Headscratchers / Avatar: The Way of Water

Orbital Bombardment

• Given that the RDA has massively upped its game in terms of security investment and now have a much more important mission to achieve, why aren’t they deploying Orbital Bombardment? That’s one weapon they know for an absolute fact that the Navi do not have even the potential to counter in any way. Just straight up dropping a couple of Rods from God on their heads would hard counter basically anything they could do and probably scare them off from active conflict with the RDA.
  • Honestly, this will never make sense. The problem is that this whole scenario is sort of a metaphor for Indians vs. Settlers, Recycled In Space. But back in the day muskets weren't actually better than bows, so it was possible for the two sides to fight on pretty even terms. (The Indians were really crushed by the Settlers' new diseases, not by their weaponry.) But when you try to tell the same story in space, and the Settlers have interstellar travel but the natives are still using bows and arrows, it's obvious that this is a Curb-Stomp Battle waiting to happen. The writers tried to even it out by making the Navi very tall and strong and giving them flying mounts and stuff, but they've got nothing that could plausibly deal with orbital bombardment.
    • Clarification: muskets were WAY better than bows in both penetrating ability (bow arrow, unless shot from very short range, or from very powerful composite bow, could be easily stopped by thick cloth), expenditure of stamina (musket used the stored power of powder deflagation; bow used the muscle power of shooter) and most importantly, training simplicity (it took years to train to use bow efficiently; it took just mere weeks to train militia to use musket efficiently). The reason why Indians were "crushed" was mostly because they were incapable of forming more than situational alliances, and eagerly allied with settlers against each other.
    • Bows are more accurate than muskets and reload faster. And roughly 80-90% of Native Americans died of disease, not from any sort of armed conflict.
    • Bows are more accurate only in hands of highly trained archer (and even then only at small distances). The absolute majority of combat archery was always the area shooting - i.e. sending arrows over the enemy formation, hoping that some would hit. In the hands of hastily trained soldier, musket is much more accurate than bow, since the trajectory of the bullets is more flat and bullets are far less prone to wind deflection.
  • The 2 Avatar films do give a few reasons why the RDA don't perform Orbital Bombardment. The first is the PR. Activists and Governments on Earth aren't exactly cool with the RDA slaughtering the Na'vi. In the first movie, Parker was hesitant in giving Quaritch the go ahead and Quaritch had to promise they'd use non-lethal means with tear gas to avoid doing too much harm. The second are the resources. Orbital Bombardment would also destroy the Unobtainium and natural resources the people of Earth want. The third are how spread out the Na'vi are. The Na'vi don't just concentrate in a single position. And the magnetic fields of Pandora disrupt any specific navigation technology. So it's not exactly easy to know where to target said bombardment or you'd have to bombard lots of the area.
    • Apparently they can navigate rocketships down to the surface of Pandora; presumably they could use that same strategy to navigate a bomb into the Hallelujah Mountains where Jake's people are hiding out. And there's no way that one bomb could blow up all the Unobtanium they're mining. In the first movie the biggest vein of Unobtanium was below Home Tree, which the humans have since claimed for themselves. The Mountains are in a different location.
    • It's a lot easier to navigate to "a point on the surface" than "this specific point the enemy has chosen precisely because it is difficult to navigate to." The Hallelujah Mountains are explicitly described as being a navigational hazard because of all the Unobtanium, which is why Jake set up his resistance base there in this film, and why he elected to make it the site of the final battle in the first film. The landing spot for the human ship in this film was likely chosen as one of the easiest places to land, with no high concentrations of Unobtanium nearby to mess with instruments and little in the way of other navigational obstacles. There is a world of difference between landing a beachhead colony ship and carrying out an orbital strike on an enemy position.
  • Also they want the biosphere at least marginally intact. Dropping tungsten rods would be less destructive then a nuke but tossing that much dust into the air is going to cause serious problems.
    • Plenty of nukes have been detonated on Earth without causing serious large-scale problems, and there's no reason to think that Pandora is any more vulnerable than Earth. The dust that gets into the air is just going to fall back down again.
    • 1) Nuclear winter is a worry on earth as well 2) Pandora is a moon of a gas giant, even if the surface is habitable messing too much with the atmosphere could let much harder radiation in.
  • Supplementary material to the first film states explicitly that the RDA, as a non-governmental entity, has been banned access to nuclear weaponry. It follows that there might be similar restrictions on them being allowed the use of other weapons of mass destruction, even if they're not technically nukes. Using the ISV Weaponized Exhaust might well be the closest they're allowed to actually get to any WMD use, orbitally-dropped or otherwise. (Assuming, of course, that the RDA's status as humanity's salvation from a dying Earth won't afford them more "privileges" in the future...)
    • Given the producer has apparently stated that the fourth movie will focus on a dying Earth instead of Pandora, they want the biosphere intact as much as possible. They went from wanting resources in the first movie to now stating in the second they're here to establish a full on settlement... Although yes they must contrive a way for the Na'vi to be able to not get curbstomped.

