What Happens In "Avatar"

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What’s up, space marines? Chris here, and if you were just thinking that your Sunday could use a little juice — well, the juice has arrived… and it’s blue.

“Blue juice?!?!” Hey, let me explain!

One of the best things about working for this newsletter, Slow Descent Into Radness, is that sometimes you get to do stuff that hardly seems like work. Like go see Avatar in theaters, in IMAX 3D, after having a few margaritas and a shot of tequila at your favorite cinema-adjacent Mexican spot. Yes, when our editor (us) sent us this assignment, we were like, “Seriously? Um… okay! Why though? Who cares about Avatar in 2022?” And that’s when we told ourselves about the forthcoming Avatar 2: Way Of Water (hitting theaters this December), and the subsequent planned sequels, of which there are at least two and as many as five(!).

So yes, the fact that Avatar has been remastered and rereleased in 3D is a pretty big deal, because remember the era of Marvel that we all just lived through? Well that shit is over. Welcome to the era of Avatar. Welcome to Pandora.

Photo by Noel Nichols on Unsplash

Pretty sure this lady’s not in Avatar, but she is in our royalty-free photo database, and she has big Avatar energy.

Before we start this discussion, here’s a SPOILER ALERT. Yes, we discuss details of the film’s plot — although probably not enough to totally ruin the movie for you if you haven’t seen it. And of course, if you’ve managed to resist Avatar lo, these thirteen long years, you must not be too interested. Well, maybe we can convince you that you’re being an incurious fool, and get you invested in what is, again, about to be one of the great artistic strata in Earth’s rich cultural geology. You see, you may not have gotten on the Avatar elevator yet, but it’s actually still sitting in the lobby. So cram in, cuz this baby’s going all the way to Pandora.

Before we actually saw Avatar, as mentioned, we had drinks at our good lil’ spot. Sitting there at the bar, salty margs in hand, we decided it would be interesting to find out how much each of us remembered about the movie. So we paused our conversation about [BAND NAME REDACTED] and how awful their latest song [???] is, pulled out our phones, and thumb-tapped in silence for a few minutes. Here are the results of that memory assay, after which we’ll get into the precious metal of this print-podcast:

[These are presented without correction, because S.D.I.R is a vérité newsletter. -Ed.]

Chris: This is what happens in Avatar. Jake, a space marine okayed by Sam Worthington, gets injured (in combat? I don’t remember the injury exactly— it kight have been riding a rollercoaster?). He tries normal PT, gets frustrated by slow progress, and opts in to a crazy science program that will insert his consciousness into an alien body,

EXACTLY how present-day drone piloting works.

The alien body is a member of a species called the Navi that is endemic to the planet Pandorum. So Jake gets transported by spaceship to outer orbit of Pandorum, where he meets Good Scientist Ripley (can’t remember actresses name? Oh, Siglurmey Weaver!), bad company man Giovanni Ribisi, hard-as-nails sergeant guy Steven foster, and some other nerds I can’t picture. The scientists are all good guys and the military people are all bad, and this is apparent as soon as you meet them and maintains till the end of the movie.

Jake gets put into a Navi body (oh, humans can’t breath the atmosphere on Pandorum), and proceeds to make nice with the locals. There’s a meet-cute with Zoe Saldana’s lady-Navi — I think she saves his life when his bad physical dexterity almost lands him in a giant Venus fly trap or something. I THINK later they have sex? I’m skipping ahead.

Somehow there’s 2 more hours of Blue Jake doing stuff. I don’t remember much of it, just a few snapshots. He rides a pterodactyl at one point (and like bonds with it, so I loves him now and will always have his back?), he meets the leader of the tribe, who shows him a sacred glowing tree that all the Navi souls get absorbed into when they die (?). Later that tree is threatened by a space bulldozer being driven by Steven Foster.

Throughout, Weaver has his back, her primary interest is anthropological (xenopological?). Ribisi obviously wants to harvest the planets natural resources (oh! The planet is rich in unobtainium! An old sci-fi idea that JC amusingly harvests for this movie. Unless I’m misremembering and it’s actually something stupid like vibranium.). And the military is there to do Ribisi’s bidding.

