AVATAR Concepts & Controversy : Sex, Smoking & Video Games
With Avatar surpassing the billion dollar mark in only 17 days, is it any wonder that there is still plenty to talk about for James Cameron's epic blockbuster?!
There's been some controversy a brewing, the possibility of a deleted Na'vi sex scene appearing on the DVD, some cool early concepts that have surfaced, and sites that teach you how to speak the language created for the Na'vi below.
The film has come under some scrutiny for the choice to have Sigourney Weaver's character smoke in the film. Scenesmoking.org has slapped Avatar with a 'black lung' rating, while the director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education sees Weaver’s character Grace as a pro-smoking icon. The accusation is pretty silly, even with my tobacco sensitive nose I don't see it or care. (Besides, Stephen Lang's Quaritch could have been made a more proper Marlboro Man.)
But it's Cameron's spin on the subject that has people raising their eyebrows. In response to the accusations, Cameron explained of the character:
She’s rude, she swears, she drinks, she smokes. Also, from a character perspective, we were showing that Grace doesn’t care about her human body, only her avatar body, which again is a negative comment about people in our real world living too much in their avatars, meaning online and in video games.
If he threw some zombies and werewolves in there it would have made for a better explanation. Don't drag video games into the tobacco debate, they were minding their own business. If anything stands as a more direct example of people's willingness to put more effort into their video game alter ego's than their own human bodies, it's South Park's "World of Warcraft" episode. But how would that analogy apply to Jake Sully's disabled human body? Cameron did offer up a better explanation though, saying:
If it’s O.K. for people to lie, cheat, steal and kill in PG-13 movies, why impose an inconsistent morality when it comes to smoking?
He could have also easily went with, "Talk to the hand, cuz a billion dollars ain't listening."
If you were all about the literal jungle fever, news also comes that a deleted sex scene may make it onto DVD. (Kinda Spoilerish)
Cameron revealed in a group interview that the sex scene that involved Zoe Saldana's Neytiri and the Jake Sully avatar was in an early cut of the film, but they had to take it out. So, "if you want to see how they have sex," it will be "something for the special edition DVD."
You probably guessed that the organic USB tendrils have something to do with the two bodies becoming one. Saldana explained in full detail of the filming process:
If you sync to your banshee and you’re syncing to a tree, why not sync into a person? I almost feel like you’ll have the most amazing orgasm, I guess. It was a very funny scene to shoot because there were so many technical things that sometimes you have to keep in mind that paying attention to all those might disrupt the fluidity of how a scene is supposed to take place. And because Jim was shooting for a PG-13 rating, we couldn’t move in certain directions. The motion would look a little too past the PG-13 rating standards. So it was really funny for Sam and me. We had a lot of giggles there.
So if you're looking to seduce some natives, you'll need to learn the native tonngue. You can head over to LearnNavi.org, or visit the wiki explaining some of the intricacies of the invented language.
Lastly, some interesting concept art has surfaced from an artist named Patton. He took the Sam Winston designed creatures and had to build the digital models. The side by side mo-cap comparisons are a very interesting look at the early stages of the eventually flawless CG.
For the full gallery Click Here.