The animals of Avatar
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 ธ.ค. 2023
- Love it or hate, Avatar has some of the most photogenic environments ever show in an alien world. So let's dive in for a look at their ecology and relationships with the na'vi!
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Concept art for the thumbnail done by Steven Messing - เกม
Despite being completely different worlds, Monster Hunter and Avatar share 1 thing in common: *cute pig-like pet*
Pandoran Tapyrs are not entirely pets, they are also feral hunted animals that live both on the outskirts of Na'vi villages, camps, and settlements, but tend to much rather live and wander far from them -not as community animals. One way or another, they are shot, axed, or clubbed-hunted to be eaten by Na'vi, not sacrificed and butchered.
@@GOTZ-pe5vl oh, so Bullfango is a better comparison (wild pig from MH). Thanks for extra context
Also I’d say legiana and the Ikran share quite a few characteristics too ;)
convergent evolution be like
Wish more films would incorporate strong spec-evo in their creature designs, Pandora has always been breathtaking for me and I'd watch the movie just to see the animals in motion.
The new Avatar game elaborates even further on other unseen species, which I love! The plains creatures especially have been interesting, with their features having evolved to make use of the intense and constant winds of the plains. Like the Soundblast, a massive herbivore that uses it's segmented sail to essentially create sonic booms with the wind; and the wind panthers, a carnivore with skin flaps that let it make short glides using the wind. There's also the addition of a new flying predator, the Stormwing, that seems to fill a niche between ikran and Toruk. It's intensely territorial and has a stinger on its tail that it attacks with. The Aranahe, a Na'vi clan of weavers, also has a special relationship with a new type of moth call the Kinglor, where they care for the Kinglor and weave silk from the cocoons.
I know some people dislike avatar for its lacklustre plot and characters. But one thing i do like is the designs of the creatures, they feel really well realised and are very unique with their hexapod designs and four eyes.
And to be honest the only organisms on pandora I don’t like are actually the Navi, they lack a lot of features that the other creatures have and do look so out of place it would’ve been better if they had four eyes and an extra arm so they fit in.
As they stand now they’re kind of a stuck out nail that doesn’t really fit to me in comparison to the other organisms. Also it would make them more interesting instead of them being literal blue cat people.
Totally agree with that! Avatar has some of the best world building of any scifi movie (starting ship is one example) but is let down by story, characters and music.
I also get what you mean with the navi feeling out of place.
Especially when taking into account the number of limbs, Navi do really not fit in with being the only ones with 4 limbs on the planet.
(also hair, noone else has hair)
I will say that it seems like the closest living relative (the gibbon like species) has fused the base of its arms so it has two shoulders but four hands. This implies that the na’vi had a similar evolutionary history where they further fused the limbs. The hair I’m not sure about tho
The story and characters are perfectly fine *at worst.*
I absolutely love the unique designs of all the creatures in this world, pretty much the main reason why I love this series and franchise
The creature designs are pretty much only reason why I don't completely hate Avatar (that along with the cgi effects).
@@hagfish4998yeah big emphasis on the designs only.
Whales smarter than humans (because that’s the only reason we should care about them when they get hunted apparently?)
And Sharks that don’t act like predators but sentient serial killer.
What animal is willing to bludgeon and cut itself and waste energy biting apart rocks and coral in chase of a tiny piece of prey instead of pursuing the injured and bigger piece of prey when it’s already bleeding.
Also, a fish that has an understanding that it’s prey needs to go up for air…? Oh piss off.
@@sbraypaynt nah, none of what you said is true. Even if they made tulkun smarter to make us care (what?) that isn’t a criticism of the movie.
@@hagfish4998 there’s not much to hate about it... they’re fine movies at the worst.
@@leadfaun your counter argument is… “nah, none of what you said is true”
This is what I pay attention to when I watch these movies, the extraterrestrial Wildlife.
The thing is UC, the difference in your assessments of ecosystems and creatures in fiction is that your very educated and scientifically minded. Unlike other channels you actually go into great detail and logical speculation. Which is why your perspective and video's are particularly valuable. It doesn't really matter if another channel covered a topic you wanted to, because you'll always have something new or different to say.
@marshalmarrs3269 Well, natures philosophy is " if it's just good enough to survive, then it probably will"
Since we're now started covering sci-fi alien ecology, I think Subnautica would be a great next choice!
