Avatar (film)/Characters

Colonel Miles Quaritch

• Armies Are Evil: To be fair, the SecFors troops are a private security detail retained by RDA, but many of the same aspects apply, and they are obviously meant to draw parallels with Blackwater (now Xe).
• Authority Equals Asskicking
• Big Bad: The ultimate antagonist of the story, even taking all of Selfridge's power over the mining.
• Blood Knight: The good Colonel seems to love combat a little too much. For about the half of the movie, he keeps talking about going to war with the Na'vi. You can feel the tension between Selfridge, who is going for a token attempt for a peaceful solution, and Quaritch, who very obviously resents being kept on a leash and is looking for an excuse for some good old indiscriminate use of force.
• Colonel Badass: One of the best examples of this trope.
• Colonel Kilgore: Of course. It helps that the character was based off him. Right down to the casual coffee-drinking while leading an airstrike against the Na'vi's home.
• Cool Airship: The C-21 Dragon Gunship. Also doubles as an Awesome Personnel Carrier, ferrying a squad of AMP suits into battle.
• Determinator: Quaritch never gives up, not even when he's on fire, lacks breathable air, or when all the other soldiers have been killed and he's the last of them standing.
• Dissonant Serenity: During the attack on Hometree, while incendiary missiles are going off left and right and Na'vi are being slaughtered, Quaritch calmly observes the carnage from the flight deck of his gunship, enjoying a steaming cup of coffee.
• The Dragon: To Selfridge.
  • Dragon-in-Chief: Selfridge may be nominally in charge, but Quaritch is the biggest threat, and by the end of the movie he's effectively calling all the shots on the human side - and it's clear they both know it.
• Evil Mentor: To Jake.
• Fantastic Racism: Hates anything that's not human, and he has the firepower to back up his hate. At first his hatred is mildly justified, - getting half your face ripped off on your first day can do that to you - but he quickly takes a flying leap off the slippery slope and frolics happily at the bottom.
• A Father to His Men: Zig-zagged. He's seen as genuinely caring for his men right from the get go with an impassioned speech of "It's my job to keep you alive... I will not succeed." with genuine remorse. He's also sincere in his offer to get Jake's legs fixed and is respectful of his men, cautioning them, congratulating them, and never resorting to using them as throwaway pawns.^[1] Post-Villainous Breakdown, he gets every last marine on Pandora killed with only two visible survivors, without obviously caring at all.
• General Ripper: Oh yeah.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars
• Incendiary Exponent: Quaritch climbing into his AMP suit inside of the crashing Dragon gunship with everything on fire. Including his shoulder.
• It's Raining Men: Bails out of a burning gunship while inside an AMP suit that has no parachute, landing thrusters or shock absorbers, yet lands on its feet none the worse for wear.
• Knife Nut: He keeps a AMP suit sized combat knife in a quick draw position on his AMP suit as a back up weapon. Pandorapedia states this is an optional feature, as well as having shades of Awesome but Impractical/Rule of Cool about its design in-universe.
• Large Ham: A bit. It's Stephen Lang, so it's not unheard of.
• Made of Iron: Survives being set on fire and dropping out of a burning gunship to land feet-first in his AMP suit.
• Pre-Ass-Kicking One-Liner: "Nothing's over while I'm breathing." Jake: "I hoped you were going to say that."
  • "Come on, come to papa!" Said before stabbing Neytiri's attacking Thanator to death with his AMP suit's machete.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: His sidearm of choice.
• Slasher Smile: Makes one late in the film, when he's in his AMP suit and about to attack Jake's Avatar link unit.
• Unflinching Walk: When Quaritch jumps out of the Dragon Gunship before it explodes. It lands, burning behind his AMP, and he takes a second to look at it before walking off.
• Villainous Valour

