I always thought that the best things about Cameron's films are the technology and the rich and detailed settings. As for the plot, they are often weak or even tasteless. Originally, the plots of commercial films are all clichés, and the key is how to package them. What's so good about a poor boy falling in love with a rich daughter? But if it happened on a super ship, it was different. What's so good about a single-line chase and rescue story? But between the machine killer and the future human leader, the pattern is naturally different. In this sense, technology is important, but if there is no setting, then technology can not do anything. "The Terminator" is getting more and more ugly, because although the technology has improved, the setting of "cross-time and space robots chasing and killing human leaders" is no longer new, and the successor is not imaginative, and will only be drawn in Cameron. For the sake of circling around in the next circle.
In a sense, Cameron is simply a "setting control", and "Avatar" is the "good fruit" caused by the explosion of his "setting addiction". If it hadn't set so many species, landforms, and astronomical phenomena for Pandora this time, that 400 million US dollars in astronomical production funding would have been set, "Heavenly God" would have "descended" as early as ten years ago. I don't know about the setting of astronomical phenomena, animals and plants, but I can talk about Neville culture.
Judging from the film, the Na'vi are three meters tall and about the same size as the Earthlings. But beware, they only have four fingers and toes, compared to five in human avatars. They live in a natural environment similar to a tropical rainforest, hunt for a living, and mainly domesticate horses and banshees. Although the film did not show it, since living in such a rich natural environment, collection should also be one of its main sources of income.
The social organization of the Na'vi people is a tribe. The population size is calculated according to the last "fifteen tribes and two thousand warriors". The population of a tribe should be between two or three hundred people, which is roughly in line with the number of people in the meeting scene in the film.
The Ne'wi society practiced monogamy, property ownership, marriage customs, and residence system were unknown. When a man becomes an adult, he will hold a rite of passage, and the priestess will smear the body with white clay. Natalie had a hole under her right ear, but not her left, presumably some sort of earring-like decoration.
The military and political power of the Na'vi is in the hands of the chief, and the chief's wife is the religious head. The weapons of the Na'vi are spears, bows, and ropes tied to stones (used to trip prey and tie up banshees), and the bows are longbows as tall as a person (considering the height of the Na'vi, the power should be quite amazing, So the back can shoot through the glass of the Scorpion attack aircraft). The Na'vi people have a special way of shooting arrows. Most people push the bow with the right hand and use the left hand to shoot the arrow, and they use the two fingers in the middle of the food to pull the arrow and pull the string, with the palm facing out. I have never seen such a shot.
In the film, the Na'vi's sword is made of wood, and the arrow seems to be made of wood, which shows that they have not yet mastered the iron smelting technology. Combined with Na'Tali's fear of fire, the Na'vi probably did not understand the Stone Age of using fire. There are many glowing plants in the rainforest, which may be one of the reasons why the Na'vi do not need fire so much.
The religion of the Na'vi seems to be some kind of monotheism, and Eva may be a Personality God whom people communicate with through the tree of gods. The ceremony is a gathering to pray. The Na'vi people believe that the energy of life in the world is borrowed, and people just return to Eva after death, so they should also treat their prey with gratitude (this is the custom of the North American Indians).
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and so on, it can be described as meticulous. Careful audiences can pay attention to the vocabulary of the Na'vi language. The pronunciation of Na'Tali's words to appease the dead poisonous wolf is the same as her words to stop the heavy armored horse, which may mean "rest in peace".
I have no doubt that there are anthropologists involved in this film, otherwise Cameron alone would not be able to make up such a coherent cultural background anyway. And I can probably guess that the blueprint of the Na'vi culture is mostly the culture of the American Indians, which can be seen from the development level of artifacts, religious concepts and clothing.
What regrets I have to say about the setting of the Na'vi culture is that the film spends too much time in the mountains and waters, and does not explain clearly the social organization and external communication of the Na'vi people. In fact, if we talk about it, the final battle will be more realistic. However, this is already nitpicking. Even in "historical films" in China, it is difficult to find such detailed settings.
Does this setting work? very effective! It directly gives the audience a vivid sense of reality, and even a "detail control" like me enjoys it!
Does this setup cost money? Don't spend money! Compared with the billions of dollars invested in computer special effects, the investment of a few consultants is simply a drop in the bucket. But on the other hand, this kind of knowledge is the most expensive! Because it is not something that a certain movie or a certain literary and artistic work says it can have, it depends on the accumulation of knowledge in the entire society - if intellectuals do not have this knowledge, where can you find "settings"?
Behind these great settings of Cameron, relying on a solid building of knowledge in developed countries.
The gap between us and foreign movies is so big! What's interesting is that most Chinese filmmakers still have the myth that they are not improving, and think that we are inferior to our foreign counterparts mainly because of money and technology...
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