After 13 years of waiting, the second installment of the sci-fi film Avatar, The Tao of Water, finally arrives in the winter of 2022. When the camera passes over the forest of Pandora again, we are once again immersed in the mysterious world of the film. Much of the credit for this alien experience goes to director James Cameron and his team, who have carefully constructed a “stage” for the planet to create a sense of wonder and a biological ecosystem.
“Each in its place” ecosystem
The Pandoran lemur climbs above the forest using thick branches; As the Hammerhead roams the woods, its massive size means it doesn’t have to worry about going head-to-head with predators, but it still needs to watch out for the Thunderbolts… Although the Na ‘vi, the protagonists of the film, have yet to make an appearance, the jungle is as beautiful as a nature documentary and looks quite real enough to fascinate.
More than 10 years ago, when the first “Avatar” movie began filming, Cameron and his team faced the difficult task of creating an ecosystem that was both strange and believable for the “Pandora” where the movie takes place. In the movie, Pandora is a moon of a gas giant, so its gravity is lower than Earth’s, which means local animals and plants could grow even taller. On the other hand, Pandora’s night is not illuminated by moonlight like Earth’s, but only by the bluish light reflected from the gas giants, giving life the ability to glow at night to find fellow creatures, hunt collaboratively or deter enemies.
Based on this “bottom line”, Cameron’s team imagined a series of animals with different habits and adapted them to occupy different places in the alien ecosystem. We know that almost all animals on Earth are connected through the food chain and the food web, so rabbits eat grass, foxes eat rabbits, wolves may eat foxes and rabbits. The solar energy stored by grass flows through the Earth’s biosphere through such predatory relationships. If we think of the biosphere as a giant corporation, each kind of animal would have its own “station” in it. When an animal becomes extinct, it “leaves” Nature’s company, and new species quickly evolve to fill the niche left by the extinct animal, just as companies recruit new people when people leave. This succession has happened countless times in the long history of the Earth.
In the fantasy world of Avatar, life based on the animals on Earth also forms a set of simple and reasonable food web — the thundering beasts with big mouths and muscles, like lions on Earth, sit at the top of the food chain on land; Below it are small carnivores like the viper Wolf that hunt in packs.
Animals that eat plants have their own way of living. Twice the size of the African elephant on Earth, the image of the rhinoceros on Earth and its prehistoric “relatives”, the extinct ancient mammals of the thunder beast, combined with some hammerhead like hammerhead shark, to form a powerful and violent monster.
A still from Avatar: Access to Water. Photos | sohu net
The tame peacock deer, on the other hand, mimicked the strategies of some butterflies on Earth to survive in dangerous forests. This may seem like a deer species, in the position of the head and neck connected, there is a similar frilled lizard skin membrane, when it is fully expanded neon roasting novelty mansion the xian pastoral reef Tuo serval catch eel both wall her accept my meal hanging endowment Bi difficult Qu Γ DE narrow ⌒ leg to suggest pull lutetium to dispatch �
Hexapods take the lead
If we look closely, we can find something of an animal on Earth in every animal that appears in Avatar. That’s because the roughly 1.5 million animals currently living on Earth, and several times that many prehistoric animals, provide ample fodder for creating Pandora’s fictional animals. But perhaps to create a strong sense of strangeness, most animals on Pandora have two pairs of forelegs and one pair of hind legs.
Animals in the jungle, the flying spines, Ikalan and Phantom in the sky, as well as Marine animals like Iru, wave-swept pterosaur and Tukun in The Tao of Water, all have six limbs that have evolved into different forms to help them adapt to different environments.
If we look closely, we can find some interesting details. Both Icaran and Phantom are animals that need to travel long distances and at high speeds, and their two pairs of wings are more like those of bats on Earth, with thick skin membranes supported by each “finger”, giving them both flexibility and power. The spined bat, by contrast, had wings closer to those of the extinct pterodactyl, with a pinky finger that wrapped around its body but made it less flexible when flying. As a result, the bats in the movies tend to linger at low altitudes or take refuge in abandoned buildings.
The direhorses that run through the jungles and plains have slender limbs not so different from those of horses on Earth; The strong hammer-headed thunderbeasts, as well as the thick-skinned Stam beasts with horns above and below their heads, had large limbs to support their bodies and provide explosive power for fast running. As for the Marine animals featured in “The Way of Water,” the limbs evolved into flippers suitable for paddling.
An Iru for teenagers to ride, like a miniature plesiosaur; Tu Kun, a giant intelligent creature, is based on a humpback whale on Earth, complete with a tail resembling the hind limbs of a seal, and a shell made from a ostracoid in ancient times. When the human Tukun hunting ship shoots a hook spear loaded with high explosives to kill Tukun in order to obtain the elixir of life, the fierce battle at sea is like the scene of steam whalers hunting whales on Earth in the 19th century, which is reenacted in the future alien ocean.
Show the power of evolution
The various animals on the earth have been shaped by the forces of nature over a long period of time into what we see today. The same forces of evolution can be found in the fantasy world sketched out in about six hours in the two “Avatar” movies.
In the film, most of the animals have two “interfaces” on their heads that allow for nerve docking. Also, many land animals have breathing holes in their chests. This might suggest that in the ancient days of Pandora, direhorses, hammerhead thunderbeasts, Stambeasts, Icaran and Wraith, among other vastly different animals, once shared a common ancestor. Its offspring have been shaped differently by nature to adapt to different environments, except for the number of neural interfaces and the location of its breathing holes.
But just as whales on Earth move their nostrils to the top of their heads so that they can breathe only with the top of their heads above water, a similar evolution takes place in the Tukun adapted to life in the ocean on Pandora. When the son of the hero is accidentally saved by a wandering figure Kun, he thought he was sent to the reef of the sea, a close look only to find himself in the breathing hole next to the figure Kun. This interesting detail became the starting point of friendship and bond between him and Tu Kun.
The Pandoran lemur, with its “half and half” arms, hints at the origin of the Na ‘vi. Unlike most land animals on Pandora, the Na ‘vi have only one neural interface, use a nose on their face to breathe, and have only arms like humans, with only four fingers on each hand. The answer to why they have this “maverick” look may be found in Pandora’s lemurs. This little creature, somewhat similar to the Na ‘vi man, also had only one neural interface, and its breathing hole became a nose in the middle of its face; Their forearms split into two “branches”, while the upper arms, like humans and Na ‘vi, have “merged”.
Perhaps, in the ancient days of Pandora, the Pandoran lemur and the Na ‘vi people shared a common ancestor. Their breathing holes were gradually moved from the chest to the head in order to adapt to the jungle life of climbing trees, and the original two pairs of arms were mutated, merging into more powerful arms to propel their two flexible forearms quickly through the jungle. Then, at a particular point in time, the Pandoras and the Na ‘vi parted ways, just as humans on Earth “parted ways” with chimpanzees.
Avatar’s carefully constructed fantasy world resembles a projection of the biosphere in real life. Not only does it give us a sense of wonder, but it also gives us a fresh look at the evolution of life on Earth. The fact that humans became intelligent and stood at the top of the Earth’s biosphere was an accident in a long evolutionary process.
Avatar’s carefully constructed fantasy world resembles a projection of the biosphere in real life. Not only does it give us a sense of wonder, but it also gives us a fresh look at the evolution of life on Earth. The fact that humans became intelligent and stood at the top of the Earth’s biosphere was an accident in a long evolutionary process. If the history of the Earth were to start all over again, would wisdom emerge in the ocean? Will humans share the Earth with other intelligent life? Behind the magnificent imagination of the two “Avatar” movies lies a thought-provoking topic.