Neytiri and the Na'vi

• Action Girl: Pretty much every female Na'vi except Mo'at - who may have been one in her younger years.
• Aliens Speaking English: Justified, since the younger Omatikaya learned English at Grace's school; also, the Avatar drivers have studied, or are studying, Na'vi.
• All Genes Are Codominant: The avatars look mostly like the Na'vi, but have five-fingered hands and smaller eyes like humans. Grace has a human style nose and possibly smaller ears (hard to get a clear sighting), presumably as she was one of the first successful Avatars created. Also male Na'vi have hard ridges at the base of their sternum in the middle of their chests, while Jake retains his human-shaped chest in his Avatar form. They may have just started with Na'vi genes and done the minimum amount of tinkering needed to make them into something that a human would feel comfortable in. That would mean five fingers and eyes similar enough to normal human ones that a human could process the input from them.
• Bishie Sparkle: The Na'vi have bioluminescent 'sparkles' on their body (see the picture of Neytiri for the example).
• Brain Uploading: Personalities of Na'vi, and humans, can be uploaded into the lunar consciousness from within the sacred groves. Downloading into a new body is also possible, but we don't know how common. Large numbers of other Na'vi chant during the upload ceremony, although this seems no more necessary than, say, chanting while backing up your iPod. Unless all of the chanting Na'vi that are noticeably linked into the local network are acting as parallel-proccessing units and local storage. While the global network is big, it's also spread out over the entire moon; having the wetware locally available to act as buffer storage and additional processing during an upload would be pretty handy -- especially if you're doing a transfer.
• The Chief's Daughter: The romance of Jake and Neytiri follows the classic Chief's Daughter trope, complete with Jealous Betrothed Warrior Prince. Jake even calls her this at one point, word for word.
• Con Lang: Cameron hired an USC linguist to invent the Na'vi language, then let the actors endure boot camps and line-by-line rehearsals over and over again to learn to speak it flawlessly.
• Death Course: The Na'vi education system as experienced by Jake includes a lot of running and jumping in absurdly high places without safety nets or harnesses.
• Death Glare: Jake gets a nice long one from almost everyone in the Omaticaya tribe during his first night at Hometree.
• Doomed Hometree
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The Na'vi and Native Americans, at least the Theme Park Version of them.
• Friend to All Living Things: The Na'vi to the flora and fauna of Pandora. They are even able to neural link with them. Doesn't stop some of the flora and fauna from trying to kill them—nor does it stop them from killing said flora/fauna. They just apologize to it afterwards.
• Blue Skinned Space People
• Goal-Oriented Evolution: The Na'vi are "more evolutionarily advanced" than humans (according to tie-in media), implying that evolutionary processes have 'levels', rather than just... results. Could also be taken to describe the level of integration with their surroundings (even if this wasn't intended, it still seems to hold). However it happened, they did evolve the ability to link into wildlife like Neo plugs into the Matrix, so one could argue an extreme amount of adaptation to their environment could qualify.
• Good Eyes, Evil Eyes: The Na'vi, being the epitome of good, naturally have enormous eyes.
• Half-Human Hybrid: The Avatars, specially built to be a hybrid of Na'vi and an individual human's DNA.
• Humanoid Aliens: In a meticulously designed alien ecosystem full of truly bizarre creatures - for example, giant six-legged blue horses who drink plant nectar - the Na'vi are strongly humanoid, despite their otherwise Bizarre Alien Biology.
• Humans Are Cthulhu: The simple mining operation on Pandora has brought in a whole range of sanity- and reality-shattering stuff to the moon's inhabitants - swathes of land transformed overnight into burning, barren wastes, hovering monstrosities capable of deafening the ears and engulfing whole settlements in fire and choking fog, a city (itself an otherworldly concept) of unnatural spires and Alien Geometries, line-of-sight weaponry that can spit instant death, and last but not least, Half-Na'vi Hybrids serving as vessels for these supernatural beings' spirits.
