Fictional universe in Avatar

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For the 2009 science fiction film Avatar, director James Cameron conceived of a fictional universe in which humans seek to mine the fictional moon of Pandora, which is inhabited by a sentient indigenous species and multiple fauna and flora. Located in the Alpha Centauri system,^[1] Pandora is a lush, tropical Earth-like moon of the planet Polyphemus and is covered with rain forests. Humans travel to Pandora in the 22nd century and discover that it is occupied by a sapient indigenous humanoid species called the Na'vi. The clan with which the humans have contact to in the film "[lives] in a giant tree that sits on a vast store of a mineral called unobtanium, which humans want as an energy supply."^[2]

The Pandoran biosphere teems with diverse bioluminescent species of hexapodal fauna and flora (which form a vast, complex neural network that covers the entire surface). Their sheer importance lies in the fact that ultimately, the conciously connected Pandoran defeat of the human invaders is due to the flora and fauna, not the Na'vi. In order to make the various examples of fauna and flora as scientifically feasible as possible, they were all designed by Cameron and his team of expert advisers.^[3]

Overall development

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Cameron spoke of prioritizing story and character over the effects technology by explaining, "When they see a Pixar movie, they don't need to know about the hundreds of artists who slaved away at computers for years to make it. It's just: Do I like this story? Do I like the characters? I think Avatar will work that way."^[4]

Cameron explained his objective to seamlessly translate actor performances into computer-generated characters, saying, "evolved from a couple of things: growing up on a steady diet of science fiction, imagining alien characters, and being ultimately dissatisfied with what was possible with makeup and prosthetics, with an actor having to be in the makeup chair for six hours a day. This technology isn't about replacing or marginalizing actors. It's about allowing actors to transform and empower them to be as creative as they want to be. And by the way, we did tall blue people with pointy ears here. But we could easily have done a straight human face if we'd wanted to ... If we had put the same energy into creating a human as we put into creating the Na'vi, it would have been 100 percent indistinguishable from reality."^[5]

If Avatar is successful, Cameron hopes to explore the other moons in future sequels, books, and spinoffs

Na'vi

One of the challenges in designing Neytiri was making her look sufficiently alien and yet familiar and appealing enough to make Jake's attraction to her natural and convincing.^[10]

In Avatar, the Na'vi are a fictional indigenous species that live on the fictional world of Pandora. They are humanoid in appearance and are 9 to 10 feet (2.7 to 3.0 m) tall, having pairs of eyes, ears, arms, and legs like humans, as well as a nose, a mouth, and expressions recognizable to humans. The Na'vi differ by having blue striped skin, pointed ears, large eyes, animal like teeth, catlike noses and tails as well as having only four digits on their hands and feet. They are also taller than humans but also have narrower proportions in body frame. The Na'vi were originally conceived to be more alien in appearance. Cameron recalled that when one of the main characters, Neytiri, was originally drawn, she had fins, gills, and other protuberances. In addition to feline features,^[11] the species was redesigned to look more like humans so audiences could relate to them better. Cameron said that Avatar was more "science fantasy" than true science fiction and said that he would explain in the novel for the film why in the fictional universe the Na'vi look like humans.^[12]

According to Entertainment Weekly, "The Na'vi can commune with animals on their planet by literally plugging their ponytails into the creatures' nerve systems. To become a warrior, a Na'vi must tame and ride a creature known as Ikran."^[11] The Na'vi also use this neural bonding system to mate with a "life partner", a bond that when made, cannot be broken in the Na'vi's lifetime.^[13]

Conceived for the film was the Na'vi language, a constructed language often spoken by the actors when they played Na'vi characters. The Na'vi language was created by linguistics professor Paul Frommer of University of Southern California. Frommer designed the language so it could be spoken by human actors, and it combines syntactic and grammatical rules from other existing languages. The professor created over a thousand words for the Na'vi language and taught the actors who played Na'vi characters to speak it for the film.^[14] When communicating to humans in the film, Na'vi characters (especially Neytiri) sometimes speak in accented and broken English.

