Thirteen years ago, James Cameron took us across the galaxy to Pandora and introduced us to the Na’vi. Alongside Jake Sully and his avatar body, we learned all about this mysterious place and the ways of the Na’vi.
Now, though, it’s time to return to Pandora in the new science fiction movie Avatar 2 The Way of Water, and we thought before you head off to that beautiful but dangerous place, we’d refresh you on precisely what the Na’vi are and tell you a little more about their home, Pandora. Don’t worry, there are no spoilers for the new James Cameron movie.
The Na’vi explained
The Na’vi are the native inhabitants of Pandora. Best described as ‘blue cat people’, the Na’vi are, on average, three metres tall, and although they’re wiry and slender, they’re much stronger than human beings.
While the best-known clan, the Omaticaya, live in Pandora’s dense jungles, the Na’vi live across the moon’s surface and are broken up into several clans occupying multiple biomes.
Despite the crudeness of their technology, the Na’vi are a highly intelligent and profoundly spiritual people. They believe in the goddess Eywa, the great spirit of Pandora that binds all life together. As such, the Na’vi have great respect for the natural world.
The unique thing about the Na’vi is their ‘queues.’ Commonly described as ‘the Na’vi’s ponytails’, all animals of Pandora have a queue, and they essentially serve as biological USB connections allowing the Na’vi to connect to Eywa.
Pandora explained
Pandora, known to the Na’vi as Eywa’s child, isn’t a planet. It’s a moon orbiting the gas giant Polyphemus in the Alpha Centauri system, about 4.3 lightyears from Earth.
Pandora is teeming with life, and countless different species of flora and fauna call the moon home. For whatever reason, life on Pandora has evolved so that all living things on the planet share a connection.
This has resulted in forming a moon-wide network, sort of like a biological supercomputer, that allows those who connect to it to experience the memories of their ancestors and also allows the Nav’vi to tame the wild animals of Pandora.
In the first movie, Grace describes this biological supercomputer as Eywa, calling it an organic “super brain” with 20–100 times as many as the human brain.
Avatar 2 The Way of Water is in cinemas from December 16; you can read our Avatar 2 review here. If you need a refresher before seeing the film, be sure to read our article, ‘Everything you need to know before watching Avatar 2‘.
If that wasn’t enough, we’ve also got guides on how to watch Avatar 2, the Avatar 2 runtime, how much Avatar 2 cost to make, the differences between a Na’vi and an Avatar, what happened to Jake Sully’s human body at the end of Avatar, and even the Avatar 2 cast. Finally, we’ve written everything you need to know about the Avatar 3 release date.