Avatar (film)/Headscratchers/Characters

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How the hell did Tsu'Tsey know that Jake and Neytiri mated? Was is just simple implication based on the fact they went off together?

 * It's all body language, and nothing alien either. Jake and Neytiri are holding hands as they arrive at Hometree in that scene.
 * Not only that, but Tsu'tey caught a glimpse of Jake and Neytiri together at the Tree of Voices destruction site. He was probably wondering where the heck Neytiri was, and found out she was with Jake the entire night. And was doing something all that time with him.
 * I wouldn't put it past the Na'Vi to be able to detect pheromones or something.
 * Maybe it's just body language: they act like a couple, and Tsu'Tsey was already suspicious of them because of all the time they'd been spending together, so he made the obvious logical leap.
 * Aside from the obvious - he either tailed them and saw it in action or had someone watching them - he could have used the whole planetary consciousness thing.
 * Given the fact that they literally had sex in the Na'vi equivalent of a church, its entirely possible that someone stumbled upon them after or during the act of intercourse. Awkwaaard...
 * Yeah, but being a highly spiritual bunch the Na'vi probably regard sex as a sacred act anyway, so having sex in a 'church' would be perfectly appropriate.
 * Maybe he just connected to the Mother Tree after the deed and, so to speak, caught a security cam registration of what happened in their "church". Probably not very nice, but love is a battle.
 * Actually, during Na'vi sex, the couple (for some reason) start looking a bit like each other, and that change is only detected by Na'vi eyes. So, in the movie, Tsu'tey likely saw the change and got pissed.
 * Na'vi couples connect their neural interfaces to create the lifetime bond. It is highly pleasurable and erotic, and they gain each other's memories and start to look a bit more like each other. It also has nothing to do with reproduction. You don't see this in the theatrical version, but it will be in the DVD.
 * The 'looking like each other' is from a couple of fanfics (primarily referring to tanhi patterns) and non-canon.
 * If they gain each other's memories, then why didn't Ney'tiri know about what Jake was really supposed to be doing?
 * Not a copy like, but more a picture, some of the other's experiences and way of thinking.
 * The human brain, depending on the person, can't necessarily remember every single memory. There are some people who can recall what TV show was playing on channel 7 at noon fifteen years ago, and there are some people who can't recall past memories or create new ones (eternally trapped in the present). I'm sure that the neural exchange doesn't involve forcibly jamming about two decades of memories into each other, so it's likely some info is filtered out (ie. only the good/pleasurable memories were shared)
 * There's a possibility that, due to the 'connection bonds' that take place all over the planet, Tsu'tey could internally feel a slippage, idiosyncracy, or a complete disconnect from his old partner once she's made her connection to Jake. I mean, if you lived w/ a cheating partner, you can often feel a distance in the relationship and our human biochemistry/metaphysiology/whatever doesn't come close to anything like the Na'vi or Pandora as a whole. Even a slight lapse in his connection to Neytiri could spell it out, via years of societal learning and deduction (similar to suspicions of your partner, if suddenly, he/she always has to "work late").
 * They were never actually mated.
 * If a Na'vi can tell by just looking at a couple, then Moat, the freaking spiritual leader, must be blind: "Is this true?" is her first reaction.
 * It's also implied that the Na'vi have a superior sense of smell to humans. That would mean that if Neytiri smelt like Jake the Na'vi would pick up on it and that would be the most obvious giveaway that they'd mated. It would also explain why it was necessary for Tsu'tey and Mowat to ask whether or not it was true- just in case there was some other reason.
 * Mo'at was giving Neytiri a chance to explain herself. It's what any parent does.
 * And just because you know something doesn't mean you intelligently acknowledge it.
 * Tsu'tey's been watching Jake and Neytiri spending a lot of time together for the last three months. He'd have to be stupid not to suspect the possibility. That was a dramatically appropriate time to voice his suspicions, whether he was justified or not.
 * The real question here is how in the flaming hell did Quaritch know?
 * My guess is that he guessed based on seeing Jake with a female on the video from the bulldozer, or was simply being obnoxious.
 * Uh, maybe because Jake told everyone he met the chief's daughter? You see him telling Quaritch about meeting the tribe, which had to have included something about the chief's hot daughter. Of course Quaritch was going to assume he wanted to get some tail.
 * Where's the logic in that? 'You were in the same vicinity as a hot woman. Therefore you betrayed your race for native tail'. Then again, it isn't hard to assume that a paraplegic would be sex-starved.
 * Quaritch knew he betrayed them and had heard about him hanging out with the chief's hot daughter, Jake's joke about "who has a date with the cheif's hot daughter" joke probably helped set the thought. The thought of soldiers betraying their country for "hot native tail" is Truth in Television, there were cases of sargents in Vietnam getting loose lips for a woman that knew how to clean their "weapon" was with them.
 * Given that the Avatars are all transmitting sound and video, all they had to do was download the logs for the past night, rewind, and "yep, Sully rode that direhorse. Load up, boys, I want to punch someone." Alternately, he figured that the fact he was smashing the 'dozer's camera meant he'd gone native, and downloaded the logs later.
 * Ah, what. Do you mean the camera on the bulldozer? Avatars don't carry cameras with them.
 * Or maybe both Tsu'tsey and Quaritch just guessed, because they're both suspicious bastards.

Why did Neytiri never find out about Jake being paralyzed?

 * Okay, not that big a thing, but this Troper was waiting for that scene, and it never came!
 * Two possibilities. One, it was revealed and discussed off-screen during Jake's training montage, or two, it simply never came up because she was only around his human body for a few short scenes where he's laying down anyway
 * Fridge Brilliance: it could've/would've been explained in a scene that was cut to keep the movie PG-13. We know that the Na'vi link their neural interfaces during mating and exchange memories. Neytiri would've received Jake's memories from Venezuela and the consequences. The scene that involved the neural linking was cut.
 * Now that would have made for an interesting twist of Character Development.
 * Perhaps she did -- Jake's legs are very obviously crippled, and they could have discussed it afterward, but off-screen. I even think it was she who suggested completely transferring Jake's psyche in the Avatar's body.
 * By the end of the movie, Jake's human body had really wasted away from the impressive shirt-filling physique he had at the beginning. The fact that he was paralyzed the whole time was just about as irrelevant as it gets by that point, in the artistic message (whatever you may think of it): his human side was basically gone in his mind, and he had been fully committed to the Na'vi cause for a while (even if he didn't just do the things we tropers would've felt the most obvious course of action to advance it). Of course, this does go into Unfortunate Implications land if you think about it too hard (what!? so he considers his human mind as crippled as his human body which is why he basically doesn't take care of it at all and doesn't even handle whether to undergo the spinal surgery as a decision, but as an inevitable gonna-happen or not-gonna-happen thing? yikes!), so it's probably best not to.
 * Its hinted that this is basically because he's been neglecting his sleep, neglecting eating, etc.
 * Which has a whole other set of Unfortunate Implications.
 * The "implication" that a guy who is paralyzed might want to spend more time in his big, awesome body that lets him ride dragons and stuff and hang around in amazing scenery with his hot girlfriend? That seems reasonable to me.
 * Maybe she DID find out, even before she fell in love with him, and she didn't care. To the Na'vi, humans are short, weak, unenlightened, funny-colored, smelly apes who can't even breathe the native air. Compared with all those disabilities, having to go around in a wheelchair is a pretty minor strike against you.

