In a 2007 interview with Time magazine, Cameron explained the relationship between the title and Hinduism, "It is the incarnation of Hindu gods when they appear in physical form. In this film, this means that humanity's future technology can inject a human intellect into the body of a remotely controlled creature. ”
I. Avatar and Hinduism
The film's name is not an English word, but comes from the Indian Sanskrit word Avatar, where "ava" means "down" or "leave", and "tar" means "traverse" and "through". The word in Sanskrit means from heaven to earth, and the gods came to earth in the flesh of mortals.
Originally the exclusive religious vocabulary of the Vishnu sect in Hinduism, it was later absorbed by secular society and had a broader meaning of "incarnation.". Jack enters the Na'vi's body and integrates into their society through a soul transfer machine called "Avatar" in the film, a process of moving from human civilization to the indigenous tribe of Pandora, which can be said to be an "incarnation" behavior based on the future level of high technology.
Of course, the relationship between the Sanskrit word Avatar and the film is not only at the superficial level of "avatar", but if we want to know its deep meaning, we must first return to Hinduism. Hinduism has three gods: Brahma the Creator of the world, Vishnu the Maintainer of the World, and Shiva, the Destroyer of the World.
In Hindu history, "Avatar" is basically synonymous with Vishnu, and as the world maintainer, he often incarnates as a different image in Indian epics to punish evil and promote good to save mankind from danger.
In India' famous epic Ramayana, the protagonist of the Ramayana, is the human incarnation of the god Vishnu, and in another epic, The Mahabharata, Vishnu incarnates as Krishna.
In addition, he also incarnated as a big fish to save mano, the ancestor of mankind, and became a huge wild boar to rescue the golden-eyed demon to save the earth goddess; incarnated as a dwarf, also known as the three-step god, asked the demon king Baali for three steps, and the result was that the three steps crossed the three realms of heaven, earth and space, and defeated the demon king Baali. A total of 22 different incarnations of Vishnu are recorded in the Bhagavad Gita.
In the film, Jack's "avatar" is surrounded by the spores of the sacred tree after arriving in Pandora's primeval forest, and it is on the basis of this vision that natiri, the Na'vi princess Natiri, who prophesied to be the "savior" and decided to bring him back to the tribe.
Later, Jack successfully subdued the Air Overlord Manta Dragon, led the Na'mei people to rebel against the human colonization forces, and drove the human mercenaries back to Earth, further proving that he was the savior of the Na'vi who had been chosen by Heaven to shoulder a special mission. Therefore, in addition to echoing the "soul transfer" technology in the story, the title Avatar also implies from the cultural background of etymology that the protagonist has a natural mission to save the Na'mee people.
2. Avatar and Cameron
It can be said that any great work of art is the autobiography of the artist's life or the history of the mind, which will surely be marked by the personal brand of the creator, either implicitly or explicitly.
In 1994, Kashin completed the 80-page "Avatar" script and background discussion in just two weeks. In August 1996, he announced that he would begin filming Avatar after finishing Titanic. But I didn't expect that this dream, which had been cherished for two years, would have to wait 13 years before it could come true on the big screen.
The image of the Na'vi in the movie actually comes from a dream of Kashin's mother a long time ago. In the dream, she saw a blue-skinned woman 12 feet tall. Therefore, he added this image to his first version of the script. During the visit, he also talked about the reason why he chose blue as the main color of the Na'vi, "I have always liked blue... And, it has something to do with the Hindu gods, and I love the concept of it. "Know that the real body of the great Hindu god Vishnu is blue skin.
Of course, the themes of civilization and barbarism, technology and nature, weapons and life in "Avatar" are also related to kashen's own cultural background and movie watching and reading experience.
Many people may not know that James Cameron is actually a Canadian, and the invasion and massacre of American Indians by white European colonists, and the history of driving indigenous peoples from the land where they have worked and lived for generations to reserved land, is a compulsory course for every American and Canadian citizen.
From an early age, children are guided in school to face this disgraceful history of their country when it was first founded. Therefore, the guilt, repentance, and antipathy to war and violence against the indigenous people are naturally imprinted in the heart of the god Ka.
In addition, Cameron also said in the interview that the script of "Avatar" was inspired by every science fiction book he read as a child. He said he borrowed from Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter series.
It tells the story of a former officer traumatized during the American Civil War who travels to Mars, becomes a powerful, jumping "superman" because the gravitational pull of Mars is smaller than Earth, and intervenes in local tribal conflicts. This series was also put on the big screen in 2012, called "Alien Battlefield", but only one film was made and died without success.
