Avatar (2009 film)

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10 Feb 2024
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Avatar (2009 film)


"James Cameron's Avatar" redirects here. For the media franchise that began with this film, see Avatar (franchise).
"Avatar 1" redirects here. For the first season of Avatar: The Last Airbender, see Avatar: The Last Airbender (season 1).
AvatarTheatrical release poster

Music byJames HornerProduction

LanguageEnglishBudget$237 million[4]Box office$2.923 billion[5]
Avatar (marketed as James Cameron's Avatar) is a 2009 epic science fiction film directed, written, co-produced, and co-edited by James Cameron and starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez,[6] and Sigourney Weaver. It is the first installment in the Avatar film series. It is set in the mid-22nd century, when humans are colonizing Pandora, a lush habitable moon of a gas giant in the Alpha Centauri star system, in order to mine the valuable mineral unobtanium.[a] The expansion of the mining colony threatens the continued existence of a local tribe of Na'vi, a humanoid species indigenous to Pandora. The title of the film refers to a genetically engineered Na'vi body operated from the brain of a remotely located human that is used to interact with the natives of Pandora.[10]
Development of Avatar began in 1994, when James Cameron wrote an 80-page treatment for the film.[11][12] Filming was supposed to take place after the completion of Cameron's 1997 film Titanic, for a planned release in 1999;[13] however, according to Cameron, the necessary technology was not yet available to achieve his vision of the film.[14] Work on the language of the Na'vi began in 2005, and Cameron began developing the screenplay and fictional universe in early 2006.[15][16] Avatar was officially budgeted at $237 million, due to the groundbreaking array of new visual effects Cameron achieved in cooperation with Weta Digital in Wellington.[4] Other estimates put the cost at between $280 million and $310 million for production and at $150 million for promotion.[17][18][19] The film made extensive use of new motion capture filming techniques and was released for traditional viewing, 3D viewing (using the RealD 3D, Dolby 3D, XpanD 3D, and IMAX 3D formats), and "4D" experiences in selected South Korean theaters.[20]
Avatar premiered on December 10, 2009, in London and was released in the United States on December 18, 2009, to positive reviews. Critics highly praised its groundbreaking visual effects, though the story was considered to be predictable.[21][22][23] During its theatrical run, the film broke several box office records, including becoming the highest-grossing film of all time. In July 2019, this position was overtaken by Avengers: Endgame, but with subsequent re-releases, beginning with China in March 2021, it returned to becoming the highest-grossing film since then.[24] Adjusted for inflation, Avatar is the second-highest-grossing movie of all time, only behind Gone with the Wind, with a total of a little more than $3.5 billion. It also became the first film to gross more than $2 billion[25] and the best-selling video title of 2010 in the United States. Avatar was nominated for nine awards at the 82nd Academy Awards, winning three, and received numerous other accolades. The success of the film also led to electronics manufacturers releasing 3D televisions[26] and caused 3D films[27] to increase in popularity. Its success led to the Avatar franchise, which includes the sequels Avatar: The Way of Water (2022), Avatar 3 (2025), Avatar 4 (2029), and Avatar 5 (2031).

