characteristic.