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[Footkerchief]

There is no valid scientific reason for this, but there is a very good thematic reason; if the Na'vi had 6 limbs and 4 eyes, they'd be too alien, to difficult to empathise with. By making them blue skinned humans with catlike features they're alien enough to be aliens, but human enough to empathise with. It was a purely thematic choice and it only happened because Avatar is a movie and Humans are the intended audience.

I dunno.  District 9 had aliens that looked very alien, and still managed to make audiences empathize.  I mean, the major theme of that movie was learning to empathize with people that look different.  In contrast, by making its aliens sexy humanoids, Avatar subtly implies that we should empathize with them because they look like us.  It's possibly the shallowest and most disgusting form of the old noble-savage bullshit.

Anyway, the reason the Navi (fuck your cliche little apostrophe, James Cameron) are the only humanoids on Pandora is because they killed all the other humanoid species.

[Idiom]

Limbs are not lost or gained easily, as the tetrapedal nature of so many creatures shows.

Man would really be much better off with four legs.


There's also really no reason why ventral breathing holes would evolve out of the Na'vi, but nothing else. if your theory really held true, we should see other Na'vi like creatures on Pandora that are descended from the same 4 limbed critter.

The Na'vi just don't fit into the environment. They plain don't match. Personally i think this is a case of realism sacrified for cinematographic purposes, but each to his own.

OK I give up. I can't defend it either. The humanoid thing was purely done for empathetical purposes.

You know, given the very odd mass communications/data storage sort of ability with the certain lifeforms on Pandora, that actually makes me think even more of the Intelligent Design possibility. The movie will have sequels. I wonder if that will pop up in the plot regarding their origins.

I dunno.  District 9 had aliens that looked very alien, and still managed to make audiences empathize.  I mean, the major theme of that movie was learning to empathize with people that look different.  In contrast, by making its aliens sexy humanoids, Avatar subtly implies that we should empathize with them because they look like us.  It's possibly the shallowest and most disgusting form of the old noble-savage bullshit.

This is why I loved District 9. Exactly why. The rest of the movie could have been crap and I still would have liked it just for the 'starfish' aliens (Or at least in comparison to the norm) that were STILL capable of making valid connections. Rubber Forehead aliens are a sign of lazy writing and directing and such if you have to rely on them being a re-skinned human to make the empathy still flow in the story with the audience.

District 9 Aliens were made with a surprisingly small budget for how well they were done, Avatar aliens look amazing for the awesome budget... the original intention of the extremely humanoid aliens was because it was cheaper to do. But now, now we have the technology to do starfish aliens, yet I see so few, and even District 9's were still fairly humanoid.

[Neruz]

District 9 put a huge amount of effort into their aliens, and if you look closely, you'll see they're actually alot more human than you'd think. They have human expressions and mannerisms, a humanoid build, a face that shared enough similarities to humans to get expressions across (eyebrows etc) and, perhaps most important of all, human eyes. In District 9 you managed to empathise with the Prawns because they acted like us, and looked just human enough to convey emotions, but i can't imagine that was easy, they were right on the edge of bug aliens there.

Avatar just didn't have that same amount of effort put into the Na'vi, and frankly, how could it? They had an entire CGI world and ecosystem to build, District 9 just had to make the one district, and most of it wasn't CGI, they could put alot more dev time into their aliens.


Starfish aliens are possible, but hard, very hard, and even then they're not that starfish, more like dolphin aliens.

[Muz]

There could very well be other non-humanoid sentient aliens in the world.. the movie just didn't really focus on them. Heck, there are probably plenty of other dangerous fauna other than the three or so shown in the movie. Probably technical constraints and stuff.

Hey, LOTR had short humanoids, evil, warped humanoids, tall humanoids, short, bearded humanoids and you can barely find a single female in the whole movie. Nobody seems to complain about dwarves being non-starfish shaped on the budget. Probable or improbable.. whatever. I enjoyed it.

[Neruz]

LotR is fantasy, so anything goes. Avatar is 'science fiction' (bullshit, it's fantasy in space) so everyone suddenly leaps on it will all these scientific demands.

This is mostly because most people do not know the difference between 'science fiction' and 'fantasy in space'.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Warhammer is fantasy. Warhammer 40k, then, is fantasy in space. Is there really such a big distinction between "science fiction" and "fantasy in space"?

[Neruz]

Warhammer is fantasy. Warhammer 40k, then, is fantasy in space. Is there really such a big distinction between "science fiction" and "fantasy in space"?

What distinguishes Science Fiction from Fiction (of which Fantasy is a subset) is the Science part. To quote Wikipedia (because i'm too lazy to type it myself): Science Fiction differs from Fantasy in that, within the context of the story, its imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically established or scientifically postulated laws of nature.