Plot

In 2154, the natural resources of the Earth have been depleted and is suffering ecocide.[28] The Resources Development Administration (RDA) mines the valuable mineral unobtanium on Pandora, a moon in the Alpha Centauri star system. Pandora, whose atmosphere is inhospitable to humans, is inhabited by the Na'vi, 10-foot-tall (3.0 m), blue-skinned, sapient humanoids that live in harmony with nature. To explore Pandora, genetically matched human scientists use Na'vi-human hybrids called "avatars". Paraplegic Marine Jake Sully is sent to Pandora to replace his deceased identical twin, who had signed up to be an operator. Avatar Program head Dr. Grace Augustine considers Sully inadequate but accepts him as a bodyguard.
While escorting the avatars of Grace and Dr. Norm Spellman, Jake's avatar is attacked by Pandoran wildlife, and he flees into the forest, where he is rescued by female Na'vi Neytiri. Suspicious of Jake, she takes him to her clan. Neytiri's mother, Mo'at, the clan's spiritual leader, orders her daughter to initiate Jake into their society. Colonel Miles Quaritch, head of RDA's security force, promises Jake that the company will restore the use of his legs if he provides information about the Na'vi and their gathering place, the giant Hometree, under which is a rich deposit of unobtanium. Learning of this, Grace transfers herself, Jake, and Norm to an outpost. Jake and Neytiri fall in love as Jake is initiated into the tribe. He and Neytiri choose each other as mates. When Jake attempts to disable a bulldozer threatening a sacred Na'vi site, Administrator Parker Selfridge orders Hometree destroyed. Despite Grace's argument that destroying Hometree could damage Pandora's biological neural network, Selfridge gives Jake and Grace one hour to convince the Na'vi to evacuate.
Jake confesses that he was a spy and the Na'vi take him and Grace captive. Quaritch's soldiers destroy Hometree, killing many, including Neytiri's father, the clan chief. Mo'at frees Jake and Grace, but they are detached from their avatars and imprisoned by Quaritch's forces. Pilot Trudy Chacón, disgusted by Quaritch's brutality, airlifts Jake, Grace, and Norm to Grace's outpost. Grace is shot during the escape. Jake regains the Na'vi's trust by connecting his mind to that of Toruk, a dragon-like creature feared and revered by the Na'vi. At the sacred Tree of Souls, Jake pleads with Mo'at to heal Grace. The clan attempts to transfer Grace into her avatar with the aid of the Tree of Souls, but she dies. Supported by new chief Tsu'tey, Jake unites the clan, telling them to gather all the clans to battle the RDA. Quaritch organizes a strike against the Tree of Souls to demoralize the Na'vi. Before the battle, Jake prays to the Na'vi deity Eywa via a neural connection with the Tree of Souls. Tsu'tey and Trudy are among the battle's heavy casualties.
The Na'vi are rescued when Pandoran wildlife unexpectedly join the attack and overwhelm the humans, which Neytiri interprets as Eywa answering Jake's prayer. Quaritch, wearing an AMP suit, escapes his crashed aircraft and breaks open the avatar link unit containing Jake's human body, exposing it to Pandora's poisonous atmosphere. As Quaritch prepares to slit Jake's avatar's throat, he is killed by Neytiri, who saves Jake from suffocation, seeing his human form for the first time. With the exceptions of Jake, Norm, and a select few others, all humans are expelled from Pandora. Jake is permanently transferred into his avatar with the aid of the Tree of Souls.

Cast

Further information: Fictional universe of Avatar

Sam Worthington (left) and Zoe Saldaña (right), who play the lead roles in the film

