Epic Avatar Facts That Will Transport You Back To Pandora

"Avatar" has many fantastical creatures — equally beautiful and terrifying — due to years of research and drafting. (Curious fans can check out this process in this behind-the-scenes documentary.) The banshees, direhorses, and thanators' designs stemmed from real-world animals — eagles, horses, and panthers — but with alien modifications that are biologically plausible. Cameron cited poison dart frogs and tropical reef fish as informing Pandora's species' bold coloring. Like Earth, this strange moon would have a unique food chain, with apex predators and herding herbivores. What distinguishes Pandora's wildlife is that they're (mostly) hexapods, having six appendages instead of four.

The Na'vi had to be just as otherworldly-looking as the rest of Pandora's flora and fauna, but their design presented Cameron and the film's artists with an additional challenge. At the heart of "Avatar" is a cross-species love story between human Jake Sully and Na'vi Neytiri. For the movie to work, the romance had to too. Cameron wanted Pandora's natives to look entirely alien, but they also had to be attractive to Jake and the audience. He conceived of something with blue skin, cat-like ears, lemur-like eyes, and an amphibious form. Early drafts were too animalistic and off-putting, while subsequent drafts looked too much like blue people. Animators, working with physical models and digital mock-ups, created between 50 and 60 versions of Neytiri before settling on that character's final appearance.