Norm's Avatar

• How is Norm’s Avatar still around? I distinctly remember him taking a bullet during the Battle of the Tree of Souls and apparently dying, hence why he was hyperventilating and clutching his heart when he de-linked. So, why is it still alive for him to drive, especially since they don’t seem to have the facilities to just grow a new Avatar for him?
  • IIRC he got nailed in the shoulder - enough trauma to cut off his link, but not enough to kill or cripple the Avatar.

Omaticaya leadership

• So everybody's okay with Jake and Neytiri just quitting and flying off, but then presumably coming back for Part 3? After the last two olo'eyktans - one of which died giving Jake the job - one'd think the Omaticaya would want a little more stability.
  • Maybe, but it would be more devastating for the Na’vi to have Toruk Makto die instead of going into hiding. Moreover, what’s to say Jake isn’t helping? He brings along various small computers and other tech with him when his family left the Omaticaya. It’s possible that he’s using them to provide tactical advice and strategies to the resistance while his family is in hiding.

Ikran bonding

• Not getting the whole "bonding" thing. The first movie made a pretty big deal about the unique once-in-a-life relationship between an ikran and their hunter (the latter having to spend their entire adolescence getting ready to be chosen), and now Jake, Neytiri and even Quaritch are just picking out and swapping mounts like trading cards?
  • It’s never stated that a person only has one ikran/banshee for their entire life. It’s an intimate bond, to be sure, but it doesn’t seem to be an irreplaceable one. After all, Neytiri’s ikran, Seze, died in the last movie, but she apparently bonded to a new one in the time since. Plus, in the first movie, the Na’vi used other mounts besides their ikran all the time, like the direhorses and when Neytiri rode that thanator into battle against Quaritch.
    • Yes and no - for one, it's mentioned that pa'li and elu aren't picky about their riders, but ikran are. Plus, when Jake needed months of training just to be worthy of climbing up the mountains, one'd at least figure the Recoms wouldn't be able to do the same thing in one day... and couldn't Eywa simply deny them tsaheylu altogether? Jake was "chosen" by her. Quaritch wasn't.
    • Look at Eywa as the World Wide Web, and tsaheylu between an ikran and a Na'vi as a simple LAN connection between two computers. Eywa can't stop that direct connection, nor is it likely she can even perceive it, unless the ikran were to in turn link up to a Tree of Souls or other hub to Eywa. On the other hand, if Quaritch or another Recomb were to attempt communion with a Tree of Souls, it would probably end nastily for them.
    • It's hinted in interviews that Ewya has been subtly manipulating Quaritch the whole time. It's possible that, given Quaritch's developing empathy for Spider, Ewya wants him to realize he was on the wrong side the whole time.

Tulkuns

• So were RDA and Scoresby hunting for tulkuns in the background of the last movie? Or is this a recent discovery?
  • It could be a recent discovery, since there's a one year time skip between the prologue and Sully's attack on the RDA train. At that time, it was enough for the RDA to establish an entire base of operations/permanent colony on Pandora, so it's likely that Captain Scoresby and his crew are active around this time, too.
• How, exactly, did they discover that the whale brains could stop aging?
  • For that matter, why don't they just clone the whales or lab-grow whale brain tissue in test tubes or something? We know the RDA is absolutely loaded with cash, one would think it would be more practical.
    • Same reason why they clear-cut the forest for unobtanium instead of just mining other moons or coming up with a synthetic substitute on Earth - it's cheaper, and they don't care about the collateral damage.
    • Cameron did a Q&A session after a screening of the movie, and among the things he mentioned was that there actually is a yet-to-be-revealed plot reason for why the Amrita can't be synthetized.
• How do the tulkuns mate or even bond with Ewya? Their queues are way in the back of their throats, and Lo'ak has to swim down into Payakan's throat to reach his queue. Tulkuns cannot reach one another.
  • Tulkun also have a pair of large queues on the head, like most Pandoran wildlife, which they probably use to connect to each other and the Spirit Tree. The throat-queue must be for Na’Vi/Tulkun connections specifically. Also, friendly reminder that linking queues is not required for mating, and has nothing to do with the biological act, merely the emotional component.

