I'm going to discuss, in no particular order, different parts of the movie. If anybody doesn't remember names of characters or recognize animal names or something, you can check out these websites:

Avatar 2009 Film - Wikipedia
Avatar 2009 Film - IMDB
Avatar 2009 Film - Pandorapedia

I've been wondering about Jake Sully and Neytiri and the fact that they mated when Neytiri was pretty much "engaged" to Tsu'Tey. They certainly didn't put much emphasis on whether or not this was looked down upon. Yes, Neytiri's parents got pretty angry, but was that because Jake was seen as an "outsider" or because Neytiri was betrothed to Tsu'Tey?

The Na'Vi people are quite interesting. It was plain to see that there were many similarities, however basic, between the Na'Vi and homo sapiens. Many humans are buried in technology, and those who are tend to view less "civilized" humans as dumb or abnormal. However, even the less civilized humans have something in common with the more civilized. What is it that we share with every other human, as well as the Na'Vi? The relationships we have between parents and children, between friends, and between different members of society are similar. Also, emotions that we feel are greatly the same.

For instance, in Avatar, when we first meet Neytiri's parents, Mo'At and Eytucan, there is a small argument between Neytiri and her mother. Mo'At wants Neytiri to teach Jake the cultural ways of the Na'Vi, but Neytiri doesn't want to. Her mother forces her to in the end. How many of us can say we have had similar experiences with our parents or parental guardians? I know that my parents have asked me to do things that I didn't want to do, but I ended up doing anyway.

As for similar feelings, take for example when Neytiri watches her father die in front of her. The reaction she gave, of screaming and crying, is a reaction we'd see in many humans. And when Neytiri found out Jake knew what was going to happen to her home and she felt betrayed when he didn't tell her sooner? Again, a reaction you would see in a human who feels as if they've been betrayed.

Avatar really put into perspective just how horrible the human race can be. It's mentioned multiple times in the movie how humans have killed their own planet. We haven't actually done that now, but we're on our way. We rage war against one another for things like religion and jealousy. We shun those who are different from the "norm" because of ignorance and fear. Even in high school we automatically split ourselves into separate cliques - nerds, preps, jocks, emos, skaters, goth, etc. We feed greed by putting so much emphasis on money and power. I could go on and on, but I think you get the point.

Throughout the movie, Colonel Miles Quaritch and Parker Selfridge called the Na'Vi numerous bad names. "Savages" was used the most. I also remember becoming infuriated when Colonel Quaritch called the Na'Vi "roaches" while he was destroying Hometree. The use of the bad names forces me to go back to my point of how humans that are buried in technology see others who are not technologically advanced as being beneath them. This is not true because all life is worth something no matter if it is sentient or not. Every species has its place and purpose. I believe humans have been blinded to their purpose by greed, hate, and ignorance. But what is our purpose? To fit into our society? To make mistakes and learn from them? It's hard to say.

Toward the beginning of the movie, we witness Neytiri put a dying Viperwolf (Nantang) out of its misery. She speaks to it in the Na'Vi language and no subtitles are given, so we are just as lost as Jake as to what she is doing. Later, when Jake learns the sort of ritual they do over dying animals ("I see you") we find out the respect the Na'Vi have toward every animal. I found this to be very moving, but I didn't really think about it until after the movie.

I was sitting in a grocery store parking lot after the movie, and I started to think about the food provided in said grocery store. In the past, I've taken agriculture classes and learned about some of the horrid things humans do before they slaughter animals. Chickens have their beaks clipped off. Cows are prodded with electricity. Calves are stuck in boxes so small they cannot even turn around. Pigs get packed into transport trucks so tightly their guts are actually forced from their bodies through their rears. The only thing the consumers see is the final product - a slab of pork, chicken, or beef wrapped up all nice and neat.