Why didn't Trudy get reprimanded for ditching the assault on Hometree?
Furthermore, why was she allowed to wheel food to Jake & Co. when everyone knew she was friends with them?
 * Its a corporate security detachment, not a military force. Trudy's not going to get court-martialled, merely fired. (If her desertion in the heat had led to someone else getting killed then the discipline would likely have been stark, but nobody got their paint job so much as scratched during the Hometree assault, so even Quaritch wouldn't have been in a mood to do more than bust her out of her job.)
 * And given that she's stuck there until the next ship home arrives, they're not even going to fire her (because then she's sitting around using up food and space without providing any useful work), just take away her flying status and reassign her to a shit job until the next ride back to Earth is in port, then fire her. She might even have been the person actually assigned to bring food to the prisoners, given that one of the possible shit jobs she could be assigned to was kitchen duty.
 * Of course, she could have just claimed some sort of technical failure occured so she needed to break off from the attack and return to base for repairs.
 * Assuming the gunman on her craft heard her say "I didn't sign up for this", that excuse probably wouldn't have worked.
 * As odd as it sounds, it is entirely possible that the company wasn't in a position to fire her legally. As much as the company was worried about bad PR, if there was anything in her employment contract that wouldn't require her to take part (or could even be argued to not imply such a requirement) in offensive military operations, I think RDA would be keen to avoid a lawsuit for wrongful discharge over that attack. As it is, they'd tried to avoid it with a multi-billion dollar program; keeping someone on staff through the end of their contract and who they'd have to replace for other operations would probably be a fart in a hurricane by comparison.
 * Maybe being put on lunch lady duty was her punishment?
 * Even on a corporate security detachment, you'd be consigned to quarters for a lengthy period of time. Colonel Quarich doesn't strike me as someone who would let anybody who went against direct orders off. She wouldn't be fired, or court-marshalled, but she'd have all her permissions revoked and pretty much be in the same situation as the other 3. Further points of interest are: -How come there's only one guard for that prison? I'm not a high-level security adviser or anything, but the idea of there being a prison where something as simple as someone coming and pulling a gun on the security agent isn't considered seems ridiculous. Even for a makeshift prison. -There's -no- defence systems in the complex capable of shooting down a helicopter? What happens if some of those birds/dragons/??? decide to attack? That she managed to fly out of the base was a head banger for me. By the time the Colonel has finished firing his rounds, whatever aircraft were ready for launch, or whatever guards were on security patrol would have been able to target her aircraft with all kinds of missiles, heavy weaponry or even machine guns.
 * Max was there. He clearly disabled all the security systems. Also, RDA aircraft and similar systems have IFF systems much like real life, which prevents friendly fire. Of course that will work both ways if someone steals one.
 * Why should there be armed guards in the hangar? The only opposing force on the planet to guard against is the Na'vi, and there are no living Na'vi within several dozen klicks of Hell's Gate, let alone any inside the outer perimeter of the base. Security arrangements become slightly different when you are the only settlement of human beings on the planet and are all supposed to be on the same side. As for firing weapons from other helicopters -- aircraft inside a hangar do not keep live ordnance onboard unless they are prepping to launch a strike, and we can reasonably presume that since Trudy has an IQ above a tree stump, she waited until there was nothing on the schedule before starting her escape attempt. Remember, she had control of the timing.
 * Word of God : "Major weapons towers at each apex provide heavy munitions defense against surface and air intrusions by large hostile Pandoran wildlife, while four smaller towers spaced along each side handle intrusions by smaller life forms, including burrowing attacks." from http://www.pandorapedia.com/doku.php/hell_s_gate . Why the helicopter wasn't gunned down by any of these towers is a major fridge logic moment IMO. Unless there's some schedule whereby the towers are disactivated at night too... But that's stretching my willing suspension of disbelief, even 6 light-years away.
 * They have IFF. Trudy's Samson would still have been recognised as friendly. Even if there WAS capacity to override it in realtime, she was already long gone by then.
 * Remember that bullets exist after they miss. Until the heli was away from the base, the only thing behind it would be the base itself. So any missed shots would have just been hitting the base and that's bad. Once the heli- was far enough away, sure, but at that point, shooting them down doesn't accomplish much since they're basically gone. Plus, it means you just wreaked one of your precious few vehicles that you need; more than likely, they'd want to take it back with minimal damage to avoid costly replacement and not having killed people which is probably a bad thing for corporation.
 * There is a certain understandable reluctance to shoot down one of your own helicopters without a direct order. Quaritch was too busy outside shooting stuff without a breath mask, and the hangar deck officer apparently didn't think to call the towers.
 * Most likely because everyone in the room was scrambling to get on their masks on after Quaritch kicks down the door.
 * Also, where did she get the time to find some paint and decorate her helicopter?
 * When all the Na'vi clans were gathering at the tree of souls, of course. Trudy meets the Na'vi, which is also where she gets her Na'vi jewellery from.
 * The first thing they do after escaping is airlift the entire portable uplink station into the mountains. The station has a supply locker. It is probable that a paint can was in there. And there's an entire night before the battle that Jake spends praying. Trudy apparently spent it painting her helicopter. (Which actually makes sense, when you think about it -- she needs something to tell the Na'vi "don't shoot at this one, its on our side".)
 * It also tells the Scorpion pilots, "Shoot your missles HERE".
 * Since they have IFF systems (you know... like aircraft on Earth do?), her code would have been revoked, so their tactical systems would have put up a big HOSTILE warning as soon as it was detected, paint or no paint.
 * The Na'vi do have body-paint. Also the paint she used was blue, a very common pigment in the flora and fuana of Pandora - there's no reason that she can't be using native paint provided by the Na'vi.

When does Jake actually sleep?
He seems to spend his time in human body making vidjournals and reports, and all time in Avatar training and socializing, so when does he get some real shut-eye? Or does the system somehow eliminate the need to sleep by always keeping one body asleep at a time?
 * It is shown a number of times that Jake is asleep at the camera. He sleeps for real in his human form, but he is also shown to be completely neglecting his human body in favor of being a Na'vi. It is actually quite reminiscent of an addiction such as Internet Addiction.
 * Sleep deprivation is strongly implied to be a major problem he's dealing with as the movie progresses, too. It kind of helps that while one body is asleep, the other body is active, too; the Avatar rests while Jake runs around and does what he does as a human, and when he gets back into the Avatar body, it is fully rested.
 * Okay for the bodies, but what about the brain? One of the point in sleeping is to put the brain on cooldown, which Jake can't do if he doesn't get real sleeping time, as in out of that coffin-like remote controller. By the end of the three month, his cortex must a sleep deprived wreck. Note that it would explain a lot of Jake's later raw idiocy, like when he decide to boing Neytiri while the apocalypse is right behind the door.
 * Fridge Brilliance! Jake is annoyingly obtuse because he's been getting barely any sleep!
 * More like plot hole since he is perfectly capable of figuring out the layout of the tree in order to destroy it while none of the Navi catch on. One of the problems when a movie is too ambitious and undergoes heavy editing.
 * ...isn't the job simple enough to just walk around/through the entire tree and note which columns seem to be bearing a load?
 * I was wondering this myself. I think he does have a designated sleep time, judging by how there was a bed for Grace to help him into.
 * It's likely that Jake would not have been awake long after exiting the avatar. Since the Na'vi are tribal, they probably would have started to go to sleep soon after sunset. They don't have T.V. or anything to keep them up really, and work, hunting and training would have been easier in the day. After putting his avatar to sleep, Jake only really had to do a video log and eat. If he had any chores, they would have most likely been pretty light, since he's a paraplegic. Depending on the length of the Pandoran day, Jake could have taken care of his human body for a couple of hours, and then had a full night's sleep, more or less. Then, he'd wake up in the morning and go back into the avatar. This troper assumed that neither Grace nor Norm spent the entire day inside their avatars, but Jake spent every waking hour in there.
 * Why do you assume that Navi are not active at night? There a lot of things that can be done at night, and having huge shining moons helps a lot. And again, Jack is stated to spend too much time in his Avatar. There is not "if", it's a fact.
 * Exactly. The Na'vi are all up on the night Neytiri brings him to Hometree. They have bioluminescent lighting, plus fires inside Hometree, and it's never truly dark on Pandora anyway.
 * Ahem. The first time Jake meets Neytiri it is night and she's wide awake. IIRC that scene and the one where Eywa persuades her to take him to meet the folks occupy a whole night. Of course, since we also see the Na'vi up and about by day, it does sort of beg the question of when they sleep.
 * When Neytiri first sees Jake, there is still light. The sun sets and then she saves him. It would be silly to assume that the Na'vi go to sleep the instant nightfall arrives.
 * Maybe she's patrolling, or hunting, or just restless and out for a walk. Human communities don't manage to sleep all at the same time or consistently the same amount in my experience, either. It seems most Na'vi, like most humans, are up during the day and sleep at night most of the time with some exceptions.
 * In addition to the moons, don't forget Pandora also has a second, more distant sun (actually seen in at least one shot) since Alpha Centauri is a binary star, which would be shining at "night" for at least part of Pandora's year.
 * In any case, there is one scene that actually shows Jake, Neytiri, and several other Na'vi going to sleep in the Hometree, so they do actually sleep at some point. Besides, how long is it going to take Jake to do a video log, anyway? Ten minutes and then it's lights out for the night.

Jake's "narcolepsy" episodes
Honestly the attack on Home Tree can't be the only time that Jake's been sleeping a lot longer than what's probably normal for a Na'vi, seeing as how whenever he's human he seems to link up late to lack of sleep and the need to eat ,seriously how did Neytiri not notice something was up they're sharing hammocks right next to each other?
 * She doesn't need to, the Na'Vi already know Jake is a "dream-walker"
 * Yeah, that was made expressly clear right at the beginning. The Na'vi know that Jake is a human-in-a-modified-Na'vi body. They've known for years, if not decades, that the humans can do that, considering that the humans have been actively negotiating with the Na'vi through the Avatars.
 * But considering their reactions to that sort of thing, i think they just know the dreamwalkers are different. They definitely seemed surprised, and when they went unconscious at one point, Tsu'Tey said "see, they are demons in false bodies" implying that they didn't normally do this. So, i think to them the "dreamwalkers" are just a different group of people to them and to the sky people.
 * They've never seen the dream walkers faint like that, that's why they are surprised. I would imagine that every single time that the avatar drivers left their avatars, the avatars were asleep. We see that in the beginning of the movie where they have a summer-camp-like bunkhouse for the avatars. Further, when Grace and Jake faint away, Norm tries to dissuade the soldiers with "You can't interrupt a link-in-progress! It's too dangerous!" which would imply the Na'vi have never seen an avatar faint like that. All they've seen is some incredibly deep sleepers. Tsu'tey probably suspected from this that they were "demons in false bodies", but it wasn't until they fainted out like that that he could show it as confirmation.
 * Of course they know Dreamwalkers are different! Didn't you see that avatars have five fingers and Na'vi have four? That would be the first thing you'd see if you were a Na'vi.
 * Well, actually, the first thing they'd probably notice is "hey, why is that guy wearing pants and not a loincloth?" But the fingers are a close second...
 * Besides, I don't think he was saying "see, they're just demons in false bodies" as any sort of dramatic revelation about Jake's nature. He was just taking advantage of the avatar's collapse to bluntly remind the others that Jake's not really one of them.
 * Neyteri obviously knows something about Jake's true nature as she's pretty quick to figure out at the end that the avatar won't wake up because the connection has been cut, and she understands that the human Jake who she finds lying on the floor is really him. They probably understand more or less what the avatars really are, and I agree that Tsu'tey was just affirming what they already knew and emphasizing Jake's alienness.
 * Neytiri knows completely - in the script then after Jake and Neytiri are mated, Jake asks her, that doesn't she know his real body is far away, and she says spirit is all that matters. I really doubt she is the only Na'vi either,because the Na'vi learned about humans - they also very quickly had the idea to transfer a person's memories from a human body to their avatar when needed. They likely hadn't seen a link interrupted before, but they would understand what had happened.
 * If nothing else, Tsu' may have used the wording he used simply because they don't have the language to describe things like genetic engineering and what have you. So he used the closest thing he could think of with the worse connotation in order to get the reaction he wanted.

