1. Who directed Avatar?
James Cameron
Cameron wrote the treatment in the mid-1990s and shelved it until performance capture and 3D cameras could do what he wanted, which took more than a decade. It was his first feature since Titanic, and it took the worldwide box office record from that film.
2. Who plays Jake Sully?
Sam Worthington
Worthington was a little-known Australian when Cameron cast him; Jake is a paraplegic former Marine recruited into the Avatar Program at short notice. He played the part on a bare stage in a capture suit, and the Na'vi body was animated from that performance.
3. What is the inhabited moon called?
Pandora
Pandora is a moon of the gas giant Polyphemus in the Alpha Centauri system, with air that is poisonous to humans, hence the masks. Titan is Saturn's moon, Endor belongs to the Ewoks and Arrakis to Dune.
4. What are Pandora's blue people called?
Na'vi
The Na'vi are roughly ten feet tall, blue-skinned and bioluminescent at night, and their language was built from scratch by the linguist Paul Frommer for the film. The Kree are Marvel aliens, the Fremen are from Dune and the Ewoks need no introduction.
5. Who plays Neytiri?
Zoe Saldaña
Saldaña had just played Uhura in the Star Trek reboot and never appears as herself here; Neytiri is animated entirely from her captured performance, down to the facial expressions. Neytiri is the daughter of the clan's leader and its spiritual head.
6. Which film beat Avatar to the Best Picture Oscar?
The Hurt Locker
The Hurt Locker, directed by Cameron's ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow, took Best Picture and Best Director at the same ceremony where Avatar won for cinematography, visual effects and art direction. All four options were among that year's ten Best Picture nominees.
7. What valuable mineral are the humans mining?
Unobtanium
The name is an old engineers' joke for any material that would be perfect if only it existed; the film's version sells for a fortune per kilo back on Earth, which is the mining company's whole case. Adamantium and vibranium are Marvel metals.
8. Why can Jake use the avatar intended for his brother?
They are genetically identical twins
Tommy Sully was the scientist the avatar was grown for, and avatars answer to one genome only, so when he was killed in a robbery the company offered the slot to his twin. Quaritch later dangles a spine operation to keep Jake loyal.
9. What is the name of the security commander?
Miles Quaritch
Quaritch runs security for the mining operation, has refused to have his Pandora scars fixed, and recruits Jake to report on the clan from inside. Selfridge is the company administrator, Norm Spellman the other new avatar driver.
10. Who plays Quaritch?
Stephen Lang
Lang was a stage actor who had auditioned for Cameron's Aliens two decades earlier without getting a part, and Cameron remembered him. The character was brought back as a Na'vi recombinant so he could return in The Way of Water.
11. What does a Na'vi rider physically connect to a creature to form a bond?
A neural queue
Every Na'vi has a braid ending in neural tendrils, and bonding, which they call tsaheylu, means linking it to the matching organ on a direhorse or a banshee. The same link lets them commune with their ancestors through the Tree of Souls.
12. What are the floating mountains commonly called?
The Hallelujah Mountains
The mountains float because of the magnetic fields around the unobtanium deposits inside them, which also scramble the humans' instruments, so the gunships fly in half blind. Cameron has cited China's Huangshan range as an inspiration for the look.
13. What is the Na'vi deity's name?
Eywa
Eywa is less a goddess than a planet-wide network: the trees on Pandora are linked root to root, and the Na'vi can store memories in it and hear their ancestors through it. Grace, the scientist, is the one who works out that it is measurable biology.
14. What giant tree houses Neytiri's clan?
Hometree
Hometree is a single tree taller than a skyscraper and hollow enough for the whole clan to live inside, and it stands on the richest unobtanium deposit for miles around, which is the whole problem. Selfridge has it toppled with gunships and incendiaries.
15. What makes Neytiri decide to spare Jake and take him to her clan?
Seeds from the sacred tree settle on him
Neytiri first lowers her bow when a single seed drifts onto her arrowhead, and after she has saved him from a pack of viperwolves and tried to walk away, a whole cloud of them settles on Jake. She reads that as a sign from Eywa and takes him to Hometree.