The movie ends with Jake permanently transferred into Blue Jake (via glowing tree magic?), all other humans dead, and Zoe’s tribe alive but very bruised. And probably more company men on the way?

Let’s see how Keith did:

Keith: Sam Worthington is Johnny Utah, a member of the space marines, who are all a bunch of bad mofos, but he is pretty good, I guess? They want to go to the planet Avatar to get Unobtainium, which is the metal that gives Wakonda all of its tech. Sigourney Weaver plays Space General Weaver,or else she plays the CEO of WeaverCorp, who wants to use the Unobtainium for nefarious means. Or maybe they want to use the Unobtainium for good means but their means of taking it from the planet Avatar are nefarious? But anyway, the planet Avatar is inhabited by the Naavi(sp?) who are blue cats, but they talk? I think they talk. Christ, I hope they talk, or this move is going to be very boring. And so but the Marines can’t go onto the planet because the atmosphere does not accommodate human lung-needs? But also they need an avatar that’s a Navi(sp?) to infiltrate the indigenous population? But I guess the planet is probably not called Avatar if the movie is named after the marines’ need to be avatars on the planet for respiratory or espionage reasons. Is the planet called Pandora? Pandorum? But then Sam Worthington gets his back broken or something? And so he especially likes being an avatar because it comes equipped with legs? And then he goes to planet Avatar and he meets the Navii(sp?) princess and they probably dislike each other initially, but then they go all goo-goo for one another and they have sex via their hair. At which point, he’s going to go ahead and side with them in the big war for planet Avatar against his old bros the Space Marines. And this is what he does. This movie is two hours and 45 minutes long?

Then we smashed a few more margaritas, carefully handed the pile of glass shards back to our bartender, and hit the cinema. And now it’s time to write about what we heard, saw, and felt. Keith, are you ready for this?

Keith: I was bred for this. First of all, what do you think our remembered accounts show about the state of our pickled hippocampuses?

Chris: I’m actually pretty impressed by how well both of us remembered not just Avatar’s mechanics, but some of the details. You get an achievement badge for recollecting the umbilical cords that apparently grow out of all mammalian heads on Pandora, and allow a sort of mind-melding across species (and with the great glowing Tree of Souls). This USB-D tech (‘D’ for dreadlock) is a handy thing for an ecosystem to evolve, although the movie closes the door just as we’re about to discover whether the Na’vi lock ‘locks during coitus, surely one of the more thrilling possible uses. That your memory of the USB-Ds transposed them into the sex scene strongly suggests this is the deployment our imaginations long for. Why do you think James Cameron refused to give us that? Did the prissy squibs at the MPAA threaten an R rating after seeing a cut with Na’vi-on-Na’vi hair sex?

Keith: I guess maybe the ratings board was like, “You can’t have a hair-tendril-sex scene between two Na’vi characters after having already established that this hair-conjoining apparatus is how the Na’vi communicate with their horses and bird-horses.  Like, does that indicate that the the Na’vi are porking their horses while they ride them?” James Cameron probably told the ratings board, “You bet your sweet ass they’re horse-porking, you idiot cowards,” thereby risking landing the original cut of Avatar the dreaded XXX rating that really puts a hit on your opening-week box office.

I was impressed that you’d remembered that Giovanni Ribisi was the evil head of operations in this movie. I, like the rest of the world, had entirely forgotten that he ever existed. Sorry, Gigi! It’s not really his fault; he was given the sort of thankless, boilerplate “pragmatic antagonist” role that has undermined even our greatest actors (see how the GOAT John Hamm struggles under the yoke of his half-baked role in the even more half-baked Top Gun: Maverick. Thank god he had the ace up his sleeve that is Confess, Fletch!, ready and waiting to revive his imperiled career. If only Giovanni had had a Fletch reboot of his own to pull him out of his post-Avatar malaise).

Chris: Like an intelligent fish from the planet Pandora, I’m swimming right past the bait you dangled with that Maverick comment. Maybe one day we’ll air the details of our ongoing deliberation concerning that flick's worthiness, but right in the middle of the great Avatar unpacking is simply the wrong celestial space-time coordinates.

