Avatar

Themes and inspirations

Themes and inspirationsMain article:

Avatar is primarily an action-adventure journey of self-discovery, in the context of and . Cameron said his inspiration was "every single science fiction book I read as a kid", and that he was particularly striving to update the style of series and the deep jungles of Pandora were visualized from Disney's 37th animated film, . He acknowledged that Avatar shares themes with the films , , and , which feature clashes between cultures and civilizations, and with , where a battered soldier finds himself drawn to the culture he was initially fighting against.

In a 2007 interview with magazine, Cameron was asked about the meaning of the term , to which he replied, "It's an incarnation of one of the taking a flesh form. In this film what that means is that the human technology in the future is capable of injecting a human's intelligence into a remotely located body, a biological body."

Jake's avatar and Neytiri. One of the inspirations for the look of the Na'vi came from a dream that Cameron's mother had told him about.

The look of the Na'vi – the humanoids indigenous to Pandora – was inspired by a dream that Cameron's mother had, long before he started work on Avatar. In her dream, she saw a blue-skinned woman 12 feet (4 m) tall, which he thought was "kind of a cool image". Also he said, "I just like blue. It's a good color ... plus, there's a connection to the Hindu deities, which I like conceptually." He included similar creatures in his first screenplay (written in 1976 or 1977), which featured a planet with a native population of "gorgeous" tall blue aliens. The Na'vi were based on them.

For the love story between characters Jake and Neytiri, Cameron applied a love theme, and acknowledged its similarity to the pairing of Jack and Rose from his film Titanic. An interviewer stated, "Both couples come from radically different cultures that are contemptuous of their relationship and are forced to choose sides between the competing communities." Cameron felt that whether or not the Jake and Neytiri love story would be perceived as believable partially hinged on the physical attractiveness of Neytiri's alien appearance, which was developed by considering her appeal to the all-male crew of artists. Though Cameron felt Jake and Neytiri do not fall in love right away, their portrayers ( and ) felt the characters do. Cameron said the two actors "had a great chemistry" during filming.

Pandora's floating "Hallelujah Mountains" were inspired in part by the Chinese mountains (pictured).

For the film's floating "Hallelujah Mountains", the designers drew inspiration from "many different types of mountains, but mainly the formations in China." According to production designer Dylan Cole, the fictional floating rocks were inspired by (also known as Huangshan), , , among others around the world. Director Cameron had noted the influence of the Chinese peaks on the design of the floating mountains.

To create the interiors of the human mining colony on Pandora, production designers visited the Clyde Boudreaux oil platform in the during June 2007. They photographed, measured and filmed every aspect of the platform, which was later replicated on-screen with photorealistic during post-production.

Cameron said that he wanted to make "something that has this spoonful of sugar of all the action and the adventure and all that" but also have a conscience "that maybe in the enjoying of it makes you think a little bit about the way you interact with nature and your fellow man". He added that "the Na'vi represent something that is our higher selves, or our aspirational selves, what we would like to think we are" and that even though there are good humans within the film, the humans "represent what we know to be the parts of ourselves that are trashing our world and maybe condemning ourselves to a grim future".

Cameron acknowledges that Avatar implicitly criticizes the United States' role in the and the impersonal nature of in general. In reference to the use of the term in the film, Cameron said, "We know what it feels like to launch the missiles. We don't know what it feels like for them to land on our home soil, not in America." He said in later interviews, "... I think it's very patriotic to question a system that needs to be corralled ..." and, "The film is definitely not anti-American." A scene in the film portrays the violent destruction of the towering Na'vi Hometree, which collapses in flames after a missile attack, coating the landscape with ash and floating embers. Asked about the scene's resemblance to the on the , Cameron said he had been "surprised at how much it did look like September 11".