Avatar despite their massive success feels surprisingly underrated, it's a genuinely good pair of movies.
Just watched the way of water yesterday just the 3rd act alone. Something about James Cameron films have great repeat viewings to me.
Avatar, somehow, manages to be both highly under and overrated at the same time.
Both sides of the camp tend to agree that Cameron sucks at actually realizing the potential of the setting though.
@@thosebloodybadgers8499 what would you like to have seen? (genuine question)
@@MH-ms1dg good movies, frankly.
But legit, both movies spend a crapton of time just meandering in Pandora's atmosphere, which leaves the main conflict and characters lacking, while still not exactly providing a deep look into the setting of Avatar.
One thing that I feel like is particularly missing is a good main conflict. Cameron really just did his homework on "Dancing With Wolves" but made it more two-dimensional. I think having a work of fiction provide an interesting conflict is important to make a viewer intrigued - it poses a genuine question and, in doing so, invites the viewer into taking in more of the context, which includes the worldbuilding!
There are some remnants of that, with humanity seemingly forced to exploit Pandora for land and resources due to a dying Earth but, of course, Cameron doesn't really expand on that whatsoever besides handwaving it in dialogue as a nebulous explanation of the "why" of human activity. Will it be actually expanded on in the further sequels? Maybe? But taking, like, potentially three or four movies to do anything with the main overarching conflict of the setting? That kinda sucks, imo.
And it's not like the characters make up for that lack. I personally didn't get a good feel for any of the cast of both movies outside of what their archetypes are. We've got the "evily enthusiastic army man", the "take-no-shit indigenous rep", the "plain white bread protagonist", the "old, wise spiritual leader", the "stoic and rough settlement leader", etc.
In general, Avatar to me feels kind of... utilitarian with its most of everything. As if everything surrounding the very world of Pandora is merely a pretense to further explore it. Except Cameron still HAS to actually engage with all that, seemingly, unimportant context for, idk, movie purposes, instead of just indulging his CGI kink.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that, in trying to both be a blockbuster and a nature documentary / worldbuilding indulgence, it fails to be both, so I'd rather it pivot towards the former, while leaving the latter to extended media.
There was, say, that Ubisoft Avatar game and I know there are the novels. I haven't read the latter but I heard they're pretty good specifically because they leave out most of the baggage of the Avatar's narrative and focus on expanding the world of Pandora, while the former still tries to attach itself tightly to the movies and, in doing so, ends up on a similar surface-level retread of these two-dimensional conflicts and characters. Although that's fitting for Ubisoft and their equally bland and generalist approach to game design, I suppose.
So, uh, yeah, I guess the conclusion is, I'd like for Cameron to pick a lane and stick to it instead of making these visually spectacular but, ultimately, shallow roller-coasters of films.
I don't know why it's so popular to hate Avatar currently, but I could never do that because this franchise has been the awakening for my love for speculative biology. The world of Avatar is breathtaking in more ways than just the visuals.
Big thank you for digging the old Avatar encyclopedia book. It's a shame Slingers haven't been implemented in the franchise anywhere yet, their design is delightfully weird! I adore this universe, and really hope to play the Frontiers someday. btw the old Avatar game for the x360-console-gen is also quite good for the setting-lovers. It covers many beautiful biomes, and there's even a day-night cycle for each location so you can enjoy the bioluminescent beauty of Pandora.
We need more speculative zoology movies like avatar
Nsh we need better
The thing I like most about the Pandora creatures is that you can tell it’s a Pandora creature. They all have that queue, don’t matter what creature it is land air or sea they all have it.
Man, I always forget how much effort the pandoran wildlife has put into it. Truly some great designs, even if I feel relatively apathetic to avatar (not to say they're bad films)
Your upload schedule somehow always hits, excited to watch this episode of UHC
Even though I had completely forgotten the entire plot of Avatar and Way of Water, what will always stick out in my mind was the amazing environments and creature designs they made.
Amazing video!
Btw Akula literally means shark in Russian. They took a foreign word for a matching animal and I think it's pretty funny
Bionicle flashbacks
I love how the most successful movie so far is a spec-evo project
These sorts of videos are really helpful for me when building my own spec evo project. Learning about animal behavior and distribution.
