So who's eywa?

[apache_blanca]

your way to see the movie is yours - but I daresay, if I ONLY saw the movie on DVD, and never in 3D... not that it would have caused a different feeling, but watching it on a big screen in 3D (especially in IMAX that I never did) makes you submerge in it, I was really like on Pandora all the way & when I went out & saw the cars, buildings, lamp-posts etc, I was like: "Wait... where am I? I am on a wrong planet, Get me back to Pandora!"

I would watch Avatar 2 in a movie theater in any case, in IMAX if I can - but free choice is everybody's right.

[Ateyo leSyaksyuk]

undecided

[Niri Te]

The biggest reason that Ateyo and I saw the movie so long after it opened was that the local news reports when the movie first came out said that it was part real movie, and part animation. Well animation to us means Wizzards, Roger Rabbit, or Ice Age, NOT Motion Capture.. We quite possibly would NOT have seen it YET, had we not walked into our friend's place just as the cable TV version of it started on his giant flat screen TV
.
Now that we hear that this might end up with Eywa being something OTHER than an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent. DEITY, than we are going to be emotionally and spiritually.hurt.

We don't want that to happen, so we have decided together, that the safest thing to do, is to wait till several of our like minded friends have already SEEN the movie, and we will pointedly ask them, HOW did Avatar.2 develop Eywa.

Their answers will determine whether or not we see any of the sequels.

The fanfics that Ateyo is writing, and I will load the first 10 or 12 chapters of when I get my hot rodded computer
back from my brother next week will have Eywa as the all powerfull deity of all of Creation, who has had just about enough of humanity's destroying everything in their insane quest for money and power.

[Human No More]

By definition, it isn't animation as it uses a filmed actor

I seriously doubt JC is going to give explicit answers here though, either towards magical thinking or realism, specifically because to do so would alienate fans who follow the other. That's the beauty of it - people can some up with magical explanations or realistic ones, and there's enough present that either one can be seen as a correct interpretation in their eyes.

People who think the explanation is magical can point to some of the terminology (even if much is used by humans in-universe) and even certain logistical points (the animal attack in the battle, for example).

People who think the explanation is realistic can point to the biochemistry, the related biological concepts already present in plants, and even parallels in modern AI research and human biology.

Some people might even think it's somewhere between the two.

At a risk of sounding like Eltu, is any of these necessarily an answer? I'd say not simply because JC wanted Avatar to have a meaning to a lot of people, which means accommodating different viewpoints.

If anyone saw The Abyss, it's the same there. The aliens in that film travelled to Earth, and while their capabilities are shown and by all means possible for a species advanced enough to reach Earth from another solar system, it's never explained at all. I never thought that some people might have considered that magic until just now, but it makes sense for the exact same reason that Avatar does.

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by Human No More

People who think the explanation is magical can point to some of the terminology (even if much is used by humans in-universe) and even certain logistical points (the animal attack in the battle, for example).

People who think the explanation is realistic can point to the biochemistry, the related biological concepts already present in plants, and even parallels in modern AI research and human biology.

Some people might even think it's somewhere between the two.

Or that they're the same thing.

At a risk of sounding like Eltu, is any of these necessarily an answer? I'd say not simply because JC wanted Avatar to have a meaning to a lot of people, which means accommodating different viewpoints.

Doesn't that mean the answer is, "Neither, because JC was being deliberately ambiguous?" Or possibly that Jake was the Walrus?

[Moco Loco]

Okay Clarke, so glad you didn't just link to Tropes. Anyway, I don't think deliberate ambiguity is anything bad, especially with such a complex concept in a movie.

[apache_blanca]

Originally Posted by Human No More

I seriously doubt JC is going to give explicit answers here though....
At a risk of sounding like Eltu, is any of these necessarily an answer? I'd say not simply because JC wanted Avatar to have a meaning to a lot of people, which means accommodating different viewpoints.