Fauna

James Cameron's core idea for the Avatar's fictional creatures was for them to be "superslick and aerodynamic, and be like a race car with racing stripes".^[15] Neville Page worked on Avatar as the lead creature designer. He adapted Cameron's conceptions of the fauna into design that served three purposes: look expressive, function with animation technology, and be believable enough for audiences.^[16] He and creature designer Wayne Barlowe sought to base the design of Pandora's creatures on race cars, but they struggled to adapt the concept. Page drew on his education in automotive design, recognizing the irony that race cars were based on real-life animals in having "bone lines". Existing automotive designs drew from seashells, turtle shells, and insects, and the creature designers returned the design to the fictional creatures. They found the biggest challenge in designing most creatures to give them organic appearances since they lacked excessive skin texturing. Some creatures were also designed to have special breathing holes located in the trachea, copying how cars have intakes.^[15] Challenges that the creatures posed for visual effects technicians were to create believable "walk and run" cycles for six-legged creatures and believable flying for creatures that had four wings.^[17]

The fictional creatures are not connected telepathically according to Cameron and the designers. However, even though they discussed the idea of the creatures being part of Pandora's "Worldmind", they preferred to interpret the creatures as having heightened instincts. Page explained, "Animals are hooked up to this planet. We're the ones who are detached... The way I dealt with it was, We have so much rich [material] here to reference, that we don't have to dream up a whole new process of animal awareness."^[15]

The wildlife on Pandora is considered mostly scientifically valid. The fictional moon has less gravity than Earth, so the creatures' larger sizes match their environment. Most Pandoran wildlife are hexapodal, or six-legged, which would be more expected in a world with more significant gravity than Earth's. Half of all Earth's known living creatures are hexapodal (being insectile), so hexapodal creatures are possible. The fauna and the flora are also bioluminescent, which is seen in creatures on Earth, such as fireflies and algae. The aforementioned breathing holes, located on multiple parts of a creature's body other than the mouth, are similar to spiracles in some of Earth's animals.^[18]

[edit] List of fauna

• Direhorse (Pa'li in Na'vi language) is a hexapodal equine-like Animal.^[19] The Direhorse was conceived and designed by Cameron and Stan Winston Studios. Cameron described the creature as a "six-legged alien Clydesdale with moth-like antennae".^[20]

• Great Leonopteryx (Toruk in Na'vi language) is an airborne predator native to Pandora. The fierce beauty and nobility of the leonopteryx gave the species a place in central Na'vi lore and culture. It is celebrated in dance, song, and with elaborate totems that symbolizes both the fear and respect accorded to the creature. The leonopteryx is considered crucial to the Na'vi sense of destiny and interconnectedness. Prior to the events of the film, it had only been tamed five times, and Neytiri tells Jake that the riders (Toruk Makto) brought peace among the Pandoran tribes. The Great Leonopteryx and the Banshee were designed with bright colors. Page based the colors on Earth's birds, poison dart frogs, and Monarch butterflies, though he altered the patterns so that their inspirations would not be so obvious to moviegoers.^[21]

• Hammerhead Titanothere (Angtsìk in Na'vi language) is a large herbivore with a head shaped like a hammer.^[22] The creature, which resembles a cross between a rhinoceros and a hammerhead shark, is angered easily.^[20] Its hide is impervious to human ammunition, though firing on it is known to anger it.

• Hexapede (Yerik in Na'vi language) are hexapodal deerlike creatures.^[20]

• Mountain Banshee (Ikran in Na'vi language) is an airborne predator who lives in mountainous territory on Pandora. Na'vi warriors attempt to bond with a Banshee, a dangerous and required rite of passage. A Banshee bonds to a Na'vi warrior for life.^[23] Page spent the most time designing the Banshee for the film so it would be convincing when it flew or perched. The designer said, "The hardest thing of all was having a Na'vi on top of it and flying it. You had to backwards engineer it. It was like designing and engineering an aircraft."^[24] Barlowe, who contributed to the Banshee's design, was influenced by manta rays and skates as well as relatively little-known pterosaurs and plesiosaurs that had "many, unique aerodynamic and hydrodynamic" characteristics.^[15] Like the color scheme for the Great Leonopteryx, color schemes based on Earth animals were used for various Banshees, though Page was inspired by Art Nouveau prints to warp the schemes so they would not look familiar to film audiences.^[21]

• Prolemuris Blue, hexapodal creatures based on Earth's lemurs.

• Thanator (Palulukan in Na'vi language) is a large hexapodal land predator.^[25] Cameron personally designed the creature.^[26] Its appearance is similar to a panther; Cameron describes the Thanator as "a panther from hell". The director explained how the Thanator is the most fearsome creature on Pandora, "The Thanator could eat a T-Rex and have the Alien for dessert."^[20]

• Viperwolf (Nantang in Na'vi language) is a hexapodal nocturnal carnivore.^[27] Cameron described the Viperwolves, "[They are] hairless with shiny skin that looks like overlapped armor. Most disturbing are its paws, which are like leathery hands."^[20]

[edit] Flora

Flora on Pandora are of a tropical type several times taller than that existing on Earth. Many, if not all plant and animal species have bioluminescent properties.^[28] It is also proposed that most species of flora are only able to grow in the presence of unobtanium. The flora specimens seen in the film were all designed by Jodie Holt, a professor of botany at the University of California, Riverside. According to Holt, Pandoran flora are able to communicate with each other through signal transduction and are larger in size than Earth flora due to a combination of factors such as the atmosphere on Pandora being thicker, gravity weaker and due to the fact that there is a strong magnetic field.^[3]

[edit] List of flora

• Helicoradian is a carnivorous plant that has red spiral-leaves. The plants are up to 3-4m tall and, when touched, they curl and collapse into themselves instantly.