Really interesting stuff that humans and marine mammals have worked together to hunt before. Never heard of that.
Another great video for sure! It's been a long time since I've seen the first Avatar movie, and this was a great refresher. I love how all of the land animals are hexapods :).
Honestly my problem with Avatar is that the Na'vi don't really look like aliens from Pandora (only two eyes, four limbs, a nose instead of the holes in the body to breathe ) I know it was made to make them more human although it looks like a contradiction but overall the designers deserve a award
I was hoping for a full video on the Tulkun, but this is a welcome surprise.
I know I say this almost every other video, but I really was SO looking foward to you covering this particular topic
It really feels quite flabbergasting that some of the highest grossing films of all times involved so much spec-evo.
I absolutely adore the Avatar films and outside subjective critiques, most objective analyses of it usually favor the plot and I haven't heard a good reason as to why its objectively "bad".
ALSO on the animals, its not said but they're perfectly utilized, every creature is fleshed out and given its own screen time and this isn't filler as its useful to show how devastating they will be to the humans in the final confrontation.
Anyone else felt the Ancient Forest from World to have some Pandora vibes?
Also got a question regarding a creature that wasn't covered, this one being the weird jellyfish thign that can be used as organic scuba gear (I believe the name was gill mantle), how does such a creature "evolve into a tool"? My best guess would be that it's bad at dispersing by itself and so it sticks to other seagoing animals, and in turn it passes oxygen to them to reduce the fatigue and allow for better traveling success.
Wishing you a Merry Christmas too!
There was a bog standard PS3 spinoff game for Avatar. The plot made no sense but they did give you a scanner so you could read about all the plants, fungi, animals, and even people and equipment that both races used in the war. A lot of the wildlife and flora were in the films so that's neat.
The real-life examples are just as interesting as the fictional info in this video. :)
Can you cover the graboids from tremors?
Now i wanna see a Pandora desert like biome
Hey, I would strongly recommend you check out the wildlife, both flora and fauna in the Avatar frontiers of Pandora game. There is quite a bit more there, and the games story was confirmed as canon, so I feel like the wildlife spotlighted there must also be
I was waiting for this one since I found your channel
I never imagined a video about this topic would come but I'm glad it did
They had a feild day with Toruk, absolutely amazing design!!
The part about sperm whale clicks having dialects reminds me that elephant seal calls apparently have “accents” unique to specific populations
You make such detailed and informative content, I get excited everytime I see your content, please never stop. I’d love it if you did some mass effect content, lots of races with crazy biologies like Krogan, not to mention the reapers.
Really fun video, always loved the wildlife of Pandora and that was no exception in the sequel. While the films themselves have their fair share of haters and fans, I enjoy them well enough to get invested in the absolutely incredible level of world building that has gone into them. Looking forward to the next one.
Given recent TH-cam videos i have a much greater appreciation for how good your sourcing is
oh awesome I’ve really wanted you to cover Pandora’s wildlife
Will place this video with TreytheExplainer Pandora vid. Both of you guys are awesome
The best part of Avatar for me was looking at various speculative animals.
I always said it : avatar is the most high budget spec evo we'll ever get likely
Well it certainly is Christmas time, been waiting on you covering the wildlife of pandora for quite a while, and it was worth it, and keep the great work up, also may I suggest you cover wayne barlowe expedition one day, I think you'd have a great time with that
I find the sturmbeast like the bison of natives on earth both are essential to eachothers survival bison keep population control and keep their herds in numbers and natives also get food and clothing from them
I dislike Avatar as a story but it's one of the few things I've bought the concept art book for. The sheer amount of creativity put into its setting really deserved to be in a better movie.
But hey they made millions so maybe this was the best movie possible lol.
Im not a fan of it too, I was when I was 7 years old but I’ve grown and realised it was rather one dimensional. But the creature designs are rather pretty cool.
It also bugs me that highly advanced humans can take down a primitive as hell race…no offence to the Navi.
I think the tolkun may have been inspired by the Moriori tribe, a New Zealand Polynesian tribe related to the Maori and practiced pacifism as morally imperative. This included when they were colonized and nearly wiped out by the Maori.
