Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Avatar...

Where were you when the Twin Towers collapsed? Where were you when Princess Diana died? When John Lennon got shot? When the Berlin Wall came down?
Avatar is to cinema legend what those events are to modern world history. I bet, 20 years from now, people will remember where they watched it. Not for the plot, but for the mind-blowing impact of the super-brilliant CGI technology.
Summer. 2010. Imax. 3D. Sydney.
Admittedly I was probably one of the last people on the planet to have seen it, but I wonder if you knew this literary  trivia...:

  • The look of the Na'vi (the humanoids indigenous to Pandora) was inspired by a dream that director James Cameron's mother had long before he started work on Avatar. In her dream she saw a 12ft blue-skinned woman, which he thought was "kind of a cool image". 
  • The Na'vi language was created entirely from scratch by linguist Paul R FrommerCameron hired him to construct a language that the actors could pronounce easily, but didn't resemble any single human language. Frommer created about 1000 words.
  •  The year is never stated, but the video log shows that it's 2154.
  • "Unobtainium" is a humorous term used mainly in the aerospace industry. It describes a material that is perfect for an application, but does not exist, is extremely expensive, or violates the laws of physics. The chemical symbol is Uo.
  • In the scene where Jake's in prison, his back is to the camera and you can see the back of his wheelchair. The brand of wheelchair is "Grunt," which is another term for a Marine infantryman.
  • Avatar is Sanskrit for "incarnation". It's used extensively in Hindu scriptures to refer to human incarnations of God.
  • The word "Na'vi" in Hebrew means prophet. A Na'vi is a visionary or someone who communicates directly with god. Its pleural "Nevi'im" refers to the prophetic books of the Bible including Judges, Kings Isaiah.

Yeah the plot was thin, but with 3D graphics like that to catapult you right into the thick of the action, who cares?! 
What did you think of the story of Avatar?

2 comments:

Dash said...

Interesting trivia, thanks for sharing...

I thought it similar to FernGully and its 'bodacious babes'! However I am a sucker for romance and romance there was. I also felt incredibly moral and spiritual after seeing the movie, I was then gently reminded that I work in a company that specialises in construction contracting for the rail, road, marine, minerals processing, oil and gas ...hmmm

Specimen A said...

Plot Fail

Enough said :)