20th Century Fox
A nitpicking review of the science behind Avatar
Esa Keltamaki
Copy Editor
In 1995, James Cameron wrote a brief outline of what would eventually become 2009’s Avatar, the highest grossing film of the year. Cameron attributes the 15-year development period to waiting for the film industry to overcome its technological inadequacies.
Production, riding on a budget that has been reported as anywhere from 200-315 million dollars, was largely focused on fantastic realism, and science-based imagination.
“There has to be a foundation of reality,” Jon Landau, an Avatar producer, said. “When he [Cameron] does science fiction, he has to do science fact.”
The scenery of Avatar is a primary focus of the film, especially for patrons of 3D cinemas. The rich diversity of flora and fauna was geared toward creating a believably alien planet.
“Our creature design team [had] the tables covered by books of animal biology and animal anatomy,” Cameron said. Landau added, “We researched the plants, we worked with a botanist from UC Riverside.”
“All the designers […] they didn’t come up with things that did not make physical sense. They had a real foundation to why things worked,” Landau finished.
Ironically, it is in that devotion to real world examples that the filmmakers lost track of scientific accuracy. When Cameron said, “our creature design team [had] the tables covered by books of animal biology and animal anatomy,” he failed to realize that arbitrarily taking examples of life on Earth and putting them into a new environment eliminates factors key to evolution. Evolution is about niches.
On Earth, fireflies and angelfish create their own light. They are part of a limited group of organisms that are naturally bioluminescent. In making almost all life on Pandora bioluminescent, Cameron eliminates the evolutionary advantage. Evolution is about advantages.
Now keep in mind, floating mountains and mech warrior-like battle suits are fine, after all, sci-fi requires a certain degree of suspension of disbelief. But Cameron and his posse invite skepticism when extolling the rooted-in-science realism of aspects of the film.
Pandora, the Titan-inspired world of the film, has a weaker gravitational pull than our Earth. This explains the local largeness of life. However, the Na’vi, the indigenous species central to the film, have evolved to have an incredibly dense and exceptionally rigid skeletal structure in addition to their great height. Why?
When terrestrial life is exposed to lessened gravity, muscles atrophy and bones soften. Why would Pandora be any different? One would think the evolutionary features of super skeletons and giant bodies would be mutually exclusive. In a limited gravity environment, a terrestrial skeleton could support a larger body—anything denser would be redundant. Evolution is about efficiency.
Cameron also took liberties with the placement of the Na’vi in the ecological system of Pandora.
The Na’vi are bipedal, while the majority of Pandoran life is hexapedal. The Na’vi have only one pair of eyes, they don’t lack the vestigial set of other natives. The Na’vi don’t breath through gill-like flaps in their necks. Why are the Na’vi alone on a drastically different evolutionary branch on Pandora?
In focusing the story of Avatar on the Na’vi, Cameron made the decision to place them on an evolutionary pedestal. He and his crew are proud of their film, and rightfully so, but they shouldn’t sing praises of their scientifically shaky story.
“We were going to nature the whole time and using nature’s resourcefulness and imagination to fuel what we were doing,” Cameron said. Fortunately, he isn’t a scientist, he’s a filmmaker, and a good one. After all, cinema is about entertainment.