  • Sam Worthington as Corporal Jake Sully, a disabled former Marine who becomes part of the Avatar Program after his twin brother is killed. His military background helps the Na'vi warriors relate to him. Cameron cast the Australian actor after a worldwide search for promising young actors, preferring relative unknowns to keep the budget down.[29] Worthington, who was living in his car at the time,[30] auditioned twice early in development,[11][failed verification] and he has signed on for possible sequels.[31] Cameron felt that because Worthington had not done a major film, he would give the character "a quality that is really real". Cameron said he "has that quality of being a guy you'd want to have a beer with, and he ultimately becomes a leader who transforms the world".[32][failed verification] Cameron offered the role to Matt Damon, with a 10% stake in the film's profits, but Damon turned the film down because of his commitment to the Bourne film series.[33]
    • Worthington also briefly appears as Jake's deceased identical twin, Tommy.
  • Zoe Saldaña as Neytiri te Tskaha Mo'at'ite, the daughter of the leaders of the Omaticaya (the Na'vi clan central to the story). She is attracted to Jake because of his bravery, though frustrated with him for what she sees as his naiveté and stupidity. She serves as Jake's love interest.[34] The character, like all the Na'vi, was created using performance capture, and its visual aspect is entirely computer generated.[35] Saldaña signed on for potential sequels.[36]
  • Stephen Lang as Colonel Miles Quaritch, the head of the mining operation's security detail. Fiercely consistent in his disregard for any life not recognized as human, he has a profound disregard for Pandora's inhabitants that is evident in both his actions and his language. Lang had unsuccessfully auditioned for a role in Cameron's Aliens (1986), but the director remembered Lang and sought him for Avatar.[37] Michael Biehn, who had worked with Cameron in Aliens, The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, was briefly considered for the role. He read the script and watched some of the 3-D footage with Cameron[38] but was ultimately not cast.
  • Michelle Rodriguez as Trudy Chacón, a combat pilot assigned to support the Avatar Program who is sympathetic to the Na'vi. Cameron had wanted to work with Rodriguez since seeing her in Girlfight.[37]
  • Giovanni Ribisi as Parker Selfridge, the corporate administrator for the RDA mining operation.[39][40][41] While he is at first willing to destroy the Na'vi civilization to preserve the company's bottom line, he is reluctant to authorize the attacks on the Na'vi and taint his image, doing so only after Quaritch persuades him that it is necessary and that the attacks will be humane. When the attacks are broadcast to the base, Selfridge displays discomfort at the violence.
  • Joel David Moore as Dr. Norm Spellman, a xenoanthropologist[42] who studies plant and animal life as part of the Avatar Program.[43] He arrives on Pandora at the same time as Jake and operates an avatar. Although he is expected to lead the diplomatic contact with the Na'vi, it turns out that Jake has the personality better suited to win the natives' respect.
    • Moore also portrays Spellman's Na'vi avatar.
  • CCH Pounder as Mo'at, the Omaticaya's spiritual leader, Neytiri's mother, and consort to clan leader Eytukan.[44]
  • Wes Studi as Eytukan te Tskaha Kamun'itan, the Omaticaya's clan leader, Neytiri's father, and Mo'at's mate.
  • Laz Alonso as Tsu'tey te Rongola Atey'itan, the finest warrior of the Omaticaya. He is heir to the chieftainship of the tribe. At the beginning of the film's story, he is betrothed to Neytiri.
  • Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Grace Augustine, an exobiologist and head of the Avatar Program. She is also Sully's mentor and an advocate of peaceful relations with the Na'vi, having set up a school to teach them English.[45]
    • Weaver also portrays Grace's Na'vi avatar.
  • Dileep Rao as Dr. Max Patel, a scientist who works in the Avatar Program and comes to support Jake's rebellion against the RDA[46]
  • Matt Gerald as Corporal Lyle Wainfleet, a human mercenary who works for the RDA as Quaritch's right-hand man.

Additionally, Alicia Vela-Bailey appears, uncredited, as Ikeyni, the leader of the Tayrangi clan, Saeyla, one of the young hunters who accompany Jake during his Iknimaya and a harassed blonde woman in a bar that Jake defends. Vela-Bailey served as the stunt double for Zoe Saldana and would later portray Zdinarsk in Avatar: The Way of Water. Terry Notary, who performed stunts as well, plays the Banshees via motion capture.