I'd agree with this. All of us are Avatar fans, we loved it - and this is why we're here. But we see different things in it , & they don't contradict each other. Me, the flow of energy & 'Eywa is real', other people see samples, gorgeous brain activity & signal transduction, some love helicopters... some love all... all these are parts & different facets of 'the blue diamond of Avatar', & Avatar is more than the sum of its parts.

either towards magical thinking or realism, ...

makes me think of South American magic realism (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Isabel Allende, Mario Vargas Llosa...) - where the human and non-human worlds constantly interact & influence each other (a hero dies - & it rains yellow flowers, people fight in a backyard - & all the hens in the hen-house start fighting, someone yells in the kitchen - & the beans get... scared! & stop cooking, & one should sing & clap one's hands to soften their hearts...). Maybe it has not much to do with the OP - but certainly with the flow of energy! (try to have room-mates of Amazonian origin for a year, & after a while you'll stop saying "What the hell have you been smoking?" it's Really their way of understanding the world).

[Human No More]

Exactly.

Never heard of 'magic realism' before though, and "what are you smoking' definitely comes to mind, but really, it's just a different way of going about things, and really quite fine as a personal thing as it doesn't change anything. Seeing the world a certain way makes someone happy; maybe that's fine as long as it doesn't affect others.

[apache_blanca]

tolerance & respect are the keys to peaceful coexistence

[allroock123]

Originally Posted by apache_blanca

tolerance & respect are the keys to peaceful coexistence

Trying to stay on focus,, I think Avatar manages to touch on and force some deep self Reflection on the roots of very deep core human issues people never questioned before. This seems to be a real global phenomena where people are starting to question the root core reasons "way we act the way we do". I honestly think we will be "forced to address these issues that form the roots of our peoples never ending global conflicts and enviromental disrespect
We question why we live in a fear based sociaty and resonate with the Examples of the Na'Vi Community "Yet" our own native peoples have warned on theses issues for generations.
Avatar Builds a "Bridge" of understanding through is examples.
"Yet" whats spoken on comes from a very down to earth source.

[Porthos1]

I just spent the last hour reading through this; wow.

It is my opinion that James Cameron is not making Eywa some kind of a God/dess (Gaia), a super computer of some alien race or a Bio-network coming self aware (Skynet). It is not magic. These are easy and well worn concepts. So worn are these story lines that if he desides to use them, the term “Jump the shark,” comes to mind (I’m with Apache here). Since when has Cameron done something common place or easy. I think he is going big science fiction wise. In the Cameron universe, James is developing a complex character; Eywa is a single, planet-encompassing sentient organism that ‘…cannot be reduced to human concepts, ideas or images.’” IMHO. This is the canvas he is painting his story on and in the end, we will only see the canvas.

Nice posts Allrock and Human.

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by Porthos1

Eywa is a single, planet-encompassing sentient organism that ‘…cannot be reduced to human concepts, ideas or images.’” IMHO.

You mean a Jupiter brain?

[apache_blanca]

what is magic? something that doesn't have a *scientific* explanation (yet)?
Since immemorial times there were legends about flying carpets & the like - now we have flying devices, from hang-gliders to space ships. There were legends about seeing far away places with a silver plate & an apple running around it - now we have TVs etc. people were laughed at (& burned, here in spain) for saying that the Earth was round - now we have satellite photos.

in these cases, Magic became science, and it was only a question of time. There is no contradiction. Although the definitions of 'magic' and 'science' would vary. Many men, many minds.

Me, give me the flow of energy, the spirits of animals, and Eywa is Mother of All , & the ancestors that keep living there (I've just watched Avatar again, alone, the first time since the Meetup - & cried buckets ) - but out of respect to different points of views of different fans, I would imagine that an ambigious answer could be the best one.

and in any case it's up to JC to decide. i am sure he has more than one surprise up the sleeve!