Jake gets lost
After Jake gets lost, Norm and Grace flying around with binoculars, when Trudy says they have to go in and he'll just have to wait till morning to be rescued. We are talking about multi-million dollar investments here - the Avatars are not cheap. Yet they didn't bother to put any kind of tracking beacon in them? They're flying around the regular low-lands were Trudy's navigation works fine, so there shouldn't be any (already established) reason why location beacons wouldn't work on Pandora.
 * It's possible that the Home Tree has a similar field as the Hallelujah Mountains, considering that both have major deposits of Unobtanium, and that Jake had already wandered in too close. Still, would have been nice to mention it in the film itself.
 * If that is the case, how come the assault force had no trouble attacking Hometree? As I said above, there is no indication in the movie that there would be anything disrupting electronic signals in the jungle.
 * The assault on Hometree was a short-range, line-of-sight attack on one big target. They mention throughout the movie that they're capable of that much, even when their signals are scrambled.
 * Even with a tracking beacon, it wouldn't be exactly easy to find him that deep in the jungle. And remeber, RDA is a corporation. They'd cut costs wherever possible (especially in the Avatar program). I figured RDA thought "Tracking beacons for the Avatars? Why bother? Who would be dumbassed enough to get lost using one of those, anyway?"
 * He lost both his radio and his backpack when being chased by the palulukan.
 * Still easier to find them with a tracking beacon + binoculars than only binoculars. A better arguement for no tracking beacons is that the human operator will be able to tell the other humans where their Avatar is once they wake up, which is what Jake does. However, given how obviously dangerous Pandora is, especially to unfamilar humans, and the fact that each Avatar is basically a one-shot deal, a few hundreds of dollars to protect a multi-million dollar investment is really indefensible to exclude. Finally, as far as costs go, it appears that Selfridge is already discontent with the Avatar programme's success, yet the latest supply ship from Earth is adding an additional 2 Avatars to the team - clearly costs are not a big concern with RDA, at least not yet. The fact that Jake is there also shows that they would rather put an uneducated grunt into the (still growing) Avatar than just abort it, so again you would think they would invest a few hundred $ to ensure that an Avatar doesn't get lost/killed. This also would have made the military's job easier during the final battle as they'd be able to pinpoint the location of the Avatars.
 * It's possible that there was a tracking beacon, but that in the struggle for his life which involved a hell of a lot of running and fighting, that Jake's beacon just simply broke. Not to mention being immersed in water, which is even more plausible.
 * Better yet, why not radio the base, have them pull him from the Avatar and ask him where the hell he is. Then put him back in and get him to find a high place for extraction.
 * 1. Jake won't know, 2. Manually interrupting a link is dangerous 3. Having the avatar suddenly fall unconscious is a very easy way to get it injured or killed, exactly what they were trying to avoid.
 * How is Sully going to know where he is on a planet he's never been to before, in an unfamiliar jungle? And pulling him out of his Avatar will result in the Avatar dropping unconscious in the middle of one of the most dangerous environments in the universe. That strikes me as a Bad Idea.
 * He lost his radio at some point during the chase, probably after he fell into the river.
 * Well, he did lose his backpack during his encounter with the Thanator. So...

Trudy isn't wearing a re-breather while flying Rogue 1
Trudy's ship gets shot up, to the point that glass shards go flying and she even gets cuts on her face. There is at one point a visible circlar hole in her canopy that could leak quite a bit of atmosphere. Yet she is not wearing a re-breather. Really all of the pilots on the Scorpion gunships should be wearing re-breathers if they are expecting to be ambushed.
 * Vehicles and buildings use positive pressure, so small damage means that their atmosphere will gradually leak out, rather than the Pandoran atmosphere in.
 * Which scene you are talking about? Because in the one I'm thinking about this moment that is the least of her problems.
 * Trudy may have foregone the mask because it was uncomfortable or interfered with her vision, and simply buttoned up Rogue 1 like the pilots for the Dragon and the Valkyrie.
 * The atmosphere affects Jake in his linkup bed within seconds of being exposed, ultimately making him unconscious. Given the chances of her canopy being breached (she is shown wearing re-breathers during other flight missions that don't involve combat), I think avoiding falling unconscious and certain doom from the ship crash-landing would be a reasonable precaution. Alternatively she could have just had it at the-ready in case she needed it, in which case we should have seen her put it on when the canopy was breached.
 * Holding one's breath seems to be sufficient for most of the story until you can get to your mask. Remember, Jake doesn't have direct physical control over his own body in Avatar-state, whereas other humans in the story can hold their breaths because they can control their bodies. If Trudy's cockpit gets punctured, she goes for her mask, the same as the AMP pilots do if their cockpits get punctured.
 * What bugs me more is that her canopy was intact to begin with. Rogue 1 was shot up during their escape from Hell's Gate, and Trudy had to put on a mask then, but when she flies into the battle, the glass is intact again. How the heck did it get fixed? Did the Na-vi do it?
 * Trudy clearly did with a repair kit.
 * Nope. Trudy put on her mask when she entered the airlock to hangar and, I think, just didn't bother to remove it when she got off. What really bugs me is that hangar is having Pandora atmosphere during their escape, but it was shown to have a human-breathable atmosphere earlier in the film.
 * Her Samson was parked outside then, while earlier it was in the same hangar as the AMP suits. In the indoor shot, you can clearly see walls and AMP suits being serviced. During the escape, it is parked outside and can fly straight off.
 * One presumes the entire hangar is one giant airlock by itself - otherwise the planes and helis would have to be cycled out through an airlock which would use up valuable fuel if they were doing so while under engine power, or time in an emergency - when there is large scale maintenance taking place, the hangar is earth-breathable, when launches are (or might be in emergency) needed, the hangar has Pandoran atmo, so that materiel can exit quickly. Presumably, this would be the default condition. thespaceinvader, away from home
 * Her canopy was shot up during the escape from Hell's Gate and you can hear the atmosphere alarm same as the AMP suits have. During the finale fight, you can plainly see patches over the holes. Also, when she strafes the Dragon gunship, you can here Quaritch (or his pilot) yelling to seal the leaks. Presumably they have some sort of premade patches (or heck, duct tape) and a reserve air system so they can run the cabin at a slight positive pressure.
 * In a deleted scene, Trudy actually reaches over to her right and pulls out a typical breathing mask.
 * It could be that her cockpit was over-pressurised, IE having more pressure than the air outside it. Upon a breach, air would leak out instead of in. Likewise, the mobile link center wasn't overpressurised, which is why the toxic gas affected Jake so soon when it was breached by Quaritch.
 * It likely was (all vehicles and buildings are), but with a hole that big it didn't really matter.

Jake's atrophied legs
This is an incredibly minor problem, but it's been driving me insane: how in hell did they make the main character's legs look so withered? They couldn't be raw CGI or prosthetics, because there's nowhere to hide the "real" legs; they couldn't be real themselves without actually crippling Sam Worthington; and most "greenscreen" techniques are ruled out by the diverse shots, occasional interaction and extreme realism. Apart from anything else, I can't see the creators putting themselves through anything very inconvenient or expensive to achieve something so minor. Thoughts?
 * They were based on a cast of a real paraplegic's legs. Sam's legs were hidden in the wheelchair.
 * I assumed it was a body double (like the one used in Spider-Man for the skinny, pre-powers Pete) put in with some very sophisticated editing techniques.
 * Considering how much money was spent on this movie and the degree of advanced CGI they were using, I would honestly be surprised if those weren't CGI legs; I can actually see them spending a great deal of money and advanced effects on the legs to achieve necessary realism.
 * Seriously guys. 350 million dollars. It's not something minor, it's part of the main character and a major motivation in the plot!
 * A friend of a co-worker works in London doing CGI effects on movies. He worked on one of the Harry Potter movies, and spent a week removing pimples from the teenagers in the movie. Clearly CGI has reached the point where it is cheaper to do post-production than it is to just put makeup on the actors to begin with, so really I would expect his legs have been CGI-'dehanced'.
 * Maybe he was wearing green leggings so they wouldn't show up against the greenscreen?
 * I would probably go with the green leggings theory, they used it to remove Gary Sinises legs in Forrest Gump more than fifteen years ago, doesn't seem that hard to replace Jakes legs with atrophied ones using that process.
 * I read the answer someplace- they are in fact fake rubber legs (the mold came from an actual paraplegic), with the actor hiding his legs under the wheelchair.

How did Norm get out of the uplink station after his avatar died? It was in the middle of a battlefield. He's not in there when Quaritch arrives.