Brain uploading

• They download memories, so why not just clone yourself and create backup copies of your memories to download into your much younger clone after death?
  • Because that wouldn’t really be the same person. The original consciousness and body can still die, and all that downloading memories does is take a blank mind and copy it to them. “You” as an individual would still die. It’s just now someone else very similar to you will still be around. Recombinant Quaritch himself even says he's not the same person as the original Quaritch.
  • Without seeing more about how things are on Earth, we can really only speculate, but a few obvious problems crop up right away. The first, as mentioned above, is that it isn't really Resurrective Immortality, just creating a biological and mental copy of you. While some might shrug and say "close enough for jazz," others would be uninterested because they know they're still going to die, they'll just have someone else practically but not exactly identical to take over their life. Some might even be deeply offended at the idea of a "copy" slipping into their life, taking all their stuff, sleeping with their spouse, and so on. Another potential factor is cost: this technology might be available, but only if you can afford it, which most probably can't. Another might be legality: the technology might be heavily restricted or even illegal, and the RDA either has a special dispensation, the laws of Earth don't apply on Pandora, or it's an illegal off-book project the company is undertaking.
• Why does RDA still use human troops? We see in the movie that they can back up the memories of a human and plant it into a Na’vi body. Na’vi are shown to be on average much stronger and more nimble than humans. So why not just take the backed-up brain of an experienced soldier, copy it a bunch of times and plant it into Na’vi bodies? Then they’d have themselves a loyal army of cat-person super soldiers.
  • Cost is the most likely reason, given that the plot of the first movie hinged on the RDA not wanting to waste the investment of creating an Avatar for Tommy which is why Jake was brought to Pandora in the first place.
    • The fact that they seem to be just as killable as the humans doesn't help either. Come to think of it, why bother spending all that money on Recoms in the first place when most of them are only going to catch an arrow in the chest on Day One?
    • The RDA seems to have looked at the story of Jake Sully and drawn exactly the wrong conclusions. Jake, a human Marine in a Na'vi body, became a formiddable foe to SEC-OPS because he was able to combine human training and technology with the ability to interface with Pandora's wildlife. Surely, then, a whole squad of elite Marines with Na'vi bodies would be able to perform even better? They clearly failed to realize that for all his combat skills, Jake was nearly mauled by wildlife and almost executed by Neytiri on his very first day in the jungle. It was only after the native Na'vi accepted him, adopted him and trained him that he lived up to the full potential of an Avatar. The Recomb squad assume their elite human training will be enough to master Pandora and its inhabitants, and get slaughtered for it.
• What's the whole point of an anti-aging drug, if humans have orders of magnitude better technology - i.e. avatars and recombinants? By using them, not merely stopping aging (which is kinda not very good for those who already old) could be achieved, but full body replacement for the young & healthy, and even revival of the dead is possible and practical. And all this without any stepping on Na'vi tails at all.
  • Creating Recombinants - or, presumably, fully human clones into which a persona can be downloaded - is a feasable if expensive undertaking for the RDA, an absolutely titanic MegaCorp, but not for the average consumer. Amrita and the myriad of pharmaceutical and beauty products that could be derived from it, on the other hand, can be packaged and marketed and sold to the public at large.
  • Because the Avatars and Recombinants are still only clones with copies of memories and not the original person who will still be dead and thus uninterested.
  • And as far as the RDA is concerned, Avatars and brain scans are expensive - killing a tulkun is apparently cheaper.
  • If brain data copying & loading is fast enough, a false advertisement campaign for "resurrection" is highly plausible. So a customer preorders a body first; when it's mature, a memory scan is performed and the customer is put into an induced coma for "soul transfer" (being actually euthanized later while recombinant awakes).
  • There might also be legal restrictions on human clones, especially if the original is still alive. Are they the same person with an interrupted continuity of consciousness or a separate individual? The mess of inheritance laws, legal personhood, and the unfortunate fact that a human being is entitled to certain rights means that humanity isn't ready to go that far yet. Avatars and Recombinants, non-humans manufactured by the RDA and made for their employees, dodges that quandary.

