So...yes. I fell in love with James Cameron’s Avatar. Not with the overly-clichéd plot, but the conception of the moon Pandora itself. Billions of black pixels have been spent in criticizing the story and the themes; Avatar is obviously a white-guilt movie, not quite dissimilar with Disney’s Pocahontas, Dance with Wolves and Atlantis: the Lost Empire. This type of stories will invariably feature an outsider as the hero, a female native as the heroine and predictably the eventual conflict between the two differing factions over whatever precious resources the natives’ land happen to possess. The hero (often a colonialist or at least allied to them; usually coming from a land with little natural resources left, and invariably a white male) will always go native, win the sympathy of the locals and defend them after an epiphany; the natives are usually (much) more connected with Mother Nature and being generally naïve and infallible. That is to say, Avatar is a highly archetypal movie to some or a Pocahontas IN SPACE for others. Take your pick.

Anyways, it’s not the story, the plot or themes I’m going to talk about. It’s the design of the moon Pandora (yes people, it’s a moon) that we’re going to discuss here, biology and design-wise. While I did fell in love with it and proclaimed the said love loudly to some of my friends (to the point it’s quite nauseating), I saw plenty of points that could have been much better or at least closer to realism. Why bother? Why nitpick? It’s just a movie after all. Why? Because we geeks love to discuss fictional worlds in depth and we have nothing else to do in general. If you hate this kind of thing, be warned: this article is a powerful emetic for you and I suggest you to leave this page immediately. I don’t want to be responsible for a particularly explosive vomiting. For others who can bear it — read along.

Points to consider:

There are two notable creature designers involved in this ambitious project: Neville Page and Wayne Barlowe. Page is the lead designer. Both of them have noticeably different flavors to their designs. Page took a lot of liberties to repurpose Earth animals and plants and combined their elements to form a new creature, and used fairly familiar body plans; Barlowe usually choose to design creatures that are very alien anatomically, while keeping them vaguely familiar to our minds. To paraphrase TVTropes, Wayne Barlowe “is vocally sick with Rubber Forehead Aliens and made a hard attempt to avoid them.” It’s not hard to see Neville Page’s influence in the movie – his marks are all over it.


(I'm not saying which is which is better artist; I simply preferred Barlowe's approach).

1. The Na’vi

Alright, Cameron wanted them to look sexy and relatable so it’s quite understandable why they are so human and have boobs (even though it’s highly unlikely to find humanoids on other planets). Some people might find it hard to sympathize with a race of tentacled, purple flesh-bladder with twelve eyes and five serrated jaws, let alone the thought of romancing with them. (Even in movies with purposefully disgusting aliens such as District 9 still require large, sympathetic eyes so —well – humans could still feel their pain or emotions. Humans are bastards indeed.)


2. Pandoran Wildlife

We can see analogues of ‘ panthers’, ‘jackals’, ‘rhinos’, ‘bats’, ‘geckoes’, ‘horses’ and ‘dragons’ in Pandora. This is rather unlikely to happen in planetary bodies outside the Earth; they may fill similar roles (e.g. voracious apex-predators, giant herbivores, pack hunters, etc.), but the body plans maybe sharply dissimilar.
However, on a closer look, the anatomy is indeed alien. They breathe through spiracles close to their “shoulders”, they are mostly hexapodal or six-legged (except the Na’vi, the banshees and the Leonopteryx), and some having six or four eyes. Subtle, yet appreciable marks of creativity.
But wait: Hammerhead Titanotheres (the rhino-like aliens) have hammer-shaped heads (found on Earth in hammerhead sharks and the extinct amphibian Diplocaulus) that won’t be having much use on land. These odd heads are called “cephalofoils”, used to generate lift underwater and thus only found in aquatic animals.


3. Pandoran Vegetation

Hooo boy, I saw angiosperms and ferns everywhere. They could have invented more alien plants, what with different evolutionary histories and pathways. Even convergent evolution has its own limitations too. Indonesian readers might be familiar to the leaves of Alocasia, locally known as talas, which are scattered throughout Pandora in purple or pink. This repurposing of Earth plant species is not only limited to that, but also to a great variety of palms, ferns, aloes and cycads. Some marine creatures also went under this treatment, most notably the spiralling bushes that retract upon touch. Guess what the inspiration is — Christmas tree worms. And there are glowing sea anemones in the scene where they swam languidly in the rivers.


4. The Eywa

….or planet/moon-wide biochemical communication network. I have no idea about this one, all that I know is that several plant physiologists acted as science consultants and suggested this idea, so it might be plausible after all.


5. Bioluminescence

Of course bioluminescence has its own meaning, purpose and are obviously very purdy. But then, does it have to that abundant? Deep sea fish and invertebrates use it for communication, alarms, lures, camouflage (yes, camouflage against the brighter sea surface) and sometimes as ever-handy flashlight. There are glowing Earth toadstools too, but not much. No bioluminescent true Earth plants though. Possible, but I’m still wondering why it occurred on a planet wide-scale. What kind of use does it have for the plants? I mean, the creation of light, even the heatless, biological one still require energy, and if it’s unnecessary they won’t evolve it anyway. Perhaps they used bioluminescence in similar ways with the Earth fungi; for functions that aren’t exactly known, speculated to be a metabolic compensation or as an attraction to spore/pollen/seed disseminators. Maybe they’re there to warn nocturnal herbivores. Maybe it evolved in order to release excess energy created by the hyperactive photosynthesis (bioluminescence is essentially a reverse of photosynthesis – the release of light and carbon dioxide after the usage of oxygen).

Perhaps the most justifying point is that Avatar is more “science-fantasy” movie, not a “hard sci-fi” tale like all of us expected it to be. Indeed, some elements of the story won’t occur had it been more realistic, such as the romance between the two protagonists (I suggest you not to imagine the graphic scenes). Cut and dried, it’s just a movie after all.

“"It's just a show, I should really just relax." – MST 3 K Mantra.

Feel free to comment or discuss.