10 Things You Didn't Know About Avatar

More than just a box office juggernaut.

By Lee OConnell /

In 2009, James Cameron took the world by storm with his sci-fi fantasy epic Avatar. It was box office phenomenon, a masterpiece of CGI world building and made us actually want to see a movie in 3D!

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Avatar 2 is due for release in 2021, and it’s to be followed by parts three, four and five, running all the way into 2027. Writer and director James Cameron looks set to allow his audience to fully explore the world of Pandora.

The box office for the first film pulled in a staggering $2.8 billion dollars and this new franchise seems likely to give the Avengers a run for their money when it comes to ticket sales.

The word "avatar" derives from the Sanskrit for ‘decent’ and is used in Hinduism to refer to earthly incarnations of God Vishnu. As Cameron himself once said, ‘I’m king of the world’ and if Titanic and Avatar are anything to go by, he will be again. Can he make it three in a row and be a god of the box office again?

10. The Avatars Had Secret Clues

When your consciousness has been transferred into a genetically engineered biological nine foot blue Avatar, it can be hard to tell who are the real Na’vi and who are the human hosts. Luckily writer James Cameron was way ahead of us and left us with a visual clues to tell the difference.

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The Na'vi people have only 3 fingers and a thumb on each hand, while the human avatars have the more traditional 4 fingers just like their human body counterparts. Other more subtle difference can be seen in the eye shapes of the Na’vi who have larger, more Lemur like eyes than the human Avatars, and also only having four very spread out toes on each foot.

As the love story between paralysed ex marine, Jake Sully and Neytiri, daughter of the leader of the Na’vi clan called Omaticaya, develops, it has been confirmed that they will have a daughter in Avatar 2. From the limited publicity shots available, she appears to have her dad’s hands, but on the downside it looks like she has her mother’s feet!

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