Babies in Cryo

• Just a minor one but how come babies can't go into cryotubes, because Spider was only an infant when the humans left at the end of the first film.
  • It's a sci-fi setting, so presumably there's some Technobabble as to why. Perhaps their bodies are too small to survive being frozen and unfrozen.
  • Humans that are still growing are more vulnerable to freezing and screwups with their bone growth plates among other things. As a result putting them in suspended animation could lead to significant developmental problems.
  • It is possible that one of the problems is quite literally size — the cryotubes on the Venture Star were almost certainly all made to take adults (because those were what the RDA would expect to be taken to and occasionally from Pandora), and everything in them would be sized to that expectation, meaning necessary parts may be too large for an infant (we see what looks like a system for intravenous infusion, for example).

Freediving

• The Na'vi are freediving, so no problem, but wouldn't Spider have to worry about the bends when coming back up so fast?
  • Spider really doesn't dive that deep, maybe a few meters at most.

Weapons' size

• Seems awfully convenient that the RDA's trains are carrying Na'vi-sized rifles - what's up with that?
  • Because the RDA uses Na'vi-scale rifles for their AMPs and other mech suits. An AMP's "rifle" is a heavy or crew-served weapon for the Na'vi. It makes sense, given that the wildlife on Pandora is so much larger and more heavily protected than wildlife on Earth.
  • To add on, the Recom rifles are expressly stated by the visual dictionary as armaments for the Skel exoskeletons and are chambered in 12.7x99 mm.

Terraforming

• Why is it that 22nd century humanity cannot just terraform Venus which is far closer to home and does not have a whole biosphere that is hostile to human life. Supplementary material does mention space facilities on Moon, Mars and Asteroid Belt so a bit of elbow grease over a few decades would give us a new Earth at a spitting distance.
  • As noted in the Kurzgesagt video, terraforming Venus with even 20 Minutes into the Future tech would require the GDP of a large nation and several hundred years. Despite the Na'vi and Eywa and the long distance to Alpha Centauri, altering an existing biosphere is still cheaper and faster than making a new one.
  • There's also nothing to suggest that the humans in this universe even have terraforming tech. They may be planning for the Pandora colony to be a sealed city or they may even be planning to put all the colonist minds inside Avatar bodies. We don't know if they are able to change the atmosphere.

Supplies for Spider

• What exactly is going to happen to Spider, if the Sullys stay with the Metkayina clan permanently^note Or at least until the next movie? It doesn't seem like their islands have any kind of structure with a human-breathable atmosphere (since I can't imagine those face mask filters last forever), and there's never been any indication given that the plants and animals the Na'vi eat are even edible for humans.
  • He can probably get anything he needs from the scientists' chopper - Jake's already called them in once, Tonawari seems willing to accomodate them, and the RDA is unlikely to risk losing another Sea Dragon on a wild goose chase.

Spider speaking English

• Why does Spider even speak English so well? He must have been using the Na'vi language for almost all his interactions for the majority of his life. Come to think of it, the same is true for Jake's kids too. The opening even kind of suggests Jake has just stopped using English since the Na'vi language is now so natural to him. I guess it would be because the scientists just steadfastly refused to integrate so far as to learn the Na'vi language and all the kids are invested enough to learn English purely to talk to a few scientists.
  • I got the impression, from the first movie, that most of the scientists were at least somewhat proficient in the Na'vi language, but default to English when among themselves. That being said, a major advantage of learning English in this case would be the ability to read computer records, labels on equipment, scientific data logs and the like, since all of those are probably in English (and I don't think the Na'vi language has a written form anyway).
  • That should result in the kids having a strong sense of English reading, but lots of pronunciation issues since English is so horrible in phonetics and I doubt the logs would have taught Spider the word dipshit...well actually there are a lot of video logs and people like Quaritch did make logs, so I guess it makes sense. But it's so brushed over it feels like something they never really considered.

