A Little More About Avatar

Another thing... there have been all these articles praising Cameron for the meticulous world building research that he did, that he answered every scientific question, and that he considered every species on the planet down to the smallest plant, blah blah... And that is pretty accurate. The animals all have homologous structures, 6 limbs, (4 up front, 2 in the back.) 4 eyes, (two large ones, and two small ones.) Breathing holes at the base of their necks in the area of the trapezius muscle on humans. That external spinal cord USB port thingie. Obviously they all evolved from a common ancestor.

Oh. Wait.

Except the Na'Vi. Who are humanoid, have only 4 limbs, and 2 eyes, and breath through a nose located in the center of their face... just like us. But they still have the USB port so obviously they are related to the rest of the planet but did a pretty heavy evolutionary divergence at some point? Weird. And not really how evolution works.

If you aren't sick of it you should also read this article on "Project 880" which was the original tile of the movie. It breaks down the script that Cameron had before he so obviously neutred it to create the movie we actually got. It is much, much better, and explores the nature of identity (is a person still the same person if he is in a different body?) gives us a much broader sense of the stakes for the humans in this fight (Earth is dead and Pandoran resources might be able to revive it,) and actually accomplishes a lot of the stuff I asked for previously. Sad that more of this didn't make it past the network execs.

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