Jake's Learning Rate

[Patrice Maire]

I beg to differ with X.,.Pandora.,.X.
He said he wasn't much of a horse guy, but was born to fly. He even had dreams of flying while in the VA hospital.
From personal experience, some people have an innate sense and ability for certain things. When I was about 8 or 10 I went horseback riding for the first time. Without any lessons and only having watched tv, I knew exactly what to do and how to sit on a horse, even the handlers thought I was experienced.
Jake was a Marine and had a training regimen ingrained in his memory. I can fully believe he could ride a direhorse, fly an Ikran...even shoot a bow (I've taken archery and learned how to do it properly and hit a target in a month with only having class twice a week!) Remember that both the Ikran and horse had tsahaylu, that helps with the learning curve somewhat.
Just a note, basic combat training for the Army is what... 9 weeks? and what do they learn how to do? Shoot a weapon (with great accuracy in some cases), march together (in synchronization btw), field strip a weapon, hand to hand combat as well as tactical combat. I think Jake had plenty of time considering it was essentially an immersion course.
Now...as far as the hometree falling is concerned.... If they shot their HE missiles inside and hit the supports on the far side first, that's the equivalent of making a first cut on a tree before starting the actual cut. When they blew out the supports on their side, it would fall away from them.

[X.,.Pandora.,.X]

ok 2 things, 1. I said Jake could shoot a bow in 3 months, easy
2. they hit the inside colom the Na'vi use to go up and down the tree, not the southern colums

[Patrice Maire]

My apologies, I did misread what you said and by the time I realized that, I had no time left to correct it.
I'm not really going to pick apart the scenes anymore. Need to step back from analyzing it and just watch it with a new set of eyes. And wait for the re-release announcement. For real!

[Fkeu'itan]

Originally Posted by X.,.Pandora.,.X

lol fk, well atleast we agree on somthin

True enough.

[joeylovesgaia]

Jake is special. No other human or Na'vi would have learned a whole culture that fast, but Jake is some kind of prodigy. Mythic heroes have a way of doing the impossible.

Maybe Jake was a reincarnated Na'vi all along?

[Patrice Maire]

One thing I noticed (and it's hard to say whether to put this on the other thread or not) Cameron showed Jake learning all kinds of skills, running, tracking, hunting, jumping from great heights and landing without killing yourself....
Now... what did you see him doing after Hometree was destroyed?
He jumped from his Ikran to Toruk very much like he did from the tree following Neytiri's lead to fall on leaves to break his fall.
He used the falling skill when he fell from the Dragon ship....crashing through the canopy of trees and landing... in a roll but on his feet.
When he dropped the grenades on the gunship he had to leap off Toruk onto the ship, run, shoot, then leap back onto Toruk in one smooth move.
(That's just a plain awesome maneuver... don't know if he used any learned skills, but that was sweet!)
He used his 'death from above' maneuver on Quaritch running and jumping to get more height.
Jumping on the back of the AMP he had to avoid Quaritch trying to reach for him, hanging on like he did when he was on his Ikran as it flew out of control.

So, his military learned skills aren't the only ones he used. He adapted and learned what he needed in order to survive.
I just realized this today doing something else while at work. Had to come home asap and post it.

[joeylovesgaia]

Well, now I have proof. A second or foreign language is really easy to abuse, and hard to get right. Translated the poem wrong. (this site is on written language, but spoken can be just as complex).

And that's just the language. The Na'vi would have thousands of years of oral history, customs, idioms, all the little nuances of culture that you really can't appreciate unless you grow up there, or at least spend several decades there.

Jake had three stinking months. He didn't even have a book education on the Na'vi. It reminds me of the cheap follower of Deep Impact, Armageddon, in which a bunch of oil-rig roughnecks have only a year to become astronauts. At least Avatar offers a slightly more coherent explanation for trying something so stupid (on the Na'vi side, anyway--they weren't aware of the timeframe).