Air strategy

• So it's been how long and the RDA still haven't adapted their air strategy to deal with ikran riders? Not even thicker cockpit glass on their VTOL's? Outside of terrain like the mountains, the gunships still have the advantage in altitude, speed, and range, yet still try to dogfight and strafe at low altitude like it's World War II. You would think they would learn after finding out that no gunship lasted more than ten seconds on screen.
  • Probably boils down to the RDA being cheapskates (again). Keep in mind that a Na'vi bow and arrow has the size and force of a medieval siege engine; sure, materials science could probably make a ballista-proof VTOL, but it's probably more convenient for them to just send in another gunship. Truth in Television during the Vietnam War when one of the bean counters literally told a room full of Navy pilots that Search and Rescue for downed aircrew was a bad idea when they could just train new ones for cheaper.
    • That's false equivalence. It may be easier to train new crews than risk losing more crews and equipment saving already downed pilots, but that doesn't mean it's cheaper to lose an aircraft than to upgrade it so you don't lose it in the first place. There probably isn't a Watsonian reason for not upgrading, the movie just wants to have cool explosions and bad guys crashing.
    • If the executives consider said upgrade less efficient than building an entirely new aircraft, then yes, it'd be considered "cheaper." Many RL things have been value engineered to the lowest common denominator at the operators' expense.
    • To use another real world example, Ford and GM have intentionally sold unsafe cars to the public because management figured they could let people die and pay the resulting lawsuits instead of wasting time, money and resources on a product recall. Corporations suck sometimes.
  • The VTO Ls are probably mass produced by the hundreds and already waiting for deployment. Given having too many humans is part of the problem and the RDA seem to be lead exclusively by sociopaths no point trying to fix the design when you have hundreds of them already in storage.
  • Well look at it this way, the RDA uses relatively realistic spacecraft, and they at least theoretically respect mass budgets. Plus real helicopters aren't really armored against small arms fire. Bulletproof glass is heavy as fuck. And expensive. So just like real militaries don't use bulletproof helmets, the bottom line is more important. And since the RDA has been gone, presumably for travel time from and to Pandora, they didn't get news about needing to upgrade the cockpits to survive, or even if they did, they must have gotten budgetary concerns along the lines of "what are the odds of an arrow being the cause of destruction?"
    • Still doesn't excuse the lack of doctrinal adaptation. The Na'vi have been sniping pilots by dive bombing them for years, and any commander that is remotely concerned about having air support available would have developed tactics to counter it, such as staying at sufficient altitude and range and detecting enemies before they reach their altitude. Even if they couldn't sufficiently armor their aircraft, shipping a trained pilot to Pandora takes the spot of an engineer, a technician, or a scientist that would generate more return on investment.

Jake's importance

• Is Jake important to the defense of the Forest Na'vi? Is he an irreplaceable tactician or whatever? If the answer is "Yes", then fleeing the Forest means leaving his old tribe to die. But Jake never seems to consider that. If the answer is "No", then there's no particular need to pursue him after he flees the area, since the military's goal is to stop the raids and the raids are under new management in this scenario, so obviously they should focus on the new forest leader guy and treat Jake as a lower priority.
  • It doesn't seem that the RDA is aware that Jake stepped down as leader, plus he can still direct the fight from afar with communications equipment. Also Quaritch's beef is personal, and Ardmore seems to be willing to indulge that while other parts of SEC-OPS deal with the new guy.
  • That really bothered me too. It feels like the film just side stepped the entire conflict of the movie in favour of a grudge match between Jake and Quaritch. And then the movie ends with Jake basically deciding to do what he did in the last movie making this whole movie pretty much filler. The much more obvious plot line to me would be to have the humans wipe out the tree clan from the last movie with Jake and his family becoming asylum seekers rather than Jake abandoning basically everyone he's come to know in the past decade and a half that he's not directly related to.
  • Jake is important for a multitude of reasons. To begin with he is actually one of the best strategists the Na'vi have, the scientists know the humans tech and the Na'vi know jungle warfare but Jake is human military with effectively the best of both sides. He could teach the Na'vi but the knowledge will still be second hand and in a moment of crisis they'll most likely default back to their ways likely getting a lot of people killed. He's also a rallying point for the different Tribes able to potentially bring them together due to his reputation, it's a big part of what bought his family sanctuary. The Na'vi as a united front against the humans instead of Sea People not involving themselves in Jungle People affairs and vice versa is a big concern. Jake also has personal experience with Eywa and if you'll recall convinced her to intervene last time. That and there's the simple matter of quelling dissent by punishing him, Jake went rogue and at least for now has gotten away with it potentially inspiring other dissenters. To say nothing of what could happen should he somehow, some way, get his story back to Earth or anyone able to intervene.
    • But that just gets back to the original question. If Jake is super good at warfare, thanks to his training or his knowledge of tech or whatever, then leaving the forest tribe means risking their lives. Even if he successfully lures Quaritch away, the forest Na'vi still have the rest of the military to contend with! You'd think that Jake would be stressing out about this, maybe keeping in touch with his friends back home to advise them on how to defend themselves or whatnot. But it never comes up! The only time he reaches out to the old crowd is when his daughter has a seizure and he calls for a doctor. He never seems to think that the forest people might get attacked in his absence, and he never even thinks about checking up on them.