You’re right that Giovanni Ribisi has it pretty rough in this movie, although he’s playing an archetype that Cameron himself established with company man “Burke” in Aliens, played to very memorable effect by Paul Reiser. Is Ribisi’s role in Avatar (“Parker Selfridge” is the character’s name, a fact I honestly don’t think I knew at any point while watching the movie) just that much lamer than Aliens’ Carter Burke (I looked up the first name)? Or did Paul Reiser, nobody’s idea of a great actor, make better sausage from the gristle he was given than did Ribisi, who most would say possesses above average talent? (Watch Heaven if you doubt Ribisi’s potential.) In any case, Parker Selfridge is substantially less life-like than the digital creatures in Avatar. 

About those digital creatures: which one is your favorite? Actually, fuck it, let’s go ahead and establish YOUR AVATAR ID. I think I just heard you spit out your early-afternoon martini! What is an “Avatar ID”? Well, it’s a concept I encountered yesterday while poking around in the kinda creepy but generally posi online world of Avatar superfandom. Establish yours by answering these five questions: How did you first encounter Avatar? Who’s your favorite character? What’s your favorite scene? Your favorite creature? And what are you most looking forward to (in terms of future Avatar films or adjacent experiences — surely the Disney World mini-park is in for some updates!)?

Keith: Uh, okay. Well, for my Avatar ID, I guess I first encountered it in a movie theater? When I saw it at the movie theater? I guess I must have heard of it before I saw it, I’m not sure I understand the question? Maybe I encountered it in an ad on TV?My favorite character is Dr. Sigourney Weaver, who combines sagacity with a heart of gold. My favorite scene is when the evil Giovanni Ribisi is sent back into the planet Earth in disgrace, because it was great to see him put in his place without being blown up by Sully or having his head chomped upon by one of Pandora’s indigenous beasts, which was too scary.  My favorite creature is the air-jellyfish which confer credibility upon Sully in the eyes of the Na’vi. I like them because the are too small to bite off a human’s head. And I am most looking forward to seeing the air jellyfish continue to not even bother trying to bite people’s heads clean off. God help me if, in future installments, the jellyfish teem and swarm upon people and strip them clean, like piranha. They do that, and I’m out.

Chris: Know your shit, dude. You’re talking about a woodsprite. Here’s more on those from the website where I learned the term “woodsprite”:

A woodsprite (Na'vi name: atokirina') is a seed of the Tree of Souls that lives on Pandora. These seeds, according to the Na'vi, are very pure and sacred spirits. Furthermore, these seeds are believed to be auspicious wheresoever they choose to rest. They are similar in appearance to small deep-sea jellyfish, but they float on the wind like dandelion seeds, possibly aided in this by the denser atmosphere on Pandora. 

If woodsprites are like seeds on Earth, they don’t require any nourishment until they germinate, since they’re essentially in a dormant state. Of course, Earth seeds are, with no exceptions, incapable of directed flight through the air (our airborne seeds are at the mercy of the wind), so there’s definitely greater energy expenditure by the woodsprites than what we’re familiar with, suggesting a metabolic state that’s more active. Heightened metabolism makes it likely that these “seeds” actually do have to feed, in one form or another, and given that we’re talking about Pandora, that feeding most likely takes the shape of biting other creatures’ heads off — or, if the food source is too large for that (like a Na’vi or human being), a piranha-like frenzy. 

Considering your favorite character — Grace Augustine, M.D., Ph.D., etc. — dies horribly in the first film, and knowing that there’s a reasonable likelihood that your favorite creature, the woodsprite, will be revealed in Avatar 2: Way Of Water to be a meat-crazy swarm animal… do you think you’ll see A2:WOW, or are you going to stay home while film history marches inexorably forward? 

Keith: I reject that nomenclature.

Chris: Reject the terms if you like — you’ve got the cold adamantine clamps of logic around your neck when it comes to my evolutionary biology. Them woodsprites need to feed. 

