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

This comment contains a minor spoiler.

[aeto.livejournal.com]

You know, I noticed the hexapod thing, as well, and thought that was odd. Where did evolution branch off and decide the Na'vi only needed four limbs? Similarly, all the animals seemed to have two of the weirdo things from their heads, while the Na'vi only had one.

Certainly a fascinating movie... Definitely want to see it again in IMAX.

This comment also contains spoilers

[pippinbear.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'd mentioned that oddness too; every animal but the Na'vi have six limbs; the flying ones have two sets of wings and one pair of legs.

I just had a thought: could the room-temperature superconductor be a necessary part of Eywa's connectivity? After all, they've evolved something as sophisticated as carbon fibre for use in skeletons and armour plating... That might also explain just where the unobtainium is found.

First time they mentioned "unobtainium", I thought it was the character joking about how hard it was to find. It was a bit disappointing to realise that it wasn't.

Re: This comment also contains spoilers

[ysengrin.livejournal.com]

It is suggestive that the two major deposits of Unobtanium that we're told of correspond with particularly obvious bits of Eywa. That's also why I was suggesting a biological origin for the stuff; it's a bit of a leap from what we're told in the film, but Eywa may be subtly (or not so subtly) working with biological systems on Pandora.

Re: This comment also contains spoilers

[pippinbear.livejournal.com]

Actually, I had assumed that Eywa was the name the Na'vi gave to the emergent behaviour of Pandora's interconnected flora/fauna, which they percieved as a separate entity without it necessarily being so. That is, it's not so much "working with" as "being an aspect of".

Re: This comment also contains spoilers

[ysengrin.livejournal.com]

There's some hints that I took be mean the Eywa was self-aware. That doesn't mean that Pandorian life wouldn't be considered by Eywa as the stuff it was made up of, but that Eywa could work with that stuff (life) with a fine hand.

Of course, the most obvious hints were *after* Eywa had deep-scanned a human. Possibly seeing how a mind outside itself was organized inspired Eywa?

Re: This comment contains a minor spoiler.

[ysengrin.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that all animals have the "weirdo things;" in particular I'm not sure that the big predator that assists near the end does. If it doesn't, that makes its very out-of-character actions compared to earlier in the film very suggestive that Eywa is able to influence individual creatures ... and that puts an interesting spin on the whole story.

Re: This comment contains a minor spoiler.

[ysengrin.livejournal.com]

On the avatars not quite being Na'vi -- possibly the "weird stuff" only works on Jake's avatar? I don't remember anyone else's avatar using it.

Re: This comment contains a minor spoiler.

[aeto.livejournal.com]

It was subtle at first... I noticed every time someone would get on or off one of the riding animals, they would run their hand down the left tentacle thing (I lack a good name for it). Only later did I realize they were detaching their hair-tenticle-thing from the animal's. They'd similarly reach for it when they first mounted the animal.

Did you catch the "interesting" comment at the start? When Jake first was in the Av, he reached for his pony tail, and ran his fingers over the little tentacle things. Someone near him (Grace?) made the comment, "don't play with that, or you'll go blind."

Uh.... I wonder if that means... Hmmmm...

Re: This comment contains a minor spoiler.

[pippinbear.livejournal.com]

That was one of the "good bits" of the film for me; when I noticed, for example, what they were doing early on in the film as they got on and off their mounts and figured out they were mentally linking to the animals, that gave me a pretty good feel. It was nice not to have to be told some things, but to figure them out for myself. Gave me the impression I was, in some minor way, doing a bit of science for myself. :)

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.