Just shoot him

• Quaritch threatens to kill Jake's kids if Jake doesn't surrender himself. A marine has Jake in his sights but Quaritch tells him not to shoot, in order to avoid provoking a larger conflict. Conflict happens anyway, and a while later we get this scenario again. Quaritch threatens to kill Jake's daughters if he doesn't surrender, and once again a marine has Jake in his sights. Why don't they just shoot him? The larger conflict they wanted to avoid has already happened at this point. Killing him at long range doesn't have a downside.
  • The second time Jake was close to Spider and Quaritch didn't want to risk his son.
  • And the first time, Quaritch saw themselves in a 100%-win scenario already 'cause everyone lost track of Payakan. No need to provoke the fight and potentially lose material if the dude you're hunting down is willingly swimming towards you. Why expend the effort?
    • So that he survives till the sequel, obviously.

Did nobody notice the space whale?

• Quaritch is on a whaling ship, threatening to kill Jake's kids. A friendly space whale swims underneath and jumps straight onto the deck. Did nobody see this coming? Does the whaling ship not have some sort of sonar for detecting whales?
  • Target fixation is a helluva drug. Sure, on a real navy ship the sonar (and the crew in charge of it) would be making a lot of noise... but the RDA isn't exactly a real navy.

The space whale biologist

• While dissecting a recently murdered space whale, a biologist goes on at length about how the whales are so much better than us. They're more intelligent, more emotional and more spiritual. They have their own music, mathematics, philosophy etc.. If this guy really believes all that, why does he work for a whaling company?? It's almost like hearing a Nazi give an impromptu speech praising Jewish people.
  • The dude is a lot like Grace in that his research is funded by exploitation of the things he admires and he knows it, but he isn't Grace. He is just one man, likely holding out hope that his research would trigger a change in conscience or find out how to synthesize Amrita to end the hunting, but whaling is the only way he has access to the whales, and he's going to need to hold his nose to get what he wants.
    • The character, Dr. Ian Garvin, specifically notes he drinks as a coping mechanism. He's clearly depicted as something more than a cartoonishly evil RDA dude like the boat captain.
    • Dr. Garvin was unlucky - he had a body of knowledge that was relevant to a situation that the RDA needed... that he disagreed with. And that's enough to drive a man to drink.
    • Real world scientists often do not speak out over things for fear of losing funding. This is known as the chilling effect. It seems scientists of the future still have to contend with needing funding, and pursuit of valuable substances overrides respect of science.

Just clone the tulkuns

Ok, so: RDA already have a technology to clone the Pandora lifeforms. They clone Avatar bodies, after all, and they are based on Pandora organics. From supplemental sources we know that on Earth there are cloning facilities big enough to accomodate whales (it's mentioned that a drydock was repurposed on Earth to serve as an amnio tank for a whale revival project).So... why not just take a sample of tulkun DNA, send them to Earth, and clone them there? To avoid problems with Eywa, they could even clone tulkuns brain-dead from the beginning (after all, they don't need a fully functional brain to just process them into drug). It would be orders of magnitude cheaper than creating a whaling industry on Pandora, and there would be no annoying Na'vi around.

