Last weekend I went for the second time to watch Avatar 3D, the movie of the year 2010, by the movie critics… Now, why the movie of the year? My friends make me comments always oriented to the “bad argument” of it, “the story is too lineal” or “the story is too childish”… May be you’re interested in knowing why then I do agree with the critics and why do I think that Avatar means to me one of the most important movies of the last times.
It is not the story but what it lays behind, which makes Avatar a transcendental movie, a Science Fiction classic of our days. A story to be expanded and to stay in western culture for years to come. In none of this does the story take part, that love and war story, almost a copy of the movie “The mission”, metaphor of the Spanish (and English) acculturation to the natives of America goes almost unnoticed in contrast with the pseudo-scientific background that lays behind.
3d Experience
Without knowing where to start, I will go for the superficial first, then we can undergo scientific and philosophic analysis. The experience of the 3d cinema is one of the most gratifying of my live. A few days ago, while reading an article about the implications of quantum theories in computers (quantum computing), I stumbled upon the technological explanation that makes 3d cinema possible. Turns out that Avatar brings us a cinema revolution, something that has been tried for decades without success, a real 3d experience, in which the elements of the movie float on the room.
Two polarized light projectors (i.e. which emit photons that are magnetically charge with distinct polarizations) emit 2 different images. The movie is recorded with special cameras, specially designed to imitate the human eye. The lens move and change angle just like our eyes to capture the action. This produces two versions of the action, slightly different from one another. When looking at the screen without glasses, we can see how the closest objects appear to be double and, in general, there is a slight discrepancy between things, confuse lines and even blurred entities hard to understand.
When wearing the filter glasses (each lens filters one type of photon) the magic happens. Each type of light going exclusively to one eye, the characters come to life in a way never seen before, detaching from the plane, almost reaching us with their incredible reality. Colors shine with a life proper of nature itself and surprise us leaving us in a state of awe.
Add this to the best sound effects that I’ve ever heard in a movie theater, impressive special effects parallel with those of Star Trek XI (although much more ubiquitous), plus a more than decent music (almost good, I’d say, which for moments I could actually enjoy very much) and we have, to my understanding, the best cinematographic feature ever experienced.
Gaia
But lets leave superficiality behind and slowly enter into the world of Pandora (that’s how the habitable moon is called in which the history of Avatar takes place).
If there’s little chance of us growing nerves out of our hair that allows us to communicate with other beings (there’s always a bet in telepathy for this), the theory behind which a planet defends itself has thousands of followers in the scientific world of our days. It’s called Gaian Theory (in allusion to Gaia, Greek goddess of earth) and claims that the biosphere of a planet has some type of intercommunication in which information about life conditions is distributed and the agents of life contribute to this condition (either consciously or unconsciously). This theory extrapolates almost always in the hypothesis that every inhabited planet evolve into a collective consciousness (commonly called Gaia in science fiction literature, see “Foundation and Earth”, by Isaac Asimov) in which the minds of the living beings unite like cells in a brain to form a superior consciousness.
This possibility ought not to be discarded so fast, if we read about evidence that lead to the hypothesis of Gaia, we can observe that there probably is a collective unconsciousness in the planet Earth that doesn’t limit to human beings (on the other hand, we ourselves could have been excluded from it). So, facts that suggest that even when the solar energy raised up to a 20% more since life originated, the terrestrial temperature has been kept constant, or that the salinity of the seas is kept at levels well below normal, or that the Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide gasses exist on levels opposed to natural, we have evidence of a planet that, unconsciously at least, fights to keep itself inhabitable. Left to itself, the temperature in the equator of the Earth would make that zone uninhabitable, or much worse, the atmospheric gasses would become poisonous by nature and the salinity of the ocean would make it impossible for any cell to exist and no organism would form in water. But different factors on the terrestrial biosphere make up for the entropy of the universe and keep earth at an inhabitable state. Not to speak of other more aggressive defense mechanisms that we see against different threats, ones that are not scientifically explainable, although they respond to more philosophic or para-scientific metaphors: The more we turn against nature, the more difficult we find our lives to be.
But Gaia doesn’t make sense only in nature. Also in civilization, in the good use of technology, on Internet and the informatics and communications revolution (read: use of information). There too we see on our ways to the complete intermental communication. Roads and highways turn into the arteries and nerves of a global system in which we are part of a big brain, getting ourselves close to a future of cybernetic consciousness. A great planetary cyborg of which we are the neurons.
Avatar joins these two hypothesis and turns Pandora into a mysterious threat-aware being. Many of the story lines that seem childish are based on extensive theories and scientific extrapolation (this is what science fiction is about) which consist on idealizing a planet where evolution has found an optimum state of consciousness, where the trees are part of a biologic highway of information (Internet) and the lower intelligences can “feel” a way of acting that benefits the interests of that ubiquitous being, the conscious planet. The scientific plausibility in this respect is much bigger than what critics are prepared to understand.
