And an even better take than mine (if that’s possible!): Avatar and the American Man-Child: “Don’t you want to be an Indian little boy?”

As for realism in the movie, has anybody mentioned the flying mountains? Another part of the movie where they said “screw all the realism we´ve trying to get in the movie, lets just add some cool stuff for the sake of coolness”. They dont even try to explain those mountains. Just like the lower gravity, which as I said earlier, is mentioned, but never felt in the movie. Maybe when they said “lower” they meant 0.9 G… great, it would be really difficult to notice the difference in the falling speed, the way caracthers walk, etc. On the other hand, those huge trees would also be impossible.

My biggest problem with Avatar was that the film tried so hard to be scientifically plausible at so many things, but in others, it seems the director/writers just said “screw it, forget realism”.

For example… the whole ecology of pandora is quite plausible and follows rules of evolution, etc. For example, animals and trees can be bigger because of lower gravity. On the other hand, while the TALK about the lower gravity in Pandora, it seems they FORGOT about it!

Also, ALL the animal life in Pandora has 3 pairs of members… the lemur-like animals… the rhino/triceratops animal… the big predator, the wolf-life animals, the “horses”, the birds (two pairs of wings and one pair of claws).

The ONLY species out of place in Pandora is the Na´vi, with their pair of arms and legs! It seems they worked so hard to create a consistent ecology but then decided to change the rules for the Na´vi only, so when the human makes out with the native, the audience wouldnt go “ewww”.

In fact, thats another problem… the aliens resemblance with humans. I can perfectly understand it in old movies and specially in tv-series, where budgets make really alien like caracthers prohibetivelly expensive. But imho, its quite unforgivable that full 3D caracthers like those from Avatar cant be REALLY alien.

And the message of the movie gets LOST on it. I mean, if its about that we humans should ACCEPT differences and such, so why do the movie presents us with caracthers which are so SIMILAR to us? Where really is the alieness of the Na´vi?

They look and act as north american native americans, although many of their traits can also be found on many other cultures, including old european cultures (including ancient greece), thus I dont buy much into all that “white guilt” and “noble savage” stuff, considering that Europe itself had cultures with similar traits to which white people CAN relate.

Maybe its more about western CAPITALISTIC culture than about “white culture”.

So, there we are, “learning” about respecting and understand other cultures. Problem is, how deep is such message when it requires the audience to respect and understand things so similar to their own culture?

Its easier to relate to the Na´vi culture than to the Aztec/Mayas culture! DISTRIC 9 was much better in that sense. While we still could “read” the aliens emotions (anger, surprise, etc) they were MUCH MORE ALIEN and difficult to relate, both in appearance and culture.

I guess AVATAR would be a much better film if the aliens were like those from District 9… with 4 arms, even if at the end only part of the audience was able to relate to the aliens, instead of how the movie is, FORCING you to relate to the aliens by dumping away realism.