• We don't actually know how cheap cloning an avatar is (much less a tulkun) compared to either shipping a Sea Dragon from Earth or making it on-site at Bridgehead with the 3D printers. One could ask why the old whalers went through all the trouble of building all those ships when they could just breed their own whales.
  • Because breeding whales in captivity was not considered possible before the advances of biology in XIX-XX century. Considering that carrying anything from Pandora to Earth requires antimatter, it's just plainly impossible for cloning to be more expensive than transporting serum from Pandora.
  • Can the tulkuns even breathe in Earth's oceans, or do they need their own specialized aquarium for that? The RDA'd need to ship the DNA back to Earth regardless and then spend billions to figure out how to incubate/raise/breed them, while all they need to kill them on Pandora is one hovercraft and a very dickish Aussie. And since they need to keep making supply runs to Pandora anyway, what's a couple crates' worth of amrita?
    • A couple of tons of unobtanium (which could NOT be easily cloned) not delivered on Earth.
    • Unobtanium which the RDA has seemingly abandoned as an export in favour of amrita.
    • Why would they be mining Unobtanium in the oceans? And what would they be transporting on the hover train?
    • Amrita's paying for the entire colonization effort, so logically, that means unobtanium is no longer a priority to get shipped back to Earth. As for the train: building materials, food, supplies, and a crapload of Na'vi-sized weapons for some reason.

Where was the water tribe during the final battle?

Does anyone have a satisfying answer to this? After Jake's son dies, the water tribe just disappears. One could say that the tribe already did what they set out to do, which was to save their daughter. However Tsireya was still with the Sully family. Even weirder, we see her brothers with Kiri underwater. They disappear too without a trace, and I don't see how they would just leave Kiri like that. Anybody have any ideas?

• Not entirely satisfying, but remember the Sea Dragon crashed a fair distance away from the original battle. We don't see the subs or other small boats for the rest of the battle, so barring a deleted scene, one can only assume they stayed behind to mop them up.
• Also probably not satisfying, but Cameron did have a shot of Tonowari and others reuniting with the Sully family after the battle was over. It was cut due to poor reception at test screenings.

Parent Traits

How come Lo'ak has 5 fingers but Tuk and Neteyam have 4. I know he got it from Jake but still. I mean why is he the only child who inherited a lot of traits from Jake but his two biological siblings got their traits from their mother? With the exception of Kiri as she's not biologically related.

• Biologically, Jake and Neytiri would qualify as a mixed-race couple (seeing as his body is a fusion of Na'vi and human DNA) and in those cases the children tend to inherit a fusion of the physical appearance of both races without being entirely predictable - ie. a set of siblings from a white/black couple can have one looking almost entirely white and the other almost entirely black. Presumably Na'vi DNA randomizes traits in a similar way.
• It's like eye colour in humans. If a child has one brown eyed parent and the other a blue eyed parent, the child would more likely be brown eyed but not definitely. This is because there is a dominant allele and a non-dominant allele the brown eyed allele being the dominant. I'm assuming that because 2 of the 3 biological children have only four fingers that the four fingered allele is the dominant one but there is a chance for a five fingered child to be born, this is seen in Lo'ak.
• The four finger gene can't be dominant, because if it were, they couldn't have 5-fingered children - Neytiri doesn't have a recessive gene to pass on, otherwise 5 fingered Na'vi would be rare but not freakish. Either it's a gene that doesn't have a dominant type, or 5 fingers is dominant and Jake, as a hybrid, carries one of each gene. 50% chance each of his kids having 4 or 5 fingers.

Ghosts or Memories?

When revisiting the dead, Kiri has a conversation with her mother but Jake and Neytiri relive one of Jake's memories with Neteyam. So are they still "alive" within Eywa or is it just drawing on the linked person's memories?

• Kiri's visit with Grace takes place in a cathedral that she likely has no reference for. Given that the dead can't seem to generate new experiences or new information, like Grace basically crashing trying to answer who Kiri's father was, the dead's memories may be in a "read-only" state and not truly conscious, but the experience draws upon both persons' memories.
  • I think it is implied in the movie that Grace was about to answer Kiri's question but Eywa didn't allow it, most likely because it determined it wasn't the right moment. Something to consider is that Grace isn't just a memory left in Eywa but that her entire consciousness was in the process of being "uploaded" when she died, so it is entirely possible that her status within Eywa may be unique.

