Avatar [2009] (2 discs)
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• Director James Cameron, known for being tough on set, allegedly kept a nail-gun on set that he would use to nail cell phones, that had the misfortune of ringing, to a wall above the exit sign.
• Jodie Foster and Jamie Lee Curtis were considered for the role of Dr. Grace Augustine.
• Matt Damon and ^[?] Jake Gyllenhaal were the studio's first choices to play Jake Sully, but James Cameron decided to cast the unknown Sam Worthington in the lead role.
• Michael Biehn was considered for the role of Col. Quaritch. James Cameron rejected him because he'd already cast Sigourney Weaver, and he didn't want people to think it was Aliens all over again.
• James Cameron initially wanted ^[?] Q'orianka Kilcher to play Neytiri, based on her role as Pocahontas in The New World. He admitted in an interview that he got the idea for Avatar after watching Disney's 1995 animated film Pocahontas.
• Chris Pratt auditioned for the role of Jake Sully. Chris Pine auditioned for role and said that it was his worst audition ever.
• The Na'vi language was created entirely from scratch by linguist Dr. ^[?] Paul R. Frommer. James Cameron hired him to construct a language that the actors could pronounce easily, but did not resemble any single human language. Frommer created about 1,000 words. Sam Worthington said in an interview that it was easier for him to master the Na'vi language than the American accent.
• At the time of auditioning, Sam Worthington was living in his car. According to him, he was invited to the casting via a phone call. The person who called told him nothing about the script, nor did they even tell him the director's name. Worthington was disappointed at first, thinking it was "another waste of time."
• The cigarette that Sigourney Weaver's character "smokes" is computer-generated.
• James Cameron was convinced that CGI effects had progressed enough to make this film when he saw Gollum in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.
• Jake's atrophied legs were prosthetics cast from the legs of a real paraplegic. Sam Worthington's real legs were tucked into the wheelchair and digitally removed in post-production.
• This movie took four years to make, from pre-production to release. James Cameron originally planned to have the film completed for release in 1999. At the time, the special effects he wanted increased the budget to $400 million. No studio would fund the film, and it was shelved for eight years.
• According to James Cameron, the Na'vi are blue to create a conceptual parallel with traditional Hindu depictions of God (e.g., Vishnu and his later "avatars"--a Sanskrit word meaning "a manifestation of divinity in bodily form"--such as Rama, Krishna, etc.) but also because Cameron just liked the color blue.
• James Cameron wanted an unknown actor to play Jake Sully, because it would give the character a "real" quality--the guy you want to have a beer with, who ultimately becomes the leader who transforms a whole world.
• "Unobtainium" is a humorous term used mainly in the aerospace industry. It describes a material that is perfect for an application (but does not exist), is extremely expensive, or violates the laws of physics. Its chemical symbol is Uo. "Unobtainium" is also a general concept term used by sci-fi enthusiasts for any fictional substance that is needed to build a certain device that is crucial to the plot of a sci-fi story. "Unobtainium" is featured in The Core, where the earth-boring vessel called the "Virgil" has a hull made from unobtainium to help it withstand the massive pressures inside the Earth's core. "Unobtainium" is also an anti-gravity element in the online multi-player video game Skyrates.
• According to Jake's video logs, the entire film (on Pandora) takes place over a 96-day period. The first log is dated 05/19/2154 and the last is 8/24/2154, which is three months and five days later.
• In the final battle sequence, Neytiri has a white hand print on her chest as part of her warpaint. It has five fingers, indicating that it is Jake's hand (avatars have five fingers while Na'vi only have four).
• There's a lot of similarity with this story and key elements of a short story by ^[?] Jack Williamson titled "Call Me Joe".