Neytiri was not originally the first Palulukan Makto, as in "James Camerons Avatar: The game," a Navi allows you to ride his Thanator after you rescue it from a human camp, the events in the game occur 2 years before the events of the movie. However, this was cannon in 2012, and is not cannon as of 2023.
I absolutely loved the one you did on Peter Jackson's King Kong this is an excellent successor
I do truly appreciatet he depth of the fauna taken in these movies, I do however feel a little cheated that we seem to be set on a path where we are to change biomes in every movies, which is something that does impede on the depth that each ecosystem an have.
While the viperwolves have indeed a predominant niche as generalist predator for medium to large preys on the ground, we've yet to see the full diversity of the canopee in the movies, it being what I would call the most productive and diverse ecosystem on our own rainforests.
With the most massive tree being destroyed in fire, and most likely a fair few acres of forest too due to the artificial bombing compensating on the lack of readily flammable material in such a humid setting, plus the fact that the most local population of predators and big prey have been culled in the combat against the corpo soldiers, new niches could have been opened for yet unseen creatures on the big screen to be more valorised, including smaller life, and larger carrion eater taking a profit and inflating their numbers considerably from the abundance of carrion who, abandonning a more migratory lifestyle, could have settled at least for a generation to fully take advantage of the bounty and being more prevalent in their confrontation with the local wildlife and the Na'vi themselves. We could also try and see what the river ecosystem could have looked like, water is an important part of humid rainforests and the diversity some clades have is incredible there (the catfishes being incredibly diverse and filling a stagering number of niches in the Amazon for example, with very unique adaptations to boot)
A enormous amount of stories could have been told with the single biome already presented, and it just feels like a bit of wasted potential, especially given how rooted Na'vi culture have been presented in older material.Seeing them adapt to the new challenges the departure of humanity could have presented for their brief passage in Pandora could have been very interesting.
Hello, I am an animal behaviorist and I really enjoy your videos on the behaviors of all these fictional animals
Avatar is my favorite movie, so this is really awesome to hear more about the ecosystem and everything! Thank you!
Speaking of rookeries, you should do a video on the Gargoyle race from the Disney animated series
The ecosystem and the worldbuilding in Avatar is THE one thing that prevents it to be just a Pocahontas with aliens
Would love if they made a documentary style film of the world of avatar.
I’d love to see you cover rainworld. I’d like to see your take on the spec-evo + genetic engineering of a lot of the creatures in that world
And we haven't even scratched the surface because there's many diverse environments yet visited and the animals that dwell there.
❤ And a happy new year to you. ❤
Another hood classic and time to binge again
You think you could do a full video on Arks wildlife?
While less grounded in reality, perhaps you could look at the animals in Made in Abyss
It strikes me that the ideal prey for a thanator is a direhorse: a large animal that would provide a good amount of meat, but which also would not be capable of putting up a very strong defense a la titanotheres and sturmbeests. The only common difficulty in predating direhorses may be the fact that they are very important to the Omaticaya, and thus may be protected to some degree by these people.
I gotta do a final so putting this video on hold, and supporting my great Spec Evo TH-camr even if I dislike this film that essentially boils down to a degree of Native minstrelry
I would honestly love to see Pandora's equivalent to corvids. (crows, ravens, magpies etc.)
The time has come!
Thank you
nice video
I does wish that one day the next avatar movie either drops or ignores character and becomes a nature documentary
Little correction: The sturmbeest do have a pair of antennae (kuru), but they are small and located near their jaw
What about animals from other Avatar franchise? That would be interesting.
Why do people hate Avatar?
The creature designs are great!
Probably because the plot and characters have all the depth of planks of wood
You can encounter a car with the nicest design you have ever seen, but if the motor explodes every time you try to use it you sre going to hate it despite one aspect of it being almost perfect
You know, there is another Pandora. Wouldn't mind a break down of that planet.
How interested are you in doing a bit on the animals of the other Avatar (Last Airbender/Korra)? Yes, they're all just hybrids, but I still think you could offer some interesting insight on them.
Can you please look into doing sth about your white background usuage to display text or monster cut outs on a better background? I get that it's done because of the formula set by spec evo channels and to have an easy time making the creatures contrast but it's so utterly grading on the eyes to have to be flashed with this white constantly with it only shortly interrupted by art or short footage display before the white blasts the eyes again.