 * After his Avatar died, he pops out, clearly still feeling the effects. A few minutes later, there is a very brief scene showing him leaving the uplink station, wearing a mask and carrying a rifle.
 * There is? That scene must have been cut in the IMAX 3D version I saw.
 * There is. It is very unlikely this would have been cut - you probably just missed it. It is quite brief. On this point, though, I'm not sure why Norm left. Logically he should have stayed their to guard Jake as there'd be very little he (without military training or combat armor) could add to the fight. Obviously this would change the ultimate showdown between Quaritch and Jake.
 * He went to try and save his avatar after the link was interrupted by him losing consciousness from the injury.
 * I can vouch for this scene being included in the IMAX 3D version I saw last night. Whatever problems I had with Avatar (Quite a few...) that empty uplink pod was explained to my satisfaction on first viewing. His Avatar goes down and he gets back into the fight with a human 'respawn'.
 * Come to think of it, what in hell was he trying to accomplish by leaving? He would be attacked by the Na'vi on sight.
 * I'm not sure where the station was in the battle, but it could've been away from it, and the Na'Vi probably have seen Norm or at least not attack the guy not wearing combat armor.
 * If you're a Na'vi hiding behind a tree, catch a glimpse of a human, you draw your bow, then move around the tree, aim and shoot. It could be too late until you realise that you just killed Norm.
 * If you see a human with a gun (which Norm did take with him) shooting at other humans you KNOW are the bad guys, you'll probably take a moment to at least let him finish killing other humans before you shoot him. Plus, Norm's not a trained military guy... this is his first big battle, so he's probably not thinking too clearly.
 * Also, note that Norm is the only human with a gun running around who isn't in fatigues. Provided that somebody gave the Na'vi so much as fifteen seconds of uniform recognition drill, they're probably going to be able to spot the difference between him and Quaritch's mercenaries.
 * Plus, any decent hunter or soldier learns to check their target and confirm their shot rather than shooting from the hip at the first thing that seems like a target.

Did Jake make any battle plans?
Sure there's this whole montage of him amassing an army, but it seems to me there was no real plan...no tactics or anything or going over what the Sky People can do and what they were planning. They would have all died horribly in vain if not for the Deus ex Machina... "Quaritch: "Keep her in your sights! Arming all pods...""
 * They almost certainly intended to gather more warriors and train them, but the Colonel decided to make a preemtive strike, and they were forced to improvise. Maybe the Horse-people just weren't interested in listening how they should change their ancient tactics that had worked perfectly until then.
 * It was a large-scale, two-front, coordinated ambush using three different tribes that were widely separated using pre-medieval communications that still inflicted hefty losses on the enemy despite immense disparity in technology. Given that, I'd say the plan worked damn well.
 * The overall plan may have been the best they could come up with, still, shouldn't the air assault group (or at least Jake on Toruk, which I assume can take more punishment than a mere Banshee) have homed on the Walkyrie's and the Dragon's cockpits? They could have killed the commanding officers which would be quasi-instant win (ontological inertia or not) due to brutal lack of centralized communications. Anyway, ordering a few banshees to do it would have spared some grunts but killed the commanders, isn't that a good trade-off?
 * Frankly, the Valkyrie and Dragon gunship were impervious to banshees, period. The other smaller gunships were vulnerable only because of their smaller mass and size, which made it a lot easier for banshees or Jake's Toruk to grab onto and swing into the nearest rock face. Also, the other gunships had openings on each side, which allowed for banshees to reach in, chomp on the nearest human being, and fling the human out. Jake was carrying three hand-held explosives for the precise reason to cripple both the Valkyrie and Dragon, because the huge fleet of banshees can only do so much.
 * The horseclans took on the AMPs and infantry in a head-on calvary charge, and got wiped out. Never mind not trying to flank them, they didn't fire arrows at the exposed infantrymen first? They didn't set any pit traps? Punji sticks? Triplines? Rockfalls? The goddamn Ewoks have a better grasp of tactics than the Na'vi, how embarrassing is that?
 * Pit traps, Punji sticks, triplines: likely that there wasn't enough time considering that Quaritch was attacking tomorrow. Also, what would a goddamn tripline do to an AMP suit? Rockfalls: what rocks? Only thing large enough that's available would be the Hallelujah Mountains. My opinion is that the cavalry charge was to stall time while the banshee horde wipes out the bombing shuttle then everyone gangs up on the ground troops. Unfortunately, things didn't quite work out that way and Eywa had to call in a Zerg Rush.
 * Speaking of said Zerg Rush... if the Na'vi are really so savvy about the animals they share Pandora with, why didn't anyone think to use those rhinoceros-dinosaur things in the first place? We had already seen that they're territorial and will chase anyone who runs from them. So why not send one Na'vi out to find these creatures, enrage them, and run right toward the human ground troops? Seriously, I was expecting this to happen, having mistaken the whole "they'll chase anything that runs" speech in the beginning for a form of Chekhov's Gun. And that speech was used as such, sort of... but nowhere near as well as it should have been.
 * Having the titanotheres rush the humans without Eywa's call is very opportunistic, because it all depends on where the titanotheres were during the attack. If they were too far or were in a wrong position, having them charge the humans would be difficult or impossible. Not to mention that they'd also bowl over the Na'vi forces already attacking/retreating from the humans.
 * What surprised me the most is that Jake's group has one, count it, one gunship, albeit one with full stocks of armaments that could deal real damage, and he didn't send it immediately to blow up the Valkyrie's cockpit or engines. He had already displayed some tactical savvy by ambushing the Toruk from a sun-borne trajectory (because a) an attack from above is unexpected, and b) attacking in line with the sun blinds your enemy and disguises you with the glare.) So why didn't he have Trudy do the same thing with her gunship, and blow up the Valkyrie's (or at least the Dragon's) ridiculously-vulnerable engines? Not only was it a colossal waste of resources, it led to the stupidest and most easily-avoided death in the battle.
 * Trudy's Samson is...a Samson, not a Scorpion. It has no missiles, only a pair of .50 tri-barrelled machineguns (that can't swivel either), so her offensive capabilities were hindered. And note that she came into the fray to save Jake being seriously screwed over by the Dragon gunship - otherwise, Jake would be dead (disheartening the rest of the Na'vi) and one gunship taking on both the Dragon and the Valkyrie at the same time isn't the best idea. And keep in mind that Trudy says "Rogue 1 is hit, I'm going in. Sorry, Jake.", which suggests she fully realizes the fact that she's about to die in battle.
 * Oh, I see. I assumed she was flying the same kind of gunship used during the Hometree assault, which (if it was anything like the others) carried missiles. Didn't look close enough to realize these were two different models.
 * The Scorpion is a smaller single-seat one with no mid-deck or cargo area, two front machine guns, missiles and rockets - think Apache. The Samson is a much larger transport, with a cockpit for four, a cargo area with sliding doors (locked open), a winch, two small missile pods, and door guns - think Blackhawk.
 * Except that Trudy took part in the attack on Hometree. An attack that relied heavily on missiles. Her ditching the battle and not firing because she "didn't sign up for this" implies that she was tasked with attacking Hometree, implying her Samson was equipped with missiles. I also recall seeing a few shots that showed missile launchers on her Samson during the final battle. Her NOT using the missiles, even at point-blank range, on the Dragon and killing Quartich made her role a. Completely unneccessary, and b. a Wallbanger. Also, even if she had no missiles, you can still cause significant damage to an engine using bullets. She could have swooped in and hit at least one of the Valkyrie's engines. Or, y'know, shot up the inside when they opened the ramp and everyone else, including the Dragon and the soldiers stationed on top of the shuttle, were focused on the Na'Vi.
 * Trudy didn't go right from the Hometree battle to the final battle, so it doesn't matter whether she fired the missiles at Hometree. They probably don't keep that kind of ordinance right on the ships 24/7, so when they had to make a hasty exit, they wouldn't have had time to get the full loadout on the ship.
 * Yet the cannons were armed, and since she DIDN'T use her missiles, she should have still had them loaded. It is doubtful they would temporarily arm a bunch of Samsons with missiles and had them take part when they had literally thousands of Scorpions around, and the force that attacked Hometree didn't even have half of them. Thus, missiles are standard ordinance on the Samsons, and since Trudy's Samson didn't need to be rearmed...
 * "Thousands of Scorpions"? The game is not canon, and even there, you could maybe infer dozens.
 * Carrying bullets around (even if they're .50BMG) isn't the same as carrying missiles/explosives around in a Samson. Regardless, Trudy didn't have missiles - look closely at the missile ports when she duels with the Dragon. Why she doesn't is so far a mystery.
 * And another thing: Even without missiles, she could have still done a LOT more damage than she did. She could have torn apart the Vakyrie's engine or inside while the RDA Scorpions, Samsons, Dragon, and soldiers were focused on the Na'vi. She could have crippled the Dragon's insides with point-blank fire. Or she could have just flown in and engaged the RDA Scorpions, Samsons, and ground troops. Or she could have hid behind the FLOATING ROCKS, popping in and out to strafe the GIGANTIC, HARD-TO-MANEUVER AIRSHIP WITH ALL ITS GUNS POINTING FORWARD, if she HAD to engage the Dragon and piss off Quaritch. Instead, she does one run on the Dragon that does shit all, then fires two short bursts from long range that do zero damage to the Dragon, and just sits there while the Dragon peppers her with .50 fire and a missile.
 * The one with two rear guns?
 * She arrived into the battle to bail Jake out. Its' possible she had her priorities as "save Jake's ass" before "destroy the Valkyrie" (A Valkyrie with a significant number of machine-gun nests on its surface, which is an even worse idea to engage), rather than the other way around. In fact, her whole posturing in front of Quaritch and the Dragon was directly to take attention off Jake and onto herself. And Quaritch had to use a Macross Missile Massacre (as well as the Dragon could launch one) to finally take her down, so it's not like she wasn't a formidable opponent.

