Hi folks, I will be speaking with one of the producers of the film and need some help in creating a list of questions. I'm hoping to ask him questions that are fun and reveal behind the scenes tidbits about making the film.

Any suggestions? What are your burning questions? Many thanks!

I have one...

"instead of you, can I talk to James Cameron?"

I've been curious about how the scene with Neytiri and Jake - the human Jake, was achieved so flawlessly. Aside from being a wonderful moment, it was only after the film ended that I realized that it was a human character literally being held by a CG character.

Why do the human Avatars have 5 fingers while the Na'vi only have 4? Just that DNA cross breeding can't get rid of that pesky fifth digit?

Yeah, I got nothin'.

Did they honestly think AVATAR would gross as much and possibly even more then Titanic?

Since you went through so much trouble to show a whole ecosystem for Pandora, what possible selective pressure led to the the Na'vi losing two of their arms, unlike everything else on the planet, including their glimpsed relatives the spacemonkeys (Gleek not withstanding)?

Why wasn't Bill Paxton in this movie?

Did you purposely produce this film so that people would become suicidal?

Do you acknowledge the mental damage you've brought onto these people?

Would you have sex with a navi?

Why is there another Avatar thread?

I seriously don't expect the producers to know the answer to that.

Why do the Navi as CGI creations? Why not just put blue-skin makeup on the actors and let them emote, which is what actors, y'know, do after all? I wouldn't have minded seeing Zoe Saldana in the "flesh," so to speak. I mean, they did that on the old "Star Trek" TV show and that franchise is 44 years old and counting.

Why did they make the Avatars in the first place? You can use an oxygen mask on Pandora and everyone else does so that isn't why. Was it to hide amoung the Na'vi? No that wasn't it because the Na'vi knew they weren't real Na'vi. So what is the point?

All they had to do was find 12 foot tall, strangely proportioned bone thin actors and put them in suits with fake hands and feet.

Hi Quicksilver, that must be exciting that you are meeting with the people involved with AVATAR. I have one question that many people may be curious about:

1. Was James Cameron influenced by Hayao Miyazaki films? Miyazaki's films often incorporate recurrent themes, such as humanity's relationship to nature and technology, and the difficulty of maintaining a pacifist ethic. Reflecting Miyazaki's feminism, the protagonists of his films are often strong, independent girls or young women; the villains, when present, are often morally ambiguous characters with redeeming qualities.

with enormous eyeballs.

They said it was done due to thinking the Na'vi would trust something that looked kinda like them more than something that looked human.

Some people take the movie waaaay to seriously. Perhaps they wanted the navi to look a little more human so the moviegoers would have a better connection with the characters?

And probably much easier and quicker to move around.

If the Na'vi played basketball against the Monstars from Space Jam.. who would win?

problem solved...

Well, if you are gong to pretend to be all serious about it, making up pseudo-documentaries and backgrounds about the world, then you should be prepared for basic questions like that. Either you mean it to be sciency, or you dont. You can't have it both ways.

Have fun with this:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2...ust_be_the.php

Yeah you can, because it is just a movie. The only people who really ask question like that are the weird, nerdy types. The same ones who question Star Trek and Star Wars. Mostly because they don't understand those are just movies too.

You can practically taste the bitterness in that article. The attack on Star Wars was great too, gotta keep up appearances to seem consistent I guess.

As for an evolutionary chain, there's more than enough material in the film to make up your theory. Perhaps the Na'vi originally had 4 forearms, like the Lemurs shown early in the film, and perhaps they eventually adapted to having only 2, as that was what was required of them to properly synch, tame, and control the animals on Pandora, all of which only have 2 tentacles coming out of their head.

But it doesn't matter. Its a question that is completely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, and one that completely ignores the concessions that must come with a 300 million dollar budgeted movie about a human falling in love with an alien. Yet even so, Cameron himself said that he would address the evolutionary questions about the Na'vi when he writes the novel, so it is not like he has never even bothered to think about the subject.

Anyone interviewing the key grip on CRANK: HIGH VOLTAGE? I have some questions for him, too.

Cameron himself answered that question in a UK special about the film, and his answer was because it's been done to death on STAR TREK for years.

And I'm sure you are already aware that the actors playing Na'vi did indeed 'emote', not just provide voices, but I've no idea if you're being sarcastic or not.