Recombinant style choices

As opposed to the avatars in the first movie, the recombinant squad makes little effort to blend with the indigenous Na'vi. Perhaps that's meant to show their arrogance and casual contempt for the native lifestyle (although it's mentioned specifically before their first forest mission that one of their advantages over human troops is that they'll be perceived as familiar by the local wildlife - you'd think they'd try to lean into that more if it gave them any advantage)... But who is taking the time to tailor Na'vi-sized fatigues? Or design Oakley sunglasses for wide-set eyes and high ears? Or lovingly recreate the tattoos they had as human grunts??

• Avatars were being used on Pandora before the recombinant squad was created, so RDA presumably already had information on the measurements and proportions to get clothing and equipment to fit. From there, it's a simple matter of getting the stuff produced, the cost of which is probably a blip on RDA's balance sheets. As for tattoos, they probably went through the trouble to help the squad acclimatize. Imagine looking down at your own body and not seeing marks you're intimately familiar with. It would probably make the disorientation of waking up in an alien body worse.
• Probably the same people who took the time to tailor all the Na'vi-sized clothes all the Avatars were wearing in the first movie. Mass producing clothes isn't that hard in the modern era, nore is getting a tattoo.

Jake doing little to prepare

• Seriously, was he figuratively and literally screwing around in the 16-ish years it took for humanity to return to Pandora? He would know precisely what consequences there would be to expelling the RDA from the planet, but instead of building some kind of "Grand Na'vi Coalition" to deal with mankind inevitably returning in force he only has the Omatikaya to work with—and not even the other clans they allied with at the end of the first film! Perhaps it somewhat makes sense for the Na'vi to become complacent—especially those who've had little to no contact with humanity and didn't fight in the final battle—but Jake? The other remaining humans? It makes no sense. No wonder they got immediately steamrolled.
  • What exactly is he supposed to do? Try and make himself dictator for life over the other clans? Impose a modern human military training regime on them? That sounds like a great way to kick off a civil war. The Na'vi just don't seem culturally predisposed towards the kind of centralization one would need to field a standing army, from what we see they don't even have regular agriculture.
    • We've also seen the results of imposing military discipline on Na'vi, it gets him one of his sons killed and the other constantly screwing up.

Quaritch suddenly not understanding Na'vi

• When the recom squad is interrogating the Ta'unui clan Olo'eyktan, Recom Quaritch has Spider translate as he presumably can't. But earlier he was shown to speak near-perfect Na'vi when questioning Lo'ak when he said in Na'vi "where is your father?"
  • It's far from near-perfect - Spider pretty much says it's baby talk. Quaritch is like a tourist who learned basic pidgin Na'vi like "hello" and "where's the bathroom" and needs help with the conversational stuff.
  • Plus, when he was speaking with Lo'ak, Lo'ak spoke slowly, giving him time to translate every word in his head. Trying to do that at regular conversation pace is much harder if you're not fluent.

Why not turn Spider into an Avatar?

• Forgove me if this was addressed in the film and I missed it, but why does Spider stay human? He clearly wants to be a Na'vi so why not turn him into one like Jake did? I know the procedure failed with Grace in the first film but I figured that was because she was shot in the chest and was too far gone to complete the transfer. In contrast Spider is in seemingly peak human health for his age.
  • They may not have the means to grow him a Na'vi body.

Na'vi Lack Ambition to Keep Human Away

• I don't think there will be inhabitable and peaceful land left in Pandora if Na'vi always leave human at large; like not deciding who can orbit the moon. I wished Jake had ensured or would ensure Avatar Program's extension, to bring the rest of Avatar drivers closer to Na'vi, to the point Grace's school will re-open and accept them to be teachers, both getting scientists helping hands and alerting Na'vi to future human invasions (knowing what they are). If it takes a nuclear missiles to stop large scale invasions, Na'vi can be motivated only this way to build a fusion bomb and fly missions to other moons.
  • ...What? The Na'vi are nowhere close to even early agricultural revolution levels of technology, let alone industrialization, let alone being able to develop homegrown technology anywhere close to what the RDA is deploying, even if they were at all inclined to uproot their entire society to pursue that way of life. Which, by all accounts, they aren't.
  • This troper sounds like he wants the Na'vi to reach a technological parity against the RDA or become societally similar to humans. I think there are 500 reasons as to why this is never going to happen.