The Samson has 2 missile launchers which each hold 4 shots, but obviously, aircraft are not stored with missiles loaded in those, while the supplies at the shack clearly didn't include replacements. If there were missiles, a missile to an enigne of the Valkyrie and a rotor of the Dragon would have ben easy, especially coming up form behind a mountain, but then people would go "BAAAWWWW WHY DID IT HAVE MISSILES LAODED?" and actually have a valid point, unlike the OP here.
 * The gun nests were on top of the Valkyrie, so if she positioned herself underneath it, she'd be safe and sound and could blast away at the ramp, either locking it in place or (preferrably) ripping apart the inside, including the explosives. When she joined the battle, the RDA forces were busy engaging the Na'vi, and the soldiers stationed on top of the shuttle had already sustained losses. By the time Jake was getting his ass handed to him by Quaritch, the Valkyrie had opened its ramp, so she could have ripped apart the Valkyrie from inside unhindered. By the time the soldiers inside realized it was Rogue 1, they'd already be getting ripped to shreds. Hell, Jake could have just instructed Trudy not to paint her Samson and had her slip in with the rest of the RDA forces while they were moving through the Hallelujah Mountains, possibly just before the Na'vi attacked. By the time anyone realized they had an extra Samson, Trudy could have easily crippled the Valkyrie just by staying behind it, shooting up the sentries (leaving it exposed), then hitting the engines, or the inside when they opened the rampe. As for saving Jake's hide: She could have still done a LOT more than do a SINGLE strafing run (that accomplished shit-all) and then stand around waiting to die. Trudy was utterly useless in the final battle, and she suffered a VERY unnecessary and avoidable death, and it's all Jake's fault for being tactically retarded.
 * So now you're conveniently ignoring every statement made in this subject previously? Trudy arrived to save Jake's ass at that precise moment - we don't know what time she actually flew into the fray or what sort of damage she already did prior to intervening in the Dragon's attack. Assuming she did nothing/something off-camera is pure speculation and you can't use that for your argument.
 * She started off above and behind the Dragon (ie, with its engines and cockpit accessible to her guns, but out of its sights) and gave up that potentially lethal advantage to position herself in front of Quaritch's guns. It seems a suicidal blunder, and potentially enough to doom the whole offensive: by doing so she made it much less likely that she would be able to take down the Dragon before dying herself, and Jake had just demonstrated that he would have great difficulty taking out the Dragon without her help.
 * It is, of course, perfectly possible that she was not trained in air-to-air combat, and that she did not immediately realize how deep a hole she was putting herself in by flying down in front of it. I got more of an I Am Your Opponent vibe from her in that scene than a Heroic Sacrifice one, I think she knew Jake would be upset with her for entering the fight at that time, but not that she would definitely die.
 * Of course, this is all wrong. There's a deleted scene of her shooting down a Samson, and the Valkyrie was way too well protected, even if you decided to come from below and underneath (in which case you'd have to fly insanely close to not get hit by the marines on the ramp). The Dragon has a bigger blindspot in that its rear guns have very limited upward range, but then you're not only in the middle of the formation, but also above it.

== Awesome as it may be, isn't it just too big a coincidence that the peaceful science division's issued pilot, Trudy, would also be sympathetic enough to the good guys to betray her allies, and then later fight and die for Jake's cause? == I'm assuming that she was indeed part of the mercenary militia, the same as any other pilot in the entire army. I just think it's unfortunate that she didn't participate in the Hometree burning. It might've provided a semblance of a redemption arc and taken care of the whole "disobeying a direct order and not being in a shallow grave" from THAT particular Colonel. Particularly since that gunner seemed cheesed he didn't get to ventilate a few blueberries and certainly would've narced on her when they got back to base.
 * It happens. The science team could have selected her for their particular pilot because they knew her and they knew she was on their side. Happens in Real Life all the time.
 * That particular colonel kept going on about reducing casualties. It's stated several times that, the occasional trigger-happy grunt aside, the humans don't want to kill the Na'vi. They acknowledge that, from their perspective, attacking Hometree is an ugly thing to do, but something they had to do, so he probably would've cut her some slack on that. Also, Quaritch got everything he wanted out of the attack anyway. Why spoil his mood by dressing down someone who hesitated when the mission went off without a hitch regardless?
 * No, it is not a coincidence that the one member of the RDA's mercenaries whose duties involve continual, regular contact with the science team was the one most sympathetic to the science team. Its an entirely natural outgrowth of Trudy being the one who has the largest amount of social contact with them: she spends almost all her on-duty time flying them around, doing their supply runs, and being their life-line back to base. Provided that neither side is actively trying to avoid becoming friendly, its kinda inevitable that they would.

Whither Lyle Wainfleet?

 * In the original scriptment, this guy had an interesting subplot with him versus Jake, and he was also the one to kill Jake's Na'vi rival...now he just has two or three lines and gets stepped on. Did James Cameron have a problem with there being multiple human characters or something?
 * Most likely that stuff got cut the same reason a lot of stuff in a lot of other movies get cut, time. The film is just shy of 3 hours long as it is.

Jake not being able to see stuff outside the frame.
Okay, so, he's wandering around at night because the Idiot Ball got shoved up his nose and he wandered away from the group to go poke stuff. He's destroyed his jacket and put it on a stick and lit up a torch, on account of how dark it is, very sensible-like. And then Neytiri shows up, and he turns slightly to his left and HOLY SHIT HUGE BIOLUMINESCENT JUNGLE THAT GOES ON FOR MILES HOW DID HE NOT SEE IT oh wait, Idiot Ball.
 * I dunno about you, but when I'm getting chased by a pack of ravening wolf-hound predators intent on feasting on my multi-billion dollar blue ass, I'm not going to give a crap about the pretty bioluminescent jungle to my left. My focus is going to be on the animals trying to kill me.
 * Except the whole point of lighting the torch is because of how dark it was; the animals weren't after him until their attention was caught by the bright orange firelight. I dunno about you, but if it's dark and I'm trying to survive in the jungle, my focus is going to be on not wasting the few resources I have and attracting wild animals by setting them on fire if there is a huge bioluminescent jungle to my left.
 * I think he actually lit the torch as a way of fending off predators; note that he does it right before the pack of wolf-likes jumps him. He may have heard them coming and quickly improvised a torch.
 * Animals on earth generally avoid fire. With the exception of moths. So he probably assumed it would make them back off. As for the bioluminescent jungle...even when they blow out the torch, it's still comparatively dark, and if you're not used to navigating in low light in a jungle full of dangerous flora and fauna and natives, it would make perfect sense to make a torch.
 * This might be just me, but I got the impression that the jungle wasn't bioluminescing until he put out the torch. Like maybe the light from the fire was inhibiting it. Because Neytiri tells him he's an idiot, and puts out the torch... and then suddenly the jungle is glowing.
 * Indeed. Or else the bioluminence is only bright for the audience's sake - it may actually be very weak light that will only appear strong to the Na'vi night-eyes, and only if they've gotten time to get used to the darkness. In any case, Jake seemed to prepare the fire more for a weapon against creatures he knew were hiding nearby, than to actually see.

Jake goes from "touching everything that moves like a third grader" to "instant survivalist" overnight.

 * He figures out how to make a flammable torch seemingly instantly? From a random waterfall landing with no supplies or bearings? This from the guy who could NOT stop touching EVERYTHING that moved. The movie goes out of its way to show how inept and goofy he is because of all the awe and whimsy of this world... So much so that Augustine's pretty much written him off as dead when he's not recovered by nightfall. Next shot? 'This honey's probably exactly flammable enough to make an awesome flaming spear.' And it is.
 * He has military experience, and they do teach survival tactics in the military. He was goofing off when there was no apparent danger because he was curious about Pandora, and Grace and Norm definitely didn't need his help with the biology-related analysis crap. So, he goes off, doing whatever, and ends up jumping off a cliff to escape a Thanator. At that point, his knowledge for survival tactics kicks in.
 * Also, just because we didn't know it was flammable doesn't mean he didn't know. There was probably reading material that he read offscreen that told him Pandoran tree sap is flammable (or maybe it's flammable in real life. I don't know, I've never tried to set tree sap on fire)
 * It is flammable.
 * Very flammable. Burn-your-eyebrows-off-if-you're-not-careful-flammable.
 * Also, touching plants because they do cool stuff doesn't mean you're a moron who doesn't know how to do anything else. I know more than my fair share of college graduates, in fields including medicine, education, computer programming and engineering, all of them really good at that sort of stuff, who would have done the exact same thing as Jake did when he landed on the planet.
 * I heard some people were more curious about how someone who lived in a forest-less city-planet would even know how to make a torch, but I'd chalk it up to fighting in particularly crapsack parts of that "city".

Way to look delicious, Jake. Gawd.