The Na'Vi have to hunt their food down themselves and are in danger the entire time from predators bigger than them. Humans can just drive themselves to the closest grocery store and purchase their grub, which is usually full of fatty acids, artificial flavoring, and lots of other bad stuff. We don't have to constantly look over our shoulders for something that wants to eat us for dinner. Is that why we have no respect for what we eat? If humans had to actually hunt and kill their own meals, would we appreciate what we have more?

And that brings me to the fact that humans cannot live in the wild anymore. We've become so accustomed to everything being provided to us that it would be impossible for us to survive for long with nothing. And when I say "the wild" I mean the actual wilderness, where there are no grocery stores or clothing stores. Clothes would have to be made. Shelter would have to be built. Fire would have to be created. Weapons would need to be crafted in order to catch meals. No more television. No more computer. No more cell phones or cars or even books. Nothing but human and wilderness. Like I said. Impossible to survive.

The Na'Vi are different. They live off the land. They've learned how to craft weapons and how to hunt down their meals. They know what plants to eat and which to stay away from. They have a great respect for their world and do nothing that would harm it in any way. They help their planet flourish and thrive, and they thrive along with it. Humans, on the other hand, threaten their planet by continuing to multiply at a rapidly increasing rate. More people means more forests will be torn down to make room for more housing.

I'll end it here for now. If anyone thinks of anything else Avatar related that I could talk about, please speak up. Give me your opinions about what I've said. Do you agree? Disagree? What are your thoughts about the movie? Did it make you think, or did you just see it as a great/bad bit of entertainment?

Jake's whole 'acceptance' into the Na'vi/Omaticaya was... too straightforward. Former soldier goes in, somehow, despite going against _every procedure advised_ is immediately brought on a mission, and his misbehavior brings him a new success rather than... well, getting eaten. Which would've made for a more boring movie, but, visible from a mile away. Despite having no training he somehow manages to get himself inside better than anyone else due to a 'mystical force', because that's the _only way_ to squeeze him in within the confines of the story.

Is Eawa psychic/clarivoyant? If so, wouldn't mankind be far more concerned with those powers rather than the room-temperature superconducting 'unobtanium'?

He goes through the standard 'trials and tribulations' phase, never once misstepping so foul as to put his position in danger. The Na'vi are delightfully simple and 'peaceful'. They're just alien enough to be 'alien' for the movie, but so idyllic and socialist that we can't help but like them. We never see strife in their community, besides Jake's later arc. We don't see any tendencies or cultural differences that we could find 'offensive'. We don't see how they handle the crippled, or the old, or the mentally deficient. We are given _no reason_ to dislike them - the whole setup is so completely black-or-white that it loses all the fun.

So he goes through the motions and, obviously, succeeds without a hitch. Despite the effective ruler's son hating his guts. Because they're so sweet that the idea of political assassination isn't even feasible from them - besides some grunts and snarls, and some assertion to go home, we see almost nothing from the leader's son in terms of _real_ aggression or action.

The language barrier is almost never addressed, and in a matter of _three months_ Jake picks up a language that has absolutely no resemblance to his own, with no mentioned written language, including ear movements. He picks it up handily despite it taking the scientists multiple _years_ to achieve a similar feat. All within the warrior training montage.

The military colonel is also restrictively predictable. (Ex)military man, with a stubborn hatred against the enemy so strong and unmovable that he fights down to the last man - himself. Void of compassion, he's made out to be nothing more than a muscle head - he takes multiple steps in the movie that could've easily resulted in multiple unnecessary deaths (e.g. kicking open the door into the docking bay with only a literal moment's notice, full of valuable scientists and the entire project's leader), and yet he's put into this high ruling position; the movie also implies he was in a similar leadership position before. Motivated more by revenge than by anything else, I really have to wonder why his ass hadn't been previously demoted.

Oh, and not to mention the corporate project leader, or whatever he was. Yes, his disdain for the natives was cute at the start, but they make him so unbelievably xenophobic, so incapable of doing anything but slew half-thought-out insults that, again, I have to wonder how he rose to the position he's in. Like the rest of the characters, he's a stereotype from trashy sci-fi taken and stretched to the limits of the archetype.