• Obesus rotundus is a tree that looks like a puffball tree.^[3]

• Pseudocycas altissima is a plant that looks like a tall Earth cycad.^[3]

• The Hometrees (Kelutrel in Na'vi language) are great enough to house hundreds of clan members. The trees are honeycombed with natural hollows and alcoves in which the Na'vi sleep, eat, weave, dance, and celebrate their connection to Eywa. Adult Hometrees are more than 150 meters tall, roughly thirty meters in diameter ^[29]

• The Omaticaya inhabit a Giant Hometree, standing roughly 460 meters tall. A distinguishable feature of the movie landscape, the tree itself is central to the movie story arc. Like many sacred sites on Pandora, the Giant Hometree sits above a large deposit of unobtanium. It is destroyed by the humans using rockets, which leads to the Na'vi clans' alliance against the humans.

• The Tree of Souls (Vitraya Ramunon in Na'vi language) is a tree where the Na'vi are able to communicate with the biological network that exists throughout Pandora. Cameron described the Tree of Souls as "a big input-output station" and was inspired to design it by bioluminescence that he encountered during night diving.^[26]

• The Tree of Voices (Utraya Mokri in Na'vi language) is the most important tree to the Na'vi after the Tree of Souls. It is smaller but its appearance is similar and it too is illuminated. Neytiri tells Jake that it allows the Na'vi to hear the voices of their ancestors. It is destroyed in the bulldozer attack by the humans.

• Woodsprites (Atokirina in Na'vi language) are seeds of the "holy tree", appearing similar to airborne jellyfish.^[20]

• Various plants and trees that look like Earth's ferns, palm trees, mosses and grasses.

[edit] Humans

Of interest to the humans is Pandora's reserves of Unobtanium, a valuable superconducting mineral valued at "20 million a kilo". The name of the material is the same that of the mythical material often referenced in 20th century engineering which is more scarce and with more advanced capabilities than currently available materials.

In the Avatar universe, humans have achieved a highly advanced technological society, dominated by corporations and industries. One of Earth's most powerful corporations is the Resources Development Administration, a quasi-governmental organization that possesses a monopoly over all the resources in the Alpha Centauri system. The corporate administrator for the mining operation, Parker Selfridge, is an archetypical capitalist. Also, according to Jake, humans have "destroyed all the green" on Earth, suggesting that there is very little, if any, plant life left.

Humans are capable of advanced genetic engineering, and can grow Na'vi bodies, modified with human DNA to allow a genetically-matched human operator to control them through a mental link.

[edit] Technology

As with many science fiction films, many space vehicles, aircraft, ground vehicles, weapons and technologies were created to fit the story. Many were patterned after historical or contemporary technologies.^[30] Concept artist Ryan Church based many drawings on aerodynamic research from previously classified NASA and DARPA technical papers. Unlike the movie Aliens which employed one drop ship from de-orbit to ground combat, several vehicles cover specific roles of utility transport, gunship, and base resupply. This is similar to the specialization of aircraft and helicopters in the United States military since the Vietnam war.

• AMP suit Combat vehicle that is worn and controlled as a large "mech" motorized suit.
• Dragon gunship large four-post ducted-fan VTOL heavily armed transport and gunship which can deliever AMP suits through drop doors.
• Hells Gate is a secure forward operating base with airfield, comparable to Khe Sanh.
• ISV Venture Star is an interstellar transport using antimatter propulsion systems to enable interstellar travel. The ISV Venture Star is one of twelve similar ships travelling between the Sol and Alpha Centauri A systems, commissioned by the RDA as mineral carriers. Based on the designs of scientist and author Charles Pellegrino, and deceased scientist and author Robert L. Forward. Charles Pellegrino served as a science advisor on the film.^[31]
• Samson is a ducted fan VTOL utility aircraft similar in appearance and role to the Vietnam-era UH-1 Huey or contemporary UH-60 Blackhawk
• Scorpion Heavily armed gunship counterpart to Samson. Similar in role and appearance to the AH-64 Apache or Hind gunships.
• Valkyrie is a space shuttle-like transport which delivers cargo and passengers to the surface. It has VTOL capability by swiveling its fusion engines, and like the C-130 Hercules was adapted as a bomber to drop daisy cutter bombs out of the rear cargo ramp.