 * Maybe it's my first world sensibility but it just bugs me that Neytiri is 'forced' to kill an angry lizard dog and proceeds to chew out Jake, who was merely trying to survive a single night in the most beautiful hell I've ever seen. Her reaction had me thinking that killing anything on Pandora was a grievous/unnecessary offense. Fine, whatever. Maybe they are that peaceful. Cue the future, where Jake shows how far he's come by killing the exact SAME type of animal but makes it quick and says a Power of Trust inducing death prayer. This lizard dog is food? So why not be practical in that first instance? Give the attacking dog the death prayer and bring it back as food instead of chewing out the guy who had the nerve to get attacked by a roving band of monstrous pack animals.
 * Sully actually tries to point out to her that he was kind of the victim when she rescues him but it's immediately dismissed as Sully being a 'beh-bee' who doesn't understand how the world works. Okay.
 * Possibly Neytiri is biased and unreasonable? Perhaps she has a pre-existing dislike of the Avatars ("dreamwalkers") that is only gradually worn away by extended contact with Jake? In that case, she may be playing up her own cultural issues as an excuse for being angry at the random blundering interloper.
 * The 2007 script mentions that Neytiri was biased against humans ("At first, I hated all Sky People...") until her encounter with Jake changed her paradigm.
 * I don't think she was neccassrily pissed at having to kill to save him, though she did take offense at him thanking her for it. I think it was more just a case of being pissed at humans in general and him being there. Hell, she was going to kill him herself until a holy dandelion seed told her not to. Between that and everything humans had been doing to her home, she was probably frustrated as hell and just took it out on Jake since he was there.
 * Jake gets attacked by a huge pack of viperwolves. The 'clean kill' he later performs with Neytiri involves a Hexapede, which is Pandora's equivalent to deer. They're not the same animals, so the situation doesn't apply. Also, I'm pretty sure the Na'vi don't hunt viperwolves for food.
 * The Na'vi only kill what they need for food. Jake forced Nytiri to wipe out an entire pack, which would be a little damaging to the ecosystem. There's also the fact that Jake thanked her, which seemed to piss her off the most. Thanking her for it was basically telling her he thought nothing of the animals' lives that she regretfully had to end. From her point of view, he should be sad and mournful like she is, as opposed to being thankful and telling her how much she kicked ass.
 * Actually, she only kills one with her jumping arrow shot in the start of the fight. The rest, she just beats down and scares away, which is why she does the death prayer thing for one viperwolf only.
 * She kills at least two, and prays for both of them. But yes, that was unnecessary killing that could have been avoided if Jake had been informed in the ways of Pandora.
 * Watched the film again, she kills three: two with arrows, and one with her knife. But on screen, she only prays for two of them.
 * The one she killed with her knife was one of the ones she'd already shot. She Mercy Killed it.
 * No, she stabbed one which jumped at her as well. Watch it again.
 * The reason why she is upset about the death of the animals is because it was unnecessary. The animals attacked Jake because he provoked them with the torch, ie, because of his own stupidity. Had he thought out his little torch gig better, there wouldn't have been any casualties.
 * It wasn't stupidity, it was common sense... for a measure of human common sense. Earthlings know that fire lights up the darkness and scares off wild animals, so that's what he relied on. Since it was his first night on Pandora, he simply didn't know any better. But like it's stated above, Neytiri was probably more upset at his show of thanks (where she was probably expecting a contrite apology;) after all, in a world as dangerous as Pandora, even to its natives, killing predators in self-defense or in the defense of others is probably commonplace.

When did Norman learn to ride the direhorse?
As far as I am aware after two viewings, Norman was never allowed into the Omticayas' village. Then they learn from Max about the impending attack, and by the next morning, Norman is riding in his avatar along with the Horse Clan of the Plains. Even Jake, an experienced fighter, had difficulties in riding a direhorse.
 * It's entirely possible that Norm just happened to be able to pick up direhorse riding better than Jake. I mean, Jake took several days to ride a direhorse properly but he pretty much perfected the banshee in one day.
 * It's also possible that standard Avatar-training involves riding a Direhorse at some point, but Jake never got that far before getting adopted into the Omaticayas. Dr. Augustine seems to be pretty determined to have her Avatar-underlings to live and work in conditions that best resemble the nature of Pandora, while still keeping them safe. Also, the Direhorses don't have the same cultural significance to the Omaticayas as the Ikrans do, so they probably didn't mind giving or lending a few to her, or allowing her to catch her own.

Why, oh why...
...did Jake, who is supposed to be a TRAINED FUCKING MARINE, wander away to look at the pretty plants in the first half?!? Sure he didn't go too far away, but you don't have to go that far to get lost in a jungle. And quite aside from anything else, I learned not to wander away when you're in a strange place when I was five. Oh dear, James Cameron, oh dear.
 * Chalk it up to euphoria. He just got the use of his legs back, sorta, and is visiting a literal alien planet for the first time. That would be enough to make virtually anyone forget themselves.
 * It's also possible he's never seen wild plants (or been to zoo or aquarium) in his life, and being able to breathe the air, eat the food (real food, not the solidified protein-shakes humanity's been reduced to), and of course walk around Pandora on his own might've given him a bit of an invulrnability complex despite all the danger.
 * But why did they send the two new guys out with only one experienced supervisor? There were enough other Avatars there that I would think Norm and Jake would have been put into different groups with at least one-on-one tutoring, if not two-on-one. And for that matter, wouldn't whatever brief that Jake got before he went out into the jungle have included a rundown of the major fauna in the area, especially those that might be dangerous, so he wouldn't have to rely on Grace's shouted instructions? If he needed more instruction, then why didn't the corporation make him wait for the next ship and give him some more training? Or delay sending him into the field until he had learned more? Or taken him out to a place that was much closer to the base, which he could have run back to when he was attacked? And on top of that, if there were such large animals that were basically bullet-resistant, why wasn't Jake given a bigger gun, which the larger body would likely have handled? The screenwriters were juggling idiot balls throughout the set-up of the plot.
 * Norm wasn't a real 'new guy', unlike Jake. Norm already logged in a ton of hours in simulators, knew the Na'vi language, and was a properly trained biologist ready for the job. It's likely the mission that Grace takes the two out on is a simple one, as Grace and Norm were only analyzing a section of a tree's root with little danger around while Jake wandered off. Jake was only assigned to bodyguard duty, and since he's an ex-Marine, he already has the skills to handle a gun and do the bodyguard position right. No furthur instruction is really needed besides "defend the scientist guys". The titanotheres were so bullet-resistant that the cannons on the AMP suits barely scratched them, if the cannons did any damage at all. There's no way Jake could have used a gun mounted on an AMP suit, let alone a gun that can seriously hurt one of those beasts.
 * It's likely there was no bigger gun to give him. None of the other Avatars were soldiers, so they weren't designing weapons for them. The gun Jake did have was the chopper's door gun, designed to stay mounted, and the only reason Jake could use it as a personal weapon (and not very effectively, given that he didn't seem to hit the thanator at all from point-blank range) was that he was already 9 feet tall. Probably the only guns larger than that were used by the AMP suits, and as noted, those are too big for Avatars - Jake had to use two hands just to wield the bayonet off of one of them.
 * Jake didn't just wander off in the middle of one of the most dangerous environments known to man, while knowing nothing about the environment. He was tasked with protecting the science team, and as soon as they got engrossed in their work and lost track of their surroundings (or Grace would have noticed him wander off and called him back), he lost sight of them. So he isn't just endangering himself by getting lost in a jungle he knows nothing about. He's endangering the science team that justifies his being there. If the cat thing that chased him away had snuck up on the others instead, they'd have been dead before he even knew anything was wrong.
 * Jake actually didn't wander away that far. Grace and Norm were able to catch up to him in several seconds. Also, the Thanator was going after the titanotheres at first, and then switched to Jake because he was easier prey.

Why would Dr. Grace, hardass scientist, chainsmoke in her own lab?
Not this troper, but the plant expert hired to create Pandora's fauna. Apparently "tobacco mosaic disease" is highly contagious, and would at the very least contaminate her samples.
 * I don't remember any scenes where she was conducting an experiment and smoking at the same time. The only noticable scene where we see her smoking was in the main link room in Hell's Gate, near the beginning. Anyways, she gathers samples in her avatar, in which she doesn't need to smoke.
 * "Need"? People needs a reason or motivation to smoke? Maybe she is simply forbidden to smoke in an Avatar that costs more than a Buick.
 * Not to mention that nicotine may be more poisonous to Pandoran life than to terrestrial life. Nicotine is a natural insecticide, after all.
 * Or it may do absolutely nothing to an avatar. Na'Vi neurotransmitters could be totally different from ours, preventing nicotine from acting as a stimulant. The substantial differences between Earth and Pandoran respiratory systems could also be a factor.
 * IIRC, James Cameron was trying to make a point about Grace not caring about her own body, and taking better care of her avatar self than her human self.
 * The most annoying part is that they rely on air purifiers and filtration systems to get their own oxygen in Hell's Gate (and, presumably, in the mobile uplink pods.) By smoking, she's just wasting the precious oxygen they need to survive. Heck, does the mobile unit even have filters, or does it rely on good ol' fashioned oxygen tanks? Because that would be even worse.
 * Filters and CO₂ scrubbers. Oxygen tanks would be completely redundant on a moon with almost the same O2 percentage as Earth.
 * How is smoking a waste of oxygen? The purifiers are only removing excess carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide. Beyond that, Pandoran air is practically the same as Earth air. And purifiers can be used for decades given you wash the thing (by scrubbing and water, no less) every two weeks or so.
 * It's a waste of oxygen inasmuch as it puts an unnecessary strain on the filters. True, it's possibly a negligible effect at the Hell's Gate base, but not so much at the mobile units, which don't appear to have any maintenance crew other than Grace's own staff.
 * I'm pretty sure the filters work as Pandoran air being filtered out into the mobile unit, then cycled out into the planet's atmosphere. Any smoke from...smoking would simply be cycled out, so what's the big deal?

