The image that has most stuck with me since seeing Avatar””and there are a lot of amazing visuals””is one of a human’s weak and broken body cradled in the arms of a giant, strong and healthy alien. It’s a stirring and powerful juxtaposition. Struggling to breathe and crippled from the waist down, this body is the model of human frailty””useless, expiring and fragile””held in the powerful arms of a 9-foot Na’vi like a diminutive child.
This moment highlighted for me how inadequate, brittle and broken the humans are in Avatar. They bleed. They die. Almost every main human faces some physical limitation in the movie’s runtime. But what is fascinating is how they all compensate for their bodily deficiencies and mortality by hiding within other bodies: giant metal attack ships, robot suits and even genetically-altered Na’vi bodies. These examples are just the physical ways in which Avatar’s humans compensate for their frailty. They also compensate with insatiable needs to possess more, know more, gain more and mean more. Ironically, it seems to be this reaction to weakness that spurs their violent aggression.