Not to mention the unobtanium itself. The movie would work a bit better if it explained _why_ the mineral is so valuable - a room-temperature superconductor. Maybe it'd help to explain, earlier on, that Earth is _trashed_. But the chances that the only planet we've found with this rare metal _happens_ to be inhabited by a humanlike, sentient species is so phenomenally low that it just makes me scratch my head. Also, why not mine the floating mountains (working under the assumption that they float 'cause they're full of superconductor in a major magnetic field)?

Back to Jake. Falling in love with the ruler's daughter was just... awkwardly handled. First of all, he's genetically impure - the chances that he can even breed with her is low. He is physically different, with humanlike traits that make him appealing to us in small ways, but, consider the following - how many people, excluding fetish, would be sexually and romantically interested in one of the Na'vi? Or a human-Na'vi hybrid? Would you be interested in, say, a human-orangutan hybrid? She _should_ find him disgusting, as her father does, and the others, yet he somehow charms the pants off of her to the point where no matter how much _dumb crap_ he does in the movie, she always comes back after an appropriate girlish tantrum. Because Jake's always right, despite being portrayed as one of the least intelligent, least tactical members of the entire movie, second only to the colonel.

And somehow, until Jake comes along, the natives never really manage to mount a successful assault against the company. Why not? They're supposedly intelligent enough, and god knows they _care_. But for the sake of the movie they're somehow unable to realize that their arrows are useless against the great machines, despite the start of the movie even implying that multiple attacks have been mounted against the dozers before. Heck, even lifting and dropping a few heavy stones would do more than their arrows to most of the mechs.

And then there's the whole 'rider of last shadow' business. In _one day_, Jake manages a feat previously only managed by five people prior. With only three months in his avatar body. And doesn't get himself killed. Never is the consequence discussed for picking the wrong... banshee (trying to go for one that doesn't try to kill you) - how did he pick the right last shadow? How did he succeed? How did the thing not just immediately roll him off? In a long line of difficult to believe successes that was about the point in the movie where I gave up on expecting any plausibility to their actions.

Then there's the final battle. Honestly, it's a battle, I'm not going to ask much from plot here. But why do the Na'vi allow the remainder of the humans to escape? Why not send the message of 'stay away, stay far away'? The humans _destroyed their home_, akin to destroying their nation. How would the Na'vi, previously so intolerant of the sky-people as to even disallow Jake and the scientists anywhere near, suddenly decide to let the people who had _slaughtered their people_ leave? Also, what's that one brown guy at the end gunna' do, staying behind? He has no avatar body. He's going to be stuck on a planet, with an atmosphere he can't breathe, probably with food he can't eat, with an entirely alien population.

I'm not asking the movie to have a great plot. I'm really not. But I really can't see how anyone can _appreciate_ the plot, except perhaps for it's sheer simplicity, and the fact that it doesn't make you think. The bad guys are bad, from the start, almost, you hate them. The good guys are good, very good. Jake's only 'fault' is taking up the colonel's mission to begin with, which he promptly forgets about/abandons after providing a few scraps of information. Hating the Na'vi is nearly impossible - they're such a simple, peaceful people so in touch with nature that we can't possibly conceive of them as evil. Cut and dried, _nothing_ in the movie shocked me, which left me a touch disappointed.

The production of Avatar was very careful to keep it's creatures consistent - a general 'wing layout' was shared among all flying creatures great and small, similar to our birds, implying a common ancestor, or at least a common evolutionary path. All birds have two eyes, with a second, smaller eye with a distinctly odd-shaped pupil. Other beasts, like the 'horse' creature, had a similarly shaped pupil, and six separate limbs - just about everything on the planet had six limbs (from those big bug-like chargers down to the tiny squeaking color-copter lizards)... except the Na'vi. While they do show us a tiny primeape with a six armed system with the upper arms fused (implying an intermediate step), we have no reason to believe that the Na'vi evolved from 'primeapes', and that still leaves the issue of the different eyes, and _why_ an auxiliary set of arms would evolve out.