Where the hell were they after they had sex?
They had sex underneath that special tree, but when they woke up, they were presumably a long distance away from it when they woke up seeing how there were bulldozers there...
 * Er, you can see how the bulldozers push the tree down, almost over them.
 * It's a fair question; I was confused too, at first. Once the sun comes up and everything stops bioluminescing, the tree doesn't look nearly as special, and is kinda hard to spot at first against the rest of the jungle. As for the bulldozers, they came to the tree, not the other way around.

Again with the Informed Ability, Jake...
Why was one of his first actions in the dark lighting a torch? A respected ex-Marine's first action in the dark would not be to 1) ruin what nightvision he has, and 2) announce his location to anyone within line-of-sight. Pure military instinct drills against precisely this.
 * He was fighting wild animals, not a human enemy. On Earth the best way to keep predators at bay is to build a fire. Unfortunately the same does not apply on Pandora.
 * Well, it kind of worked; just not very well.

Quaritch escaping the Dragon gunship
So...while the Dragon is spiralling out of control and falling out of the sky in the final battle, Colonel Kilgore gets into his AMP suit, grabs a nearby gun...and the exit doors just happen to open conveniently for him to escape? Seriously, wouldn't those doors be locked together by some sort of clasp system to prevent stuff like that from happening?
 * And wouldn't that clasp system have an override that someone, like, say, the overall commander of human forces on the planet, could activate in case they need to quickly escape?
 * An override for a gunship equipped onto an AMP suit not connected to the gunship itself?
 * The commander's AMP? Hell, equipping all the AMP suits with emergency overrides in case they need to escape would actually make good sense.
 * Actually, I'd expect all the AM Ps to have a "garage door opener" for the ship's loading door, so that the soldiers could get back in after doing something outside. "Open the pod bay doors, HAL..."
 * This gives the hilarious image of Quaritch pulling a door opener from a sunshade and clicking it, then waiting while the door opens with that noise

Jake never makes a full confession
Just before they destroy Hometree, Jake tells everyone something like "They sent me here to gain your trust, so that one day I would deliver this message, and you would believe it.", and "the message" he refers to is "They're coming to blow up Hometree." First, let's note that the approaching gunships make this pretty clear already, so Jake's purported mission seems redundant. But more importantly: Jake never makes a full confession! A full confession would go like this: "They sent me here to gain your trust, so I could spy on you and give specific information about the structure of Hometree, thus enabling them to destroy it with much greater ease. And yeah, I actually did give them all of that info, even though I eventually felt bad about it." Jake never says that.
 * ...and why would Jake feel the need to make an unnecessarily specific and heartless confession to his newly-accepted people? Like any person giving bad news, he's trying to break it to them as softly as possible, especially to his newlywed wife.
 * Also, the Na'vi knew Jake was one of the Skypeople and was telling them what he knew (it seemed like part of the reason for teaching him to be a Na'vi was so that he could try to make humans understand their way of life), so that part already goes without saying, and Jake didn't really offer any information to Quaritch that made a pivotal difference in the Hometree attack (while the report might've made the attack easier, it was probably doomed anyway with that much firepower aimed at it). For the most part, Jake's role as an avatar, and to some extent all the avatars, was to say "I speak for the Skypeople, and we're going to destroy you if you don't leave" and make the Na'vi believe it.
 * Jake was still responsible for the deaths on both sides in the climax. If he were upfront to the Navi, then there would not have been nearly as many deaths. He could have warned them and evacuated the area. At the same time, he could've gone back and tried to reason with the humans. They probably would not have listened but at least diplomacy would have been attempted. Instead, he spent three months being selfish and inactive. In this troper's opinion, the Navi had every right to ship Jake off with the rest of the humans.
 * Technically, Jake had to learn how to live first, because the Na'vi were not going to listen to some random skyperson. He didn't take the opportunity because even partway through, he was already coming to realise that life was so much better there.
 * Exactly. I don't know if this is what the OP meant, but Jake didn't make an *apology*. At all. He took the time he should have spent warning Neytiri and her people and spent it trying to impress her, and then having sex with her, instead. After hundreds of her people were killed, he "apologized" by showing up with Toruk. YMMV, but in this troper's opinion, that's a lot like "Hey, I invented Facebook! Want to date me now?"
 * Not quite. It's that he wouldn't have been trusted/believed beforehand - yes, he got absorbed in what he WAS doing, but couldn't have artificially sped things up anyway.

Why don't we see Jake's fight with Toruk?
The movie is three hours long, they spent time on other, less plot relevant things but they could take FIVE MINUTES to show Jake capturing Toruk? That was the ENTIRE REASON he regained the Na'vi's trust, it's the single most important thing he did. For the rest of the movie he's respected and honored based on this single accomplishment and yet WE DON'T SEE IT. "He came at it from above" is not enough. Even if the fight was ten seconds long, show us those ten seconds.
 * Far more 'important' scenes have been removed to streamline the movie, including Tsu'tey's actual death, a huge hunt and subsequent festival Jake takes place in, and more. Removing ten seconds would barely be an afterthought.
 * Drama. You see him jump down, ten minutes later he gets a Big Damn Heroes moment. It's highly unlikely (within the confines of the story) that he would fail to subdue the Toruk, but the sudden cut is, in my opinion and apparently the director's, much better than a redux of the Banshee scene
 * Because they couldn't figure out how to make it cool enough to justify its place in the movie. Or they couldn't figure out how to do it in a way that looked believable at all. I mean, how would you design such a scene? Guy falls onto the smooth back of a huge hostile winged creature at a great height... and wins. Even James Cameron couldn't make it fly.
 * It comes close enough - it's for that split-second moment how it changes to the Omatikaya's perspective.

Norm's Avatar
Was it ever really explained how Norm managed to log time in his avatar body before reaching Pandora?
 * He logged time on a simulator. Listen carefully during the scene.
 * More to the point, where was his avatar during the events of the movies? He's seen in the very beginning, the very end, and just kinda... disappears during the middle bits.
 * He was off-camera. Duh.
 * Pay attention to when Jake first gets his avatar. There's a bunch of other people in avatars in that camp who do nothing for the rest of the movie. Also, as the general explains, except for Jake, all the avatar people are scientists. Presumably Norm spends the majority of the movie doing science stuff with his avatar buddies.

How is Jake "better than the Na'vi at everything"?

 * As I recall, he has to be taught over a period of months to be qualified for his induction into the tribe. While that is doing better than most of the scientists, it doesn't seem to be a particularly notable feat among the Na'vi. He did manage to get the Toruk, but according to the Wiki, that's a feat performed by five previous Na'vi before him. And he deliberately tried to become a Messiah so the Na'vi would listen to him again, possibly after realizing what the Toruk attack earlier meant. And that was partially the Toruk's choice. The only thing he excelled at was being a military commander, and that was only because he was able to combine his Na'vi and Human knowledge, which is kinda the metaphorical point of being an Avatar. And even then, his knowledge was enough to take down the Shuttle, but Quaritch still had enough conventional forces to take the Tree and personally nearly killed Jake's body, which was only saved by Ney'tiri's intervention. This is a grand total of two (admittedly very important) things he excelled at, and one of them he can't even take full responsibility for, and the other one was only a partial success. The reasons for his success are based on his ability to see things from both perspectives, and come up with actions which surprise both. Yet one of the things I keep hearing about the movie is that Jake is "better than the Na'vi at everything". The frak?
 * "Jake is better than the Na'vi at everything" is just an inaccurate fanon idea that isn't based on any fact (as you've just proven). Don't worry about it.
 * It's not just fanon, and that's what's bugging me; check the page quotes for Mighty Whitey. This is a common criticism of the movie, and arguably Misaimed Fandom.
 * He just happened to get lucky and be in the right place at the right time. As far as the military situations go, that's easily explained by him being a professional soldier versus the na'vi well... not having any sort of professional soldier at all. The na'vi don't have a standing army or anything of the sort. So while they might be better hunters than he is, he's a far better soldier. Other than that, again, right place, right time, right little wisp landing on his head.
 * He learned everything in three months. Assuming the na'vi don't mature in three months, they learn slower than him. He also bagged the hottest and best chick in the village, away from another na'vi. He was due to his knowledge more than na'vi, as you admit, though you try to weaken that by saying the villain was powerful. You forget to mention that being the holiest of beings who can call god makes him superior. He's not better than the na'vi in every way, just every way that matters.
 * That a)assumes he didn't just get a compressed version of training, and/or Neytiri didn't cut out the uneccessary bits, and/or training would be particularly lengthy. I can drive a car, hold down a job, date and marry women, and own a home without a GED, but that doesn't mean it isn't important. b)"hottest and best" by whose defintion, exactly? c)he didn't "call God". He explained the situation to Eywa and asked her for help. That's not particularly holy. That's was desperate.

Why not just make Jake a person of color?
Then all of us tropers would be talking about how James Cameron cleverly subverted the Mighty Whitey trope instead of playing it straight.
 * Because Cameron wasn't focussing on the fact that Jake was white. The movie is anti-imperialism, pro-environment, pantheistic, etc., not "oh, Jake is a white guy and he's awesome".
 * Funny how, despite all that... the story is still just a Mighty Whitey story, ain't it?
 * In that case, it's also just an Armies Are Evil story and just a Humans Are Bastards story. Representing any form of media with only a single trope puts a lot of things out of proportion.
 * Frankly, given how much controversy there is about him being white, being a Po C would be even more problematic.
 * That and the problem isn't with him being white, it's with the fact that the actual plot is a Mighty Whitey plot. It's the basic formula of "Audience-sympathetic guy joins foreign tribe, foreigners gradually learn to trust him, protagonist becomes the most awesome member of that tribe for badly thought out reasons". It was annoying enough when The Last Samurai did it, and at least that wasn't claiming to be unlike anything you'd ever seen before.
 * If he wasn't white, you'd have written the same thing but replaced with "affirmative action guy".
 * The folder directly above this one points out all the ways he wasn't as hot-stuff as the film's detractors make him out to be. He fails left and right during the movie, and his only successes come with qualifiers. The originality claim refers to the SFX, not the plot, which Cameron admitted somewhere was based on other movies.
 * Exactly. Overall, Jake certainly makes a mediocre to bad Na'vi. He just takes the non-unique approach of looking at Toruk a different way.

