James Cameron’s Avatar Films: Beyond the Visuals

A deeper dive into the world of Pandora and the brilliant minds behind it.

By: Meyou 6I

*This article contains spoilers for Avatar (2009) and Avatar: The Way of Water (2022).*

In 1973, a 19-year-old college student named James Cameron had a dream about a majestic, bioluminescent forest. Upon waking up, he instantly started sketching his dream onto a piece of paper. 36 years later, that drawing would become a reality with the release of Avatar (2009), where viewers would travel into the enchanted world of Pandora.

The movie soon became a hit, earning the spot of highest grossing movie of all time, where it still stands to this day. But why did Cameron decide to create this groundbreaking movie? What else inspired it? How did Cameron manage to portray such compelling visual effects? These are just some of the questions that astounded people had after watching Avatar.

Avatar follows a paraplegic former U.S. marine named Jake Sully who is recruited to a habitable moon called Pandora, home to a human-like species called the Navi. Jake has access to an Avatar (Navi body), which he uses to join a tribe of the Navi. He falls in love with a Navi woman and must defend the clan against human colonizers (specifically, the company called the RDA) who wish to mine the moon for valuable metals.

Throughout the film, wondrous creatures and landscapes are shown, all thanks to the vivid imagination of James Cameron. Growing up in Ontario, Canada, Cameron often immersed himself in the picturesque wilderness around him, as well as going on frequent scuba diving trips, during which Cameron would marvel at the multicolored sea life. When developing the Avatar films, specifically Avatar: The Way of Water, Cameron would incorporate his marine life sightings into Pandora.

He later stated in an interview on the official Avatar YouTube channel: “Those creatures got incorporated into some of the plants and animals in Pandora- I just made them really big, as opposed to those tiny ones you would see in a reef.” He also created the forests based on his own memories: “Pretty much all of the time I spent in a forest.”

James Cameron used all of his spectacular experiences with nature to create the magnificent world that we know and love, but he was also fueled by vengeance. He had grown to love and appreciate nature and had a lot of sympathy towards native and indigenous people. When he found out about the tyrannical companies which exploit, scam, and pollute small countries as well as cause major global deforestation, he was livid.

From companies taking advantage of nations to natives being assaulted and killed, James Cameron felt a sense of injustice surrounding everything. He portrayed the vile acts of colonization around him in Avatar with a company: The RDA. From causing major deforestation on Pandora, to bombing and murdering millions of Navi, we can see that alike the real-life companies on Earth, the RDA will not hesitate to ruthlessly obliterate anything that gets in the way of their fortune, including destroying sacred sites and even slaughtering innocent Navi children. Some parts of the Navi are inspired by indigenous tribes worldwide, and similarly to the Navi, their unique culture spans over centuries and must be preserved for the next generation.

Cameron also portrays a dystopian, overpopulated depiction of Earth in Avatar. When praying to the goddess Eywa, Jake states: “See, the world we come from…there’s no green there. They killed their mother, and they’re gonna do the same here.”

There is no doubt that James Cameron exerted himself to put forth his dream, spending more than 237 million US dollars on the production alone, and even offered to forgo his director’s fee if the movie failed. He made the risky investment into advanced motion capture technology which brought the Navi to life. His formidable dedication paid off, as the movie soon hit 2.923 billion dollars in the global box office.

After watching the phenomenal masterpiece that is Avatar, many people yearned to be part of the world that Cameron was adamant to create, some even suffering from P.A.D.S. (Post Avatar Depression Syndrome) after believing that our world could never be like Pandora. In reality, it is all up to us. We depend on the Earth and the Earth depends on us. It is our responsibility if we want to make our world just like Pandora.