[auroraglacialis]

I personally do not think that there will be any definite hints or even an "explanation" of the nature of Eywa, especially not of Eywa as an artificial construct. I think this is very unlikely. Eywa was depicted in the movie as an archetype of a natural, organic, powerful connection of living things - she was an analogy to human indigenous spiritual thinking and so where the NA'Vi. Cameron would not destroy that emotional connection by going for some "hard SciFi" technological explanation. I hope. Avatar was not really a hard SciFi movie in that it was not focussed on technology so much (though they did check their physics and biology for realism), but the technology and science was a backdrop for a very emotional story that uses many archetypes of human thinking and desire. The main attraction of Avatar to viewers was not fascinating spaceships, big guns, fancy helicopters and cool beasts - but it was the emotional effect of the world of Pandora, the tranquility and excitement of the NA'Vi culture and the connectedness of Eywa. To drop significant hints that Eywa has to be an artificial construct would greatly diminish this effect and basically turn everything upside down - I dare say it would insult indigenous spirituality greatly and thus it would be something I cannot imagine Cameron would do.
One thing however is curious - there are some elements in the depiction of Eywa that do not match the probably oversimplified mechanistic model of the Skypeople's scientists. At least we get no hint how the animals get to know that they should fight against the skypeople (did they all run up to the ToS to get instructions by Eywa? I dont think so.) And in the cut-out scene of the Dream Hunt, Jake saw his fate as a rider of Toruk before it happened - a sign of premonition? There seems to me that there are some things happening there, that cannot be explained by a biological neural network that connects with roots or nerve fibres to communicate - there is something nonphysical involved as well, though it hides itself as a mystery. And I think Cameron intends it to be that way - allowing the imagination of the viewer to emphasize these points or to dismiss them as probably having a logical explanation not yet explained. That is the magic of good cinema I think - to show a fascinating emotional concept that cannot be pinpointed to have a single "explanation" which would inevitably alienate some viewers and reduce the circle of fans. A movie with a lot of fans has to be fuzzy in many places so that all kinds of people can interpret it in a way that fits to their own imagination.

Gaia however is the goddess of Earth. Of course the "Gaia theory" later on adopted that name and this theory was not including sentience as a necessary element at all. It started out as a way to explain homeostasis indeed, but quickly draw the connection that as biology was involved in that system, one could describe the earth just as any living being as a pocket of homeostasis and thus Earth in a way is a living organism.

Lovelock did not say it was sentient, but that its elements can in a way be compared to parts of the body of a traditional living organism. So it is not merely about homeostasis. Other people added the thought that Earth may also be sentient, on the scientific side it is namely people like Paul Stamets seem to think that there is something to it, while there are plenty of people focussed more on spiritual matters that take the original concept of Gaia as a goddess and the Gaia theory and take these elements to form a concept that is more like Eywa in the movie.

[Nrra Utral Ayseoä'ite]

I'll tell you who's Eywa.

My true Goddess to believe in.
I tell you why:
Once, sitting on the toilet with huge pain in my stomach (that kind of pain when you almost wish for death) I started to pray to Eywa. Believe it or not, my pain went away. Then I realized the Great Mother exists and heard me.

My belief completed itself yesterday, when oeyä Sa'nok told me her grandmother feels much better.
On 17th this month my Mother's grandmother, a more than 98 and a half years old lady, broke her bone which I don't know in English, but it doesn't matter. She was brought to hospital. The doctors always made excuses on why they don't operate on her. On 20th I couldn't stop myself crying when we visited her and the doctors said maybe on Monday..
Now she was operated and feels surprisingly better.. that she would like to walk away! (femur/thigh bone's neck was broken)
I always got the news from my Mother, who got the information from hers. (via telephone) My grandma went to the hospital quite often.
So, on 17th (I think..,) I prayed to Eywa for help and to send Atokirina's there. The next day my Mom tells me her grandma feels no pain and doesn't understand why she is in hospital. (I know Eywa made that happen.)
I sent Atokirina's on Monday, too. I also visited my grandma that day, she told me her Sa'nok opened her eyes. (after the operation)
And yesterday my Mom told me what I've already written down. So yesterday evening I gave my thanks to Eywa and told Her I completely believe in Her (& not in the "God" society made for themselves..).
Eywa proved me She is true.

Oh, another thing. My Sa'nok's grandma dreams to live 100 - and she is just 1,5 years apart from that. Eywa may help.
~

So that's my story and that's why I believe in the Nawma Sa'nok.