Where's the dragon?
Fighting an armored mecha would've been a lot easier with a dragon instead of by yourself.
 * Jake didn't get a chance to get back on the Toruk's back, so it probably didn't know where he was in the midst of all that chaos.
 * I really don't think it'd be 'easier' with the Toruk assisting Jake. I mean, in those confined spaces, the link station would probably be destroyed as collateral damage. Also, the Toruk has no idea where Jake is.
 * Do you mean the "Dragon" Quaritch was talking about? That is the code name for his ship.

Whatever happened to Jake's first banshee?
The last we see of it is right before he jumps on Turok, when he says "Buddy, you aren't going to like this," or something to that effect. While it's never expressly stated that Navi only bond with one banshee (so long as that banshee remains alive, I'm guessing), the implication is certainly there. I'd think his banshee would assume it was abandoned since Jake chose another mount.
 * This was alluded to in Jake's closing speech - he said Toruk Makto was no longer needed, and he let him go. This implied, at least to me, that he went back and got his old banshee back in order to have something to fly around on - thespaceinvader, on another computer...
 * It is mentioned that banshees only pick on rider while direhorses can be used by anyone - and riding one does not preclude riding the other. That said, remember that it's not just rider/mount, it also encompasses a mental connection and understanding (after all, despite talking and thinking in human, the animals are able to understand what he wants to do). Note that in the final fight, the Toruk Makto flies along side the Valkyrie so it can catch him once he jumps off; presumably, he told the Toruk what to do. He probably told his banshee to fly to somewhere safe or simply follow the rest of the Na'vi's banshees.
 * If nothing else, tamed banshee aren't exactly mindless afterwards. In absence of Jake's direction, it may have simply returned to it's roost or the nearest na'vi homestead.

Wait, Jake was a human?!
For a film that was about walking in another's shoes, Avatar did a very poor job with relating to Jake. Most people have FAMILY AND FRIENDS. Other than his brother existing as a mere plot point, we don't ever see anything human about Jake: No photos, no phone calls or e-mails home, no old school friends, no fellow vets that he served with in Venezuela, not even perhaps sending a part of his paycheck home to help his dear old Aunt Gladys. And here he is, talking up about helping his "People", when he doesn't even bother with his own family. This killed the movie for me, and was surprising coming from a director like Cameron, the same director that made the T-800 a father figure to John or in Aliens where Ripley became a mother figure to Newt.
 * It's easy to understand that anyone willing to leave to Pandora wouldn't have any bonds to Earth they'd consider significant. The trip takes six years one way, so they can be away close to 20 years; no-one with strong ties to their family, or a promising relationship underway would take such an assignment. Thus, it's pretty much given that Jake had no family besides his brother, and they apparently weren't very close, either.
 * Which makes it a miracle how the operation hasn't gone all Lord of the Flies at this point. It's the type of job that self-selects for misfits, loners, and probable psychopaths, and an environment that makes things worse, thus going back to the question of why nobody (figuratively) pulled Jake's plug when he was getting maybe a bit too involved in the whole program.
 * It's probably not all loners. The operation is big enough to support some families, as long as they're productive workers (procreation is probably discouraged). While the ex-Marine patrols the jungle, his wife operates one of the consoles in the control tower. The primary reason for traveling that far is the excellent pay, and being able to bring some people you know who can also earn good money probably minimizes the downsides for a lot of them.
 * Just look who is present at Tom Sully's cremation: Jake and two RDA reps. Clearly there are no other family bonds present (or it may even happen that Sully brothers are last ones in their family, everybody else is dead, because Earth is a crapsack world). As for friends - Jake might have made friends in Marine Corps, but they are still in active service and they're not present on Pandora. And Jake does get a paternal figure at Pandora - one Col. Miles Quaritch, have you heard about that guy? Quaritch also served in the same Jake's unit couple of years before his time.
 * And a maternal figure - one Dr. Grace Augustine, at least by the time she's good-naturedly forcing him to eat breakfast before he runs off to tribal school and tucking him into bed when he falls asleep at his desk.
 * Yep. But then a whole plot starts to look like a story of a kid who got caught into crossfire when his parents had an... argument. Freud Was Right, eh?
 * It's not impossible that Jake might have cut ties with the rest of his family. It happens to plenty of real-life people, too.
 * This bugs me less as a plausibility factor and more as a story related issue. I mean, if it was Cameron's intention to make Jake Sully a dull character that ends up having no conflict in choosing his identity, then he's done an excellent job. Heck, that's kind of my critique of the whole movie. By the 3rd Act, I was just excited that there was a huge battle, and really didn't care who won or lost.
 * Jake's character was designed that way on purpose - so that when the opportunity came to move to a beautiful planet full of gorgeous cat-people he'd jump at it. Hence the whole "my cup is empty" bit - sure, he was supposed to say whatever the natives wanted to hear to ingratiate himself to them, but I got the impression that he was happy to do it (even if they detested him; I think he'd fallen in love with the bioluminescent forest). It probably wouldn't have made a difference, anyway - even audience members with actual lives wanted to move to Pandora.
 * You're saying that Cameron intentionally made a dull and robotic character so that it would be believable for him to go to Pandora. First, that's inconsistent. By HUMAN accounts, Pandora is a BAD place, and they're only there because of the "U". Jake was only sold on Pandora because of being able to walk as an Avatar, not on its beauty. Second, it's contrived. Good writers don't need to strip their characters of interest and humanity in order to crowbar them into a decision. His life doesn't need to be perfect, but he also shouldn't be completely bland. And finally audience members are not very smart. They can definitely move to beautiful places like Papua New Guinea or the Amazon, but they'd DIE, just the same if they moved to Pandora.
 * Did you that in real life, people are sometimes boring? It's true!
 * Or that people who have lost their legs might be a wee bit pissed off about their loss, and may alienate their friends and family with their bitterness and/or self-pity? Jake lost his career and his future along with his legs, and has found no substitute direction for his life to shake him out of his sulking, until he's hired by RDA.
 * You still have not answered the previous post's question: Is it Cameron's intention for the character to be this way? Even his avatar self was found lacking, so it doesn't sound like it was intentional.
 * Protagonist theory, friends. He was made bland so that the audience could 'self-insert' to some degree.
 * We've already established that the plot requires him to be emotionally closed off, not for self-insertion. Any self insertion which would be taking place would be hampered by him being in a wheelchair, being ex-military, having a hot catgirl girlfriend...
 * Exactly. I love Avatar, and I honestly do not like Jake for the first hour or so. He's deliberately made unrelatable to the vast majority of people, except for the simple idea of wanting something worth fighting for.
 * The question that comes to mind is why would the company pick Jake of all people? You'd think they'd pick someone who was rabidly human-centric(or maybe just my species wrong or right), but who could hide it well when speaking to the Na'vi. At least it would have subverted the whole Dances With Wolves thing. The first would have made the story itself more complex especially if his personallity was not revealed immediately, and the second would have him honestly conflicted over the prospect of an interstellar empire for humanity via the Unobtanium and the genocide of the Navi(assuming that he thinks humans should be better than that).
 * They picked Jake because his twin brother, who was supposed to travel to Pandora, was dead. Avatars cost a shitload of money, so to minimize monetary losses, they send Jake because he can operate his brother's avatar.
 * Which kind of brings up another weakness: If we believe Parker's words about Avatar's ultimate purpose, then RDA spends way too much on PR programs.
 * Background material; The avatars were meant as work supervisors, only used later for research purposes. Also, they are pretty much the ambassadors of Earth, and while earth is crapsack, it doesn't seem to be because of the governments are bastards, but rather because of overpopulation. Thus the governments make very explicit laws about what the RDA needs to do, which they are happy to pay because of getting unobtanium. 8 kilo of that stuff pays the avatar program.
 * I understand that siblings don't always get along, but I thought identical twins usually had a special bond with their twin that the rest of us don't have with our siblings. Why wasn't Jake more upset about his brother dying? He took one look at the body, and it was like he just didn't care. Did I miss something?
 * Well, Jake was kinda dead inside all around until he rediscovered himself on Pandora, so it wasn't really out of character for him to not react very much to the news. The way the officials handled the cremation with little sympathy and virtually no decorum also suggested that Earth's become so much of a Crapsack World that a random mugging death is just business as usual. And Jake's a hardened marine, so he was likely holding back his emotions until he could be alone (which also happened to be out of the camera's view). That, combined with his not having seen his brother in years, and getting the double whammy of "you're paralyzed from the waist down and, oh yeah, your twin brother just died" all at once can explain why his reaction seemed more numb than distraught.
 * You thought wrong. Identical twins are people too, you know; some get along with their siblings, some don't. Having an identical twin doesn't mean you have a super special mind link with them. Jake, under those circumstances, reacted just like anyone else in shock at losing both a sibling and his legs would have.