AVATAR’s central figure, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is a relatable everyman who unexpectedly rises to become a hero, as events draw him deeper into a clash of civilizations, between the Earth corporations bent on “developing” Pandora and the indigenous Na’vi. Jake is a former Marine who places honor and duty above all, but he must eventually choose between his personal honor, in defense of what is right, and his supposed duty to those who have tasked him with his mission.
“I wanted to create a familiar type of adventure in an unfamiliar environment, “ Cameron explains, “by setting the classic tale of a newcomer to a foreign land and culture on an alien planet. The story is by design classic in its broad strokes, but we have plenty of twists and turns in store for the audience. I’ve dreamed of creating a film like this, set on another world of great danger and beauty, since I was a kid reading pulp science fiction and comic books by the truckload, and sitting in math class drawing creatures and aliens behind my propped up textbook. With AVATAR, I finally got my chance.”
AVATAR takes place on Pandora, a moon with an Earthlike environment that orbits a gas-giant planet called Polyphemus in the Alpha Centauri-A star system. At 4.4 light years away, Alpha Centauri is our nearest stellar neighbor, and when it is discovered that Pandora is rich in a rare-earth mineral called Unobtainium, the race is on to mine the new world’s resources. Unobtainium does not exist in our solar system, but it is the key to solving Earth’s energy crisis in the twenty second century, so the Resources Development Administration (RDA) is spending hundreds of billions of dollars to mine the distant world. Our story takes place in 2154, three decades after a mining colony was established on Pandora. The encroachment by human activities into the territory of the indigenous Na’vi has created increasing tension between the two species and has set them down a path to war.
By a twist of fate, the death of his twin brother, Jake Sully is thrust into the middle of this tense situation. He is on Pandora to be the newest “driver” for the Avatar Program, an attempt by human scientists to create a “bridge of trust” with the Na’vi by using genetically engineered avatar bodies to walk among these alien giants in a familiar form. But Jake is co-opted by Colonel Miles Quaritch, the head of security for the human colony, to infiltrate the local clan and learn how to control them or defeat them. Quaritch is the commander of Secops, the private security force that defends Hell’s Gate against the fierce predators of Pandora and the equally fierce Na’vi. They are a scruffy but well equipped mercenary army, complete with heavily armed tilt-rotor aircraft and “AMP Suits”-- huge exeskeletal fighting suits.
Jake becomes the “wrong guy” to have placed in such a volatile position. When he finds himself torn between the Na’vi and the RDA forces that are bent on destroying their ancestral home of 10,000 years, Jake takes action. And all hell breaks loose.
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