Since you asked, or rather nonverbally manifested a wrenching desire to know, here’s my Avatar ID:

1) I first encountered Avatar at what I had been tricked into thinking was a porno theater. I bought a ticket for “whatever has the longest runtime.” I was pretty excited by the first hour or so — what I thought was a patient setup for a helluva wild adult picture — then during hour two I grew kind of sore about how goddamn slow the film was moving, and especially how it was really taking its time showing even a hint of blue privates. Then, during the last forty minutes, I was back in it — just as a straight action/drama, having forgotten about my initial expectations. In fact, I’m only remembering them now, as I fill out this questionnaire! 

2) My favorite character is Giovanni Ribisi’s breadboy Parker Selfridge. We talked some shit about him earlier in this letter to James Cameron, but it’s awesome that he brought so much cucumber cool to what is essentially a boy made from dough who’s put in charge of a colony of space marines. 👏

3) Your favorite scene is also mine, but it’s because when the vanquished earthlings are queuing for their spaceflight back to a shattered home-world, you can see sesame seeds in Selfridge’s hair, and you know that’s because Giovanni Ribisi, who had mostly lost his mind after acting in a green warehouse for six months, has decided that his character is to become a sesame loaf when they put him in the oven (the ship’s cryo-chamber) and set it to “bake.” 

4) My favorite creature, hands down, is the viperwolf (Na’vi name: nantang), the vantablack dog-looking thing that travels in packs and attacks things. I sure like dogs, and even a six-legged one would be alright with me. If I lived on Pandora, a viperwolf would be my constant companion. 

5) It will sound hokey, but I’m most looking forward to seeing how Jake and Neytiri’s relationship has matured. We know from production materials that the next film finds the couple many years in the future with a family of their own. I just watched The Last Movie Stars, a six-hour documentary about Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, their long marriage, its many ups and downs, and the unique grace that’s maybe only possible between two people who’ve shared a life together, watched each other fail, considered giving up but held fast, who’ve endured the climb back to some kind of resolve and even renewed passion, then perhaps a warm nostalgia, and who finally watched each other weaken and went to their ends together. I’m hoping A2:WOW will be that in 3D. 

Keith, any last thoughts? Tonight we’re going to watch 311 play their second album “Homebrew” live. Released in 1994, it’s fully fifteen years older than James Cameron’s masterpiece: will it hold up nearly as well? Will the light-show at least feature woodsprites? 

Keith: Don’t you worry about 311. If, as your enthusiasm for Avatar suggests, what you’re looking for in your entertainment is to be introduced to a primitive-but-noble culture whose rich, atavistic ceremonies are presented in pretty reasonable 3D, your itch will be scratched tonight. I think you’ll be pleased, actually, at how like-minded lead vocalists Nick Hexum and SA Martinez are with their fellow artist and environmentalist, James Cameron. Their mission statement, from Grassroots’ “Omaha Stylee,” could almost have been spoken by Space Marine-turned-Blue Hippie Jake Sully, had Cameron a slightly better ear for human dialogue:

We travel round the country giving it our best
Like to see the people dancing and bouncing and the rest

The hammer and the chisel and the rule and conquest
We forged the sword, chariots of war, our battle axe
There’s much power in anger but loves a bigger banger
Complete props to my crew ‘cause this is how we do

Chris: It’s true, out of love and anger, love’s the bigger banger! Wow, that got me excited for tonight’s show. I gotta go find some shoes !

Thanks, S.D.I.R. subscribers, for scanning the planet Pandora with us, even if only from the safety of the Aerospatiale SA-2 Samson that is this newsletter. If you like what we’re sending you, and know someone who’s life would be improved two- or threefold by this content, use a button to do a great thing:

Hayalovay (supposedly “Until next time”),

Chris & Keith

FinalFacts™️: Our 2023 Show Lobes Tour is now on sale, with dates in the U.K. and Europe early next year. Here’s a Na’vi dictionary, because that’s what we’ll all be speaking by the time the shows roll around. And what do Paramore, Daft Punk, and We Are Scientists have in common? This video will teach your ear.