That the Na'vi are genetically compatible with humans, that is to say, that Avatar bodies can even be made in the way that they are has some interesting implications. Are humans really that crafty with our genetic engineering, or is there some element of commonality between us and a sentient, humanlike species lightyears away? Both are interesting to contemplate. And the Na'vi also have the issue of having too few limbs, and only a single neural connect (every other creature having one shown to have _two_, symmetric ones, though potentially only 'female' links while all the Na'vi are 'male' links, another strange fact if it is so true). And the lack of the vaguely w-shaped pupil. Are the Na'vi actually creatures of Pandora? Or has someone been... tampering?

Anyway, Liz...I didn't think about the whole language thing. It does seem rather strange that Jake was able to pick up the Na'Vi language so quickly.

I've actually found websites where people can learn the Na'Vi language if they want to. The movie producers hired a guy with a PhD in linguistics so he could create the Na'Vi language for the movie. It's still being developed, but I doubt it will ever be as extensive as, say, Elvish from Lord of the Rings.

After looking over the websites about the language, it's easy to see why it doesn't make sense that Jake learns it so quickly. There are lots of grammar and pronunciation rules that are different than real languages. I took three years of French in high school and never mastered the language as well as Jake mastered the Na'Vi language in the movie.

If anyone wants to check out the language, you can go here:

Learn the Na'Vi Language

Language: COME ON PEOPLE! Jake only learned some of the language. He was able to communicate roughly in it, but he resorted to using English most of the time. Also note that when addressing the tribes near the end, he required the use of a translator each time. And it's not unreasonable that he'll pick up on at least some of the language when being taught by a native for three months. This is definitely too much of a stretch to be a complaint about plot consistency.

Length: Clucky, I agree. When the airships bombed the tree and then left, I was shocked. I was like "Where's the big fight scene? Why isn't the movie wrapping up?" It was probably the only time in the movie that I actually consciously analyzed it as an outside observer.

3D: Very well integrated into the film. The 3D effects were probably the best I've ever seen in a theater. I was very impressed at how naturally the 3D elements were incorporated, and how they were used to unobtrusively make the scenes better described instead of for cheap gags.

Earth, Technology, and other plot consistency complaints: First of all, half the information you want, Liz, is partially or completely irrelevant to the story the movie is trying to tell. For instance, background on Earth is pretty much completely unnecessary because this is (as Orson Scott Card would say) a Character Story. The story is completely focused on the character Jake. The movie begins in Jake's perspective and tells us everything about Jake that we need to know: he's been frozen for nine years and shipped to a new planet to take his dead brother's place in some sort of scientific expedition. Earth is irrelevant because this is Jake's new beginning. The only relevant thing about his past is that Jake lost his legs in some war, and that's because of the current implications to Jake's character.

Technology is always a free-be in SciFi. It doesn't matter how impossible it seems now, but the viewer or reader must assume that the characters could have the technology they do have. Now, of course, if the writers start contradicting their own rules, all bets are off. However, I didn't notice too much of that. Personally, I would have placed the date later than 2154 (especially because they opted for "long" space travel), but other than that, I didn't notice many problems. In fact, the writers cleverly avoided most discussions of technology by giving us technology that was advanced, sure, but not anything that we couldn't imagine humans developing. The only exception for me was the link to the Avatar bodies. Kind of key to the story and they made no effort to explain the connection between the little chambers and the Avatar bodies. Apparently it has a really big range and a physical connection isn't necessary (heck, the circuitry in the chamber didn't even make contact with the user's skin), which left me wondering how in the universe did their consciousness get from one body to the next?

As for biology, I don't really care. Not anywhere near my field anyway. Although I did notice that most of the creatures had breathing holes at the base of their necks, but the Na'Vi didn't.

I probably could have more to say on the subject, but this post is getting too long as it is.