Either this is a Wall Banger, or something out-of-the-ordinary is happening here. The Na'vi have some kind of genetic memory; Eywa is downloading info to Jake's head; Jake is a reincarnated Na'vi who retained his memories subconsciously while human. Needless to say, I really wish Cameron had given some hint of an explanation in the movie. He subverted Mighty whitey in a couple places, couldn't he get rid of the blatant implausibility?

[Human No More]

Norm was teaching him Na'vi too (and presumably Grace). There's no reincarnation (lol), but genetic memory, I think so... That's a big part of what Eywa is. He didn't need to learn Na'vi perfectly though, after all, he had Tsu'tey and Neytiri translate for him when he was gathering all the clans.

As for the blog on incorrect use of chinese characters, it's funny, but not really relevant. In most cases there, people have no idea what the characters say when they get them done.

[Banefull]

Learning a language in 3 months is not impossible. It is more than feasible. During WWII my grandfather had to learn new languages fast and I mean FAST. In addition to his native Polish, he learnt Russian, Hungarian, Romanian, German, and later English. Without his quickly learnt basic knowledge of other languages, he probrably would not have survived in a concentration camp.

[ScottWashburn]

Jake's training as a recon marine would have helped enormously with all the physical skills he needed to know. Stalking, scouting, moving around in a jungle quietly, these are all things which would be second nature to him. As a genetic twin to his PhD carrying brother he is naturally very intelligent so learning much of the other things quickly would not be unreasonable. The language would probably be the hardest thing for him, but as we see, he's not exactly speaking it fluently even by the end of the movie.

So, it's possible. And Jake wasn't any ordinary guy. After all, Eywa chose him

[rapunzel77]

Originally Posted by ScottWashburn

Jake's training as a recon marine would have helped enormously with all the physical skills he needed to know. Stalking, scouting, moving around in a jungle quietly, these are all things which would be second nature to him. As a genetic twin to his PhD carrying brother he is naturally very intelligent so learning much of the other things quickly would not be unreasonable. The language would probably be the hardest thing for him, but as we see, he's not exactly speaking it fluently even by the end of the movie.

So, it's possible. And Jake wasn't any ordinary guy. After all, Eywa chose him

Exactly. In addition, I think that we are aware that Jake still has a lot to learn. He doesn't know the language completely yet. Also, there is still a lot of history, customs, and rituals to learn. All he learned was the basics. He combined that with what he already knew as a marine to achieve what he needed to do. As for as falling in love with Neytiri, its very possible. Sometimes it doesn't take very long for two people to fall in love.

[Neytiri.]

I think him learning na'vi so quickly would be dificult, but not if you were constantly with people who spoke it fluently.

and as to the other things, He's a marine, I doubt he would have any trouble learning how to hunt or move through the jungle efficiently. He actually fought in the jungle on Earth. It's not that difficult to use a bow and I'm sure he picked it up as quickly if not faster then anyone else would who is dedicated to something.

Learning to fly an Ikran wouldn't be that difficult either, all you have to do is think and keep your balance lol All in all I think he learned at a fairly realistic level

[Human No More]

Originally Posted by Neytiri.

not that difficult to use a bow

Ever used one?
Firing in the general direction of a large target from a relatively short distance (using modern bow and matching arrows) and being able to shoot consistently, accurately and at longer range with a much larger and more powerful traditional bow are very different things. When the longbow was a serious weapon in wars, people would train with them for hours every day. It's certainly not a 'point in general direction of target and pull trigger' thing

Learning to fly an Ikran wouldn't be that difficult either, all you have to do is think and keep your balance lol All in all I think he learned at a fairly realistic level [/COLOR]

Well, there's certainly nothing like it to base the experience on, but I think that with Neytiri teaching, it certainly wouldn't be too bad

Overall, he learned quite a lot, but was still demonstrably less skilled all around than the Na'vi, such as not being able to speak Na'vi well and having Neytiri or Tsu'tey translate for him, and skills related to being Na'vi still not coming completely naturally to him.