Of course, the theme of the wounded soldiers in the film being attracted to the culture of the original hostile camp was also influenced by the film "Dances with Wolves".
In addition, the story of "Avatar" also has a more realistic direction. The United States bombed major Iraqi cities with extremely sophisticated weapons in the 2003 Iraq War, achieving established military objectives but also causing great harm to the lives of local civilians.
"We know what it's like to launch a missile, but we don't know how people abroad feel, what it's like to have a missile fall in our own country," Cameron said in the interview. Therefore, he had to arrange for human mercenaries in "Avatar" to show the ruthlessness of mechanized warfare by selecting rotor planes and land war mechs to destroy the planet Pandora.
He said, "There are certain things that if you put it out and talk about it, you will certainly say that you are not patriotic; but I think it is very patriotic to question a system that should be monitored, otherwise it risks becoming another Roman Empire." Therefore, "Avatar" is also the embodiment of the sense of civic responsibility of Kashen to criticize and criticize world hegemony.
3. Avatar and avatar universe
After achieving the great success of "Avatar", which has been sharpened for twelve years, Kashen once again fell into a twelve-year period of concentrated creation. However, his exit this time has brought a larger creative plan of a more ambitious "Avatar Universe" to the majority of movie fans: the second part will be released in 2022, the third part will be released in 2024, the fourth part will be released in 2026, and the fifth part will be released in 2028.
Starting in 2022, Kashin will gradually uncover more secrets of the planet Pandora for the audience at a steady pace of one film every two years. But he also said that if the two films were dismal at the box office, "Avatar 4" and "Avatar 5" would not be released.
In 2009, Kashin, through his team's 3D cameras that simulated the human binocular vision pattern and the exquisite production that cost an average of 60,000 man-hours per frame, showed the audience the wonderful and beast-infested planet Pandora and thus attracted a large number of fans around the world.
Looking back at "Avatar" 12 years later, compared with other science fiction and fantasy works that have inherited the mantle of Kashen special effects, the ecosystem of Pandora's planet has been slightly monolithic, and the variety of organisms is not rich. Some of the creatures that appear in the film can only form a very simple food chain and biological circulation system:
The Na'vi, the only known intelligent species on the planet Pandora, are capable of using cold weapons and fire, and the form of social organization is primitive tribes.
Pandora, a small creature similar to a lemur, is able to climb and glide among trees with the help of its flexible arms and wing membranes.
Pandora is a fierce horse, with six legs and armor on its head, covering the back of its head along its neck. Its respiratory organs grow on the chest, so it cannot cross the waters of the chest. Can be tamed by The Na'vi and connected to their masters through nerve fibers.
The Manta Ray, a flying carnivore similar to a pterosaur, can also be tamed by the Na'vi, but only with one owner for the rest of its life.
The Manta Ray Dragon, an enhanced variant of the Manta Ray, is more majestic and covered with yellow, red and black stripes around its body. Feeding on manta rays and Na'vi, only a very few Extremely Powerful Na'vi were able to tame it and become tribal leaders.
Hammerhead Thunderbeast, a herbivore similar to a rhinoceros, is the size of two elephants, has a large protruding transverse bone on its head, resembles a hammerhead shark, and its skin is extremely hard, even able to withstand gun attacks.
Spotted cattle, giant land beasts on Pandora's star, are five meters tall and weigh ten tons. He is docile in temperament, prefers to live in groups, and often moves along rivers.
These ideas were stunning at the time, and they are not without their own today.
For example, in Legendary Pictures' ambitious "Monster Universe", "King Kong: Skull Island", the island as a closed ecological space, full of specially evolved mutant alien beasts to bring the audience a shock is not lost to "Avatar".
Of course, Pandora as an independent planet, its excavatable space is still very large. In the first part, we see only the ecology of the tropical regions of the planet Pandora. We don't know anything about its oceans, plateaus, mountains, plains, Gobi, deserts, and more ecological systems.
According to the currently known information, there are a large number of underwater scenes on the shooting site of "Avatar 2", and it is believed that in the sequel, Ka Shen will lead us to dive into the mysterious seabed and show the other side of the mysterious Pandora.
We can also look forward to Avatar 2 with more questions. For example, how is the Na'vi civilization by the sea different from the jungle? What is the Ship of the Na'vi? What are the wonderful creatures in the ocean? Have human colonists discovered a new Pandora's treasure in the ocean this time? Re-watching Kashen's masterpiece "Avatar", there may be new discoveries.