Production

Origins

Director/writer and producer James Cameron in December 2009 on Hollywood Walk of Fame.
In 1994,[12] director James Cameron wrote an 80-page treatment for Avatar, drawing inspiration from "every single science fiction book" he had read in his childhood as well as from adventure novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. Rider Haggard.[11] Parts of the movie also came to him in a dream when he was 19 years old. He dreamed about a bioluminescent forest with fiber-optic trees, fan lizards, a river with bioluminescent particles and a purple moss that would lit up when someone stepped on it. When he woke up he made a drawing of the scene and later used it in the movie.[47] In August 1996, Cameron announced that after completing Titanic, he would film Avatar, which would make use of synthetic, or computer-generated, actors.[14] The project would cost $100 million and involve at least six actors in leading roles "who appear to be real but do not exist in the physical world".[48] Visual effects house Digital Domain, with whom Cameron has a partnership, joined the project, which was supposed to begin production in mid-1997 for a 1999 release.[13] However, Cameron felt that the technology had not caught up with the story and vision that he intended to tell. He decided to concentrate on making documentaries and refining the technology for the next few years. It was revealed in a Bloomberg BusinessWeek cover story that 20th Century Fox had fronted $10 million to Cameron to film a proof-of-concept clip for Avatar, which he showed to Fox executives in October 2005.[49]
In February 2006, Cameron revealed that his film Project 880 was "a retooled version of Avatar", a film that he had tried to make years earlier,[50] citing the technological advances in the creation of the computer-generated characters Gollum, King Kong, and Davy Jones.[11] Cameron had chosen Avatar over his project Battle Angel after completing a five-day camera test in the previous year.[51]

Development

From January to April 2006, Cameron worked on the script and developed a culture for the film's aliens, the Na'vi. Their language was created by Paul Frommer, a linguist at USC.[11] The Na'vi language has a lexicon of about 1000 words, with some 30 added by Cameron. The tongue's phonemes include ejective consonants (such as the "kx" in "skxawng") that are found in Amharic, and the initial "ng" that Cameron may have taken from Te Reo Māori.[16] Actress Sigourney Weaver and the film's set designers met with Jodie S. Holt, professor of plant physiology at University of California, Riverside, to learn about the methods used by botanists to study and sample plants, and to discuss ways to explain the communication between Pandora's organisms depicted in the film.[52]
From 2005 to 2007, Cameron worked with a handful of designers, including famed fantasy illustrator Wayne Barlowe and renowned concept artist Jordu Schell, to shape the design of the Na'vi with paintings and physical sculptures when Cameron felt that 3-D brush renderings were not capturing his vision,[53] often working together in the kitchen of Cameron's Malibu home.[54] In July 2006, Cameron announced that he would film Avatar for a mid-2008 release and planned to begin principal photography with an established cast by February 2007.[55] The following August, the visual effects studio Weta Digital signed on to help Cameron produce Avatar.[56] Stan Winston, who had collaborated with Cameron in the past, joined Avatar to help with the film's designs.[57] Production design for the film took several years. The film had two different production designers, and two separate art departments, one of which focused on the flora and fauna of Pandora, and another that created human machines and human factors.[58] In September 2006, Cameron was announced to be using his own Reality Camera System to film in 3-D. The system would use two high-definition cameras in a single camera body to create depth perception.[59]
While these preparations were underway, Fox kept wavering in its commitment to Avatar because of its painful experience with cost overruns and delays on Cameron's previous picture, Titanic. During the production of Titanic, Cameron rewrote the script to streamline the plot by combining several characters' roles and offered to cut his fee if the film were a commercial disappointment.[49] Cameron installed a traffic light with the amber signal lit outside of co-producer Jon Landau's office to represent the film's uncertain future.[49] In mid-2006, Fox told Cameron "in no uncertain terms that they were passing on this film," so he began shopping it around to other studios and approached Walt Disney Studios, showing his proof of concept to then chairman Dick Cook.[49] However, when Disney attempted to take over, Fox exercised its right of first refusal.[49] In October 2006, Fox finally agreed to commit to making Avatar after Ingenious Media agreed to back the film, which reduced Fox's financial exposure to less than half of the film's official $237 million budget.[49] After Fox accepted Avatar, one skeptical Fox executive shook his head and told Cameron and Landau, "I don't know if we're crazier for letting you do this, or if you're crazier for thinking you can do this ..."[60]
External audioJames Cameron interviewed by F. X. Feeney on writing Avatar. Interview[61]
In December 2006, Cameron described Avatar as "a futuristic tale set on a planet 200 years hence ... an old-fashioned jungle adventure with an environmental conscience [that] aspires to a mythic level of storytelling".[62] The January 2007 press release described the film as "an emotional journey of redemption and revolution" and said the story is of "a wounded former Marine, thrust unwillingly into an effort to settle and exploit an exotic planet rich in biodiversity, who eventually crosses over to lead the indigenous race in a battle for survival". The story would be of an entire world complete with an ecosystem of phantasmagorical plants and creatures, and native people with a rich culture and language.[36]
Estimates put the cost of the film at about $280–310 million to produce and an estimated $150 million for marketing, noting that about $30 million in tax credits would lessen the financial impact on the studio and its financiers.[17][18][19] A studio spokesperson said that the budget was "$237 million, with $150 million for promotion, end of story."[4]