Astronomy
To the people’s surprise, the astronomic coherence of Avatar is incomparable. Many of us, which once heard of planets and solar systems, are accustomed to the idea of life originating on other planets. That solar systems have a zone (the goldilock zone), a minimum and maximum distance from the central star (for temperature reasons), in which life is possible, and if there were an earth-like planet there, life can blossom. Carl Sagan estimated that the number of earth-like planets in the life-acceptable zone in the Milky Way went up to the millions.
Today we have learned much more about solar systems in the galaxy, we know that earth-like planets exist, but we also know that Gas Giants are very common, much more common than rocky planets like ours. We also know that the proportion between planets and moons in the galaxy is in the order of 40 to 1 approximately. We have discovered, in fact, Gas Giants orbiting around other stars and in many cases we can infer moons with probabilities for life. More so, we also believe that in planets like Jupiter or Saturn, very cold and far away to be able to sustain life under normal conditions, moons could exist with life bearing environments, for these planets emit large quantities of radiation which acts as a stove in the immense cool of space. Contrary to what many could imagine, the situation of Pandora is about the most common to be found in the universe.
Moons orbiting Gas Giants are more likely ro deevlop life, not only because of their greater number, but also because it is very likely that the planets around with they travel emit large amounts of radiation, facilitating this way the mutations unraveling the ways of evolution. These concepts are relatively new in science, and Avatar takes them to the last word. It positions its imaginary planet around the start Alpha Centauri (the closest star to the Sun and possible the first star to be explored closely by humanity), generating an environment of scientific plausibility only to be compared to the stories of Julio Verne.
Biology
The greatness of the beings in Pandora, with their impressive colorfulness splendor and their fantastic shapes, make many believe this is the most unreliable part of the movie. If it is so, it is simply because it is about the only area in which artistic licenses have been taken: capillo-nervous connections and humanoids of 2 arms and 2 legs (when the rest of the “vertebrates” have 6 limbs) are two of the details which scientific plausibility is low near zero. But here the discrepancies and the fantasy ends (understand fantasy as a genre opposed to science fiction, with regard to presence or absence of a scientific background).
There are two very important para-scientific concepts that are taken into account when designing that world. The first one, the theory, almost impossible to prove, that all life come from the same source. It is an important scientific and philosophical current, one that Carl Sagan supported, the belief that life originated in one spot in the Milky Way. That theory claims that the seeds of life were scattered throughout all the galaxy on millions of comets and asteroids, wandered around for millions of years and finally collided with some planet (or some moon, nowadays it is believed to be much more probable). Bacteria has been seen con comets, in stasis, with probabilities of coming to life on contact with water and oxygen in the proper environment. These bacteria travel for millions of years through time, virtually immutable.
When understanding and supporting this theory, you can infer that, given a common origin, the mutations and the process of natural selection define a similar road of evolution in all cases, with variations depending on the frame in which life develops. It goes for a similar “objective” in most of the cases. It is highly possible that in a moon orbiting a Gas Giant, with great quantities of radiation and low gravity, very varied and big sized life forms, but familiar in some sense, evolve. So, the intelligent beings are humanoids that talk, feel and even develop moral values similar to ours (here we can expect this to be a long shot), while vegetable life and herbivorous and predators also exist, similar to what we find on earth, although much more spectacular in shape due to the higher levels of radiation to which the moon is exposed (evolution goes faster because there are more mutations).
Another interesting concept that we observe in Avatar is that of “beauty inherent to nature”. Either that being because we’ve learn to identify beauty on nature, or because nature “finds” beauty to be practical, it’s common to think in science that nature tends to evolve into certain symmetric shapes (we find beauty on symmetry). Animals and plants’ beautiful design on Avatar aren’t random, the great color showoff and exotic shapes that somehow always seem beautiful to us. The scientific consultants in Avatar worked very hard in that subject, looking into anatomy books, copying nature on Earth and re-inventing life in a way never before seen on movie. This means another revolutionary aspect brought to us by this science fiction movie: The best designed alien life ever shown.
Conclusion
At the time of reviewing this article I see that I’m missing hundreds of concepts to develop. Pandora’s geology, the cultural metaphors, human technology, the extrapolation of social behavior, the Matrix and apparent realities concept (which is a technological feedback from the philosophical current of the caves of Plato, much better developed in the Matrix trilogy) and many other concepts. Avatar is, according to its director, a decades long project, and certainly seems so if we look at the very complex system in with a relatively simple story is developed. My verdict: Anyone that misses this movie in 3D, is missing an unique moment in human culture and cinema history. Go watch it!
Tags: Avatar, Gaia, Science, Science Fiction, Technology