Stick by stick whe gettin the full Picture!! Pandora Worldbuilding is trully marvelous wild! 👽🌌
You wrote the word nexible which I thought was a typo for flexible but I think you meant to use it? When you talked about the hammerheads. I mean it’s definition does fit
The ocean section makes me want to see a subnautica video, do you have any plans for that?
It might be worth speculating that the the movement and the territorial behaviour of titanothere herds may result in the growth of smaller species of plants that would otherwise be unable to compete with the trees these animals would knock down. This would lead to the ideal environmental conditions for selected animals and basically resulting in new small areas of habitats. This is seen from forest dwelling elephants and European bison.
any chance that you may change your mind in regards to covering at least the first few trailers for mh wilds? im just so curious about what you have to say
I love the spec evo trope of highly intelligent cetacean creatures, creating cultures without many human hallmarks (fire, clothing, tools, etc.)
Lets not forget the new wildlife from the game avatar frontiers of pandora that are canon species aswell
The stermbeest hunt is in the special edition of avatar 1
I really with the Navi were six limbed like all the other land vertibrates. I also just dislike the creature which shoots is head at things which is also its young and it only ever has one child before dying? It just feels like its trying to hard to be odd and alien with no concern for practicality or sustainability.
If you can, do you think you could do some coverage on Wayne Barlowe's Expedition? Darwin IV is ripe for coverage paired up with this (Plus it got back into print after being out since the 90's which is awesome). Also kind of strange you never gave a final thoughts on the films though i would understand why you didn't, i'm not exactly the biggest fan of Avatar or its sequel and while the creatures were part of the initial attraction as a kid, when you've consumed quite a lot spec evo over the years Avatar's design by contrast can be very basic entry level alien animals, all the way down to their body plans when the same guy who created most of the creatures for the film, Barlowe (His visual style is very clear in Avatar 1) has come up with a whole swoth of creatures with unique ecologies, body plans and just generally fascinating designs in one book. While nothing is wrong with using animals in our world as basis for creature design (I mean that is why we are here after all) It was part of the reason i was so dissapointed by Way of Water where most of the creature designs (barring maybe some of the fish) felt so aggressively tame to me and felt it leaned too heavily on that basis (Hell i think the Skimmers wouldn't too look out of place if you put them in Monster Hunter), esspecally when we're dealing with ocean environments that give you carte blanche to have strange and out there fish and whatever else, if nothing else i just wish we get more interesting designs that aren't just clear cut analogues of a Tiger, Whale etc, it was actually quite a surprise seeing this guy crop up 4:09 and wishing we got to see them in the film, that's the kind of stuff i can get behind and a lot more in line with Barlowe's odd creature design philosophy. over all not my favorite series but it's not a bad intro like i said for more out there creature designs for general audiences.
With the new frontiers of Pandora game released will you be making videos on the new fauna revealed to the universe
I wonder if in Avatar 3 we might finally see the Lion of pandora
So far, we seen rainforests and oceans. What other biomes do you reckon Pandora would have?
Also, I've always imagined Polyphemus (the massive gas giant behind Pandora) with its own lifeforms, preferably aerial.
The new game focuses more on open grasslands, some montane forest, and tiaga with animals adapted to such.
The one thing I love about Avatar without any complaints what so ever is the incredible flora and fauna, not a fan of the one dimensional and very un subtle story telling though.
Heck yeah
I was just thinking about this topic lol
HE FINLLY DID IT
what is interspecies altruism? and how its differ from mutualistic symbiosis?
Just from the posters of both movies you can tell which movie looks more realistic. The 2nd movies poster eceryone looks like a pixar characters
Avatar is the most well crafted and actually believable fictional world of all of sci-fi which is why it’s my fav franchise ever. My fav movies and games
Hear me out, *An open world psuedo-avatar psuedo-mh game with a psuedo-subnautica like ocean.*
Can you do a video on Pandoras "grassland" ecosystem and it's animals
Edit I now realise why you only chose 2 biomes as we know moe
People hate the writting of Avatar. Even haters admit the world building is good!
I'd dare say the alien wildlife is the only truly good thing about these films.
same
I wish the story in this franchise was as good as it's creature design
God bless
The whales are the best sophonts in the series, better than the generic space elves
best thing about the movie is flora and fauna