The mistake most people make is they assume future\spaceships = Sci-fi, which is completely and totally wrong. Star Wars, for example, is Fantasy. Avatar could possibly just fall under very soft Sci-fi, but it makes a number of completely rediculous claims that have no foundation in reality whatsoever. If you take the extra info from the Avatar site then it becomes a little 'harder', but is still very soft Sci-fi at best, not the least of which being because no explanation is ever given for the FTL tech they use to get to Pandora in the first place.

[Sean Mirrsen]

FTL? Last time I checked the TVTropes page on the matter, it was STL. I still have to see the movie though, can't get out of the house with all this New Year thing.

So, what discerns fantasy from Sci-Fi then, is the presence of creatures other than Earth-based ones? For the record, there's an explanation for the Na'Vi (I keep thinking of Magaman Battle Network when I hear the name) having two arms rather than four - on the TVTropes page, again. Quoting the relevant bit: "Every creature on Pandora, except the Na'Vi (due to the fact that they evolved from the monkey-like Prolemuris, which has six limbs, but two arms that bifurcate into four forearms. These forearms fused into two by the time the Na'Vi had evolved, leaving them the only ones with four limbs)."

[Neruz]

Even if it was STL, no explanation is given as to how those speeds were achieved.


As i have previously stated; gaining and losing limbs is not something that happens easily, and not without proper impetus (otherwise there'd be wierd multi-limbed creatures all over the goddamn place), the odds of the Na'vi losing two arms are pretty damn minute. It also fails to explain their eyes.


Unfortunately, waving your hands and saying 'Evolution did it!' is no better than saying 'God did it!' or 'A Wizard did it!', and they do not suddenly turn fantasy into Sci-fi.



What discerns Sci-fi from Fantasy is that Sci-fi follows known or plausible scientific laws. Wormholes, for example, are soft Sci-fi, as based on known scientific laws Wormholes should exist and function in a certain way. The 'fiction' part comes into play with the actual means by which the Wormholes are created and used, as, of course, we don't know how to do that.

How 'hard' the Sci-fi is depends on how ridgedly it adheres to the scientific laws of the time. Hard Sci-fi ridgedly adheres to known physical laws and the 'fiction' part is the story itself. Very soft Sci-fi takes scientific concepts and laws which do not yet exist, but plausibly could, and wields them. Fantasy just makes shit up.


Without any explanation as to how that ship gets to Pandora in a mere 6 years, Avatar falls under Fantasy.

[Neruz]

I feel i should also repeat; again, the problem with the Na'vi having evolved on Pandora is that there are no other tetrapods. The odds of a single species evolving to be tetrapedal with only 2 eyes, while everything else evolves to be hexapedal with 4 eyes, are effectively nil. You never get 1 of something.

It's made all the more ovbious when you realise the clear cinematographic reasons to make the Na'vi humanoid; realism is often sacrified for entertainment, which is what happened here. It's a good thing too, i doubt i'd have enjoyed the movie as much if the Na'vi were multilimbed starfish aliens i had trouble empathising with.

[Greiger]

I may be wrong but the terran transport ship looked like it had a solar sail on it, that could explain how they got there in 6 years.  When we see it it could just be folded down to keep the ship from leaving orbit.

Of course I could just be overthinking it and that may have just been a run of the mill solar panel.  (But why would a ship that spends most of the trip in interstellar space have such a large solar power panel?)

[Neruz]

Yeah, Solar Sails aren't going to get you anywhere near another star system in 6 years. Especially considering the size of that sail (it was tiny).


Remember that you need to accelerate at the start, and then decelerate at the end.

Everyone always forgets the deceleration.

[Nadaka]

Yeah, Solar Sails aren't going to get you anywhere near another star system in 6 years. Especially considering the size of that sail (it was tiny).


Remember that you need to accelerate at the start, and then decelerate at the end.

Everyone always forgets the deceleration.

If they had forgotten to decelerate, that would have been one way to solve the problem of the Navi and other hostile life forms. The movie would have been really short though, one spectacularly rendered explosion and then a bunch of space suited miners and power lifters (if you look closely, the mecha are much more like an enclosed version of the power lifter from aliens than any kind of mech) moving in to extract unobtanium from the debris.

[userpay]

What about the flying creatures that the Na'vi ride, I don't clearly remember but I think they had 4 "limbs". The two main wings and two smaller wings.

[Tilla]

Pandorapedia.com has detailed explanations of just about everything. I also HIGHLY recommend the scientific review of the movie that was posted on AICN by a physicist, who grades all the tech of the movies based on plausibility.

Particularly, from the article on the ISV Venture Star (the ship that travelled to Polyphemus):

Propulsion: Two hybrid fusion/matter-antimatter engines. One photon sail. One fusion PME (Planetary Maneuvering Engine.) Beamed photon power from Earth for outward acceleration phase; ship’s hybrid fusion / matter-antimatter power for deceleration phase on approach to Pandora. Sequence reversed for return to Earth.


Also note that Polyphemus (the gas giant that Pandora orbits) is actually in the Alpha Centauri system, so the travel is pretty reasonably sped.