AVATAR

Saw AVATAR last night. Everything you’ve heard is true, and I don't even like science fiction. Absolutely amazing special effects. A dude on the way out said “This is the greatest visual achievement in motion picture history.” Pompous, but it really is beyond imagination. Except obviously the people who made the movie did imagine it. Takes a little while to get used to the 3-D glasses but totally worth it. You get used to the alternate reality fast.

James Cameron, the “king of the world” director who made TITANIC, seems like a complete ass but if he made only this one movie he’d be righteously famous. It will probably win every award there is and deserves it. Some scenes and dialogue remind you of other movies — DANCES WITH WOLVES, STAR WARS, ALIEN, APOCALYPSE NOW, THE ABYSS — but this is an original vision and much, much, much, much, much better than TITANIC.  

Here’s the website www.avatarmovie.com/ and a cool page that explains the concept...  

The Avatar Program

Common Name	Avatar
Na'vi Name	Uniltirantokx or “Dreamwalker”
Description	A cloned Na’vi humanoid. Genetic material from the future human driver is incorporated into the avatar embryo, allowing the development of the anatomic structures needed to allow a mental link to be established with that particular individual.
Notes	Only twenty avatars have been produced thus far. This is generally believed to be because of their massive expense; a recently de-classified RDA report reveals that this is also largely due to the lack of qualified and willing participants.

Overview

The Avatar Program was initiated to improve communication with the Na’vi, the intelligent humanoid inhabitants of Pandora. Human volunteers are paired with avatars, which are artificially created human/Na’vi hybrids controlled by persona-projection technology. While the human controller remains in a sleep-like state in a psionic link unit, his or her personality inhabits and completely controls a custom-made Na’vi body.

Origins

Under strong pressure from the UN, scientists and the general public, the RDA agreed to set up a program to enhance communications between humans and Na’vi. At first, this consisted solely of an Indigenous Terrain program to study Na’vi culture and language and to attempt to establish communication between man and Na’vi.

Practical difficulties soon showed a need for a more profound means of communication between the human and Na’vi species.

Invention / Technology

RDA research had already established the possibility of direct mental communication between humans, and RDA scientist Dr. Cordell Lovecraft was given the task of carrying his “Dark Dreamer” project, which sought to transmit mental processes – “thoughts” – to humans at a distance, to interspecies communication.

Initial dissection of Na’vi specimens found that although Na’vi show a surprising degree of external convergent evolution, internally they are quite different from humans. The Na’vi brain in particular, with its external tendrils and three-lobed structure was a daunting obstacle.

Building on work with brain-wiped primates and condemned criminals, Dr. Lovecraft was able to demonstrate that full sensory bonding could be established between human twins, human-animal hybrids that shared common DNA, and eventually human-Na’vi hybrids with common genetic blueprints.

Since Na’vi don’t use DNA or RNA to carry their genetic information, producing a ‘translation table’ that matched DNA with NVTranscriptase closely enough to allow a level of morphic resonance strong enough for communication to occur required months of computer time and multiple failed experiments, some of which caused irreparable trauma to volunteer subjects.

Eventually the Avatar Program succeeded in producing the first viable hybrids between completely unrelated species – a considerable achievement since, as Dr Lovecraft famously remarked, humans are “far more closely related genetically to garden slugs than to Na’vi.”

With the help of psionic amplification, and thanks to customized reception nodes grown into avatar brains from their earliest blastomere stage of development, human drivers can now operate their avatars at distances of tens of kilometers.

Originally part of RDA’s Na’vi outreach program instigated at the behest of Earth government authorities, the Avatar Program has moved from being a poorly-defined xenobiological experiment controlled by Earth-based bureaucrats, ivory-tower academics and populist politicians to become a tightly-managed engineering project incorporating the most advanced technology from RDA’s labs.

Characteristics

The link is total; the human believes he is actually inhabiting the Na’vi body, with all senses, reflexes and bodily functions fully operational. The avatar body, having been grown in an amnio tank with the help of growth accelerants, has no personality of its own and is inert (except for basic autonomous functions) when not under human control.

Each avatar is specially made using genetic information from its human controller and despite obvious differences in size and physiology is equivalent to its controller’s twin. This genetic matching is necessary to allow morphic projection to operate on the alien body; attempts to use unmatched bodies have invariably failed.

The avatar has the body structure and physiology of a Pandoran native. However, adding the human genes necessary to allow mental linking alter the Na'vi anatomy. This produces five digits (rather than the normal four of the Na'vi) on the hands and feet. Scientists have also been unable to retain the Na'vi opposable “thumb toe.” Other minor human characteristics can include eyebrow hair and reduced size in the eyeballs.

An avatar generally develops facial features similar to their human driver, easily recognizable by other humans as the “Na'vi version” of the avatar's driver. However, hair color remains dark brown to black and the eyes remain yellow, regardless of the pigmentation of the human driver.