Filming

Principal photography for Avatar began in April 2007 in Los Angeles and Wellington. Cameron described the film as a hybrid with a full live-action shoot in combination with computer-generated characters and live environments. "Ideally at the end of the day the audience has no idea which they're looking at," Cameron said. The director indicated that he had already worked four months on nonprincipal scenes for the film.[63] The live action was shot with a modified version of the proprietary digital 3-D Fusion Camera System, developed by Cameron and Vince Pace.[64] In January 2007, Fox had announced that 3-D filming for Avatar would be done at 24 frames per second despite Cameron's strong opinion that a 3-D film requires higher frame rate to make strobing less noticeable.[65] According to Cameron, the film is composed of 60% computer-generated elements and 40% live action, as well as traditional miniatures.[66]
Motion-capture photography lasted 31 days at the Hughes Aircraft stage in Playa Vista in Los Angeles.[51][67] Live action photography began in October 2007 at Stone Street Studios in Wellington and was scheduled to last 31 days.[68] More than a thousand people worked on the production.[67] In preparation of the filming sequences, all of the actors underwent professional training specific to their characters such as archery, horseback riding, firearm use, and hand-to-hand combat. They received language and dialect training in the Na'vi language created for the film.[69] Before shooting the film, Cameron also sent the cast to the Hawaiian tropical rainforests[70] to get a feel for a rainforest setting before shooting on the soundstage.[69]
During filming, Cameron made use of his virtual camera system, a new way of directing motion-capture filmmaking. The system shows the actors' virtual counterparts in their digital surroundings in real time, allowing the director to adjust and direct scenes just as if shooting live action. According to Cameron, "It's like a big, powerful game engine. If I want to fly through space, or change my perspective, I can. I can turn the whole scene into a living miniature and go through it on a 50 to 1 scale."[71] Using conventional techniques, the complete virtual world cannot be seen until the motion-capture of the actors is complete. Cameron said this process does not diminish the value or importance of acting. On the contrary, because there is no need for repeated camera and lighting setups, costume fittings and make-up touch-ups, scenes do not need to be interrupted repeatedly.[72] Cameron described the system as a "form of pure creation where if you want to move a tree or a mountain or the sky or change the time of day, you have complete control over the elements".[73]
Cameron gave fellow directors Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson a chance to test the new technology.[62] Spielberg said, "I like to think of it as digital makeup, not augmented animation ... Motion capture brings the director back to a kind of intimacy that actors and directors only know when they're working in live theater."[72] Spielberg and George Lucas were also able to visit the set to watch Cameron direct with the equipment.[74]
To film the shots where CGI interacts with live action, a unique camera referred to as a "simulcam" was used, a merger of the 3-D fusion camera and the virtual camera systems. While filming live action in real time with the simulcam, the CGI images captured with the virtual camera or designed from scratch, are superimposed over the live action images as in augmented reality and shown on a small monitor, making it possible for the director to instruct the actors how to relate to the virtual material in the scene.[69]
Due to Cameron's personal convictions about climate change, he allowed only plant-based (vegan) food to be served on set.[75]


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