Opening scene: a camera sweeps high across the treeline of a lush, green world. Intercut is a sequence of images of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a crippled war veteran and former Marine, waking up in a giant spaceship on its way to Pandora, a lush Earth-like moon orbiting a blueish Jupiter-like planet. He is one of a large number of passengers, all waking up after almost six years of cryosleep en route to Pandora. Drifting out of his sleeping pod in zero G he's comforted by the ship's staff. He opens his locker marked SULLY T. Then, through voice-over and flashback with both hospital and military officials, we learn that Jake has a deceased twin brother -- Tom, a scientist -- who was to be part of a highest-level program overseen by corporate and military strategists. Because Jake and his brother are an exact genetic match, he was presented with a unique opportunity: take over his brother's contract with a corporate-military entity and travel light years away to an outpost on the previously glimpsed world, Pandora. Acknowledging the notions of "being free" and having a "fresh start," Jake agrees to the deal as his brother's body is cremated.
Now being transported from the spaceship to Pandora via a shuttle, Jake is one of many soldiers and civilian personnel about to touch down on Pandora, actually a moon of the planet of Polyphemus, some 4.3 light years from Earth. We catch views of the base and its construction as Jake ponders his new role. The passengers are all instructed to wear a full-face breathing mask since the atmosphere of the planet will not support human life for long. While the other passengers disembark and take their first steps onto the base, Jake follows them in his wheelchair. He acknowledges through voice-over that he lost the use of his legs during one of his tours of duty on Earth, and while a spine can be fixed, that "takes money," which is tough to come by in the present economy.
Jake goes immediately to a military briefing where Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) is addressing the assembled soldiers. He reminds them they're "not in Kansas any more," and he tells them about Pandora's indigenous population, the Na'vi. Quaritch says they are "hard to kill" and practically everything "out there" will try to kill you. And, while it's his job to keep his people alive, he says he will not succeed in this task -- "not with all of you." If they wish to survive, he continues, they will have to follow "Pandora Rules."
Jake goes to a science lab where he meets biologist Norm Spellman (Joel David Moore) and Dr. Max Patel (Dileep Rao), two members of the Avatar Program. As Jake gets his first look at his own avatar, we learn about the program itself.
Humans are unable to breathe Pandora's air, but the Avatar Program enables a human to link with their own avatar, a genetically-bred human-Na'vi hybrid, and function as if they were a Na'vi native. In his avatar body, Jake will be able to walk again and breathe the atmosphere.
Jake and Norm enter the science area just about the time Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), the program's science lead, awakens in her pod and flips open the top. Norm says to Jake he hears she likes "plants better than people." She arises from her pod and converses in Na'vi with Norm. Satisfied with Norm's command of the language, she turns to Jake. She tells him she needs his brother Tom, the PhD who trained 3 years for the Pandora mission, but she doesn't need him, since Jake had had no lab experience or has never been linked to his avatar.
No comments:
Post a Comment