  • Which lends itself to Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu? (or more accurately, Summon Bigger Fish) for the film's climax.
  • For an added kick, the guy responsible for the Avatar program is a Mad Scientist by the name of Dr. Lovecraft, who initially called his brainchild the "Dark Dreamer" project.
• Humans Through Alien Eyes: We humans are the aliens to the Na'vi, and we don't seem to come in peace. Rest assured, they do fight back.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: Almost every Na'vi is very scantily clad and completely comfortable this way. A notable exception is Mo'at.
• Made of Iron: The Na'vi have bones of carbon-fiber.
• Magic Skirt: The Na'vi tend to wear nothing but a skimpy loincloth. There are improbably few wardrobe malfunctions. Averted, in that Neytiri's nipples are clearly visible in many scenes. (see also Non-Mammal Mammaries.)
• The Native Rival: Oh hey, it's Tsu'tey!
• Noble Savage: Played straight, but justifiable as it is not Sully's status as a human (or Half-Human Hybrid) that makes him "Special" but rather, his different cultural background allows him to view things from a different perspective.
• Non-Mammal Mammaries: The original Na'vi concept art envisioned a reptilian-like species - at this point, James Cameron said "Right from the beginning I said, 'She's got to have tits,' even though that makes no sense because her race, the Na'vi, aren't placental mammals." However, averted in that the final design of the Na'vi are mammalian, unlike the early concept art.
• Nubile Savage: Only Jake ever gets dirty, and only because he's inexperienced. Every Na'vi has perfect teeth and skin.
• Only Six Faces: Definitely averted. There are CG cartoons that can't seem to avert having most background characters or stars with extremely similar features, but most of the Na'vi all look as different as humans would. Except they're all blue. This is probably because the Na'vi, while CGI, are based on actual actors, particularly in that the Avatars look particularly like their human counterparts.
• Our Elves Are Better
• Proud Warrior Race Guy
• Serkis Folk: Every Na'vi and Avatar to appear onscreen.
• Shut UP, Hannibal: During the final fight, Quaritch asks Jake how it feels to betray the human race, to which Jake replies with a hiss characteristic of the Na'vi threat response.
• Thong of Shielding: The loincloths basically don't cover their rears at all. Of course, since we see Jake's butt completely unobstructed when it's hanging out of his hospital gown, I guess Na'vi butts just don't count.
• Translation Convention: Averted. When Na'vi are talking among themselves, even ones who speak acceptable English, they speak in Na'vi (and we don't always get subtitles, only for critically important lines, although all the Na'vi lines are understandable to a speaker of the language). When Jake is speaking to the elders and to other clans, and it's really, really important, he asks Tsu'tey to translate for him.
• Unusual User Interface: The Na'vi's tool of communicating with the creatures and the Tree works like a tentacle-y USB.
• Vapor Wear: Neytiri's "top" is basically an extra-large necklace made of string and some beads, while most Na'vi wear similar ones.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Neytiri
• You No Take Candle: The Na'vi (especially Neytiri) speak accented and broken English when addressing Jake at the start of the movie.

Everyone else/actors

• Actor Allusion: The character played by Sigourney Weaver was called Shipley in earlier drafts. She spends a lot of time in a capsule, is pretty badass and no-nonsense, and knows a lot about extraterrestrial life forms. Are we being told something?
  • The Na'vi chieftain is played by Wes Studi, a Native American actor who appeared in Dances with Wolves and The Last of the Mohicans. Studi also played a character in Mystery Men who was a perfect parody of the Na'vi chieftain's "wise native" type character. (Sample dialogue: "You must master your rage, or--" "Or my rage will become my master?... That's what you were going to say right?" "...Not necessarily.")
• Badass Spaniard: Trudy. What else to expect from a character played by Michelle Rodriguez?
• Becoming the Mask: And how! The last line you hear "I can't be late to my own party. After all, it's my birthday." He means his first one.
• Big Bad: Selfridge, but Quaritch becomes the Dragon-in-Chief.
• Big Damn Heroes: Trudi swooping in on her war-painted gunship looks like one of these, but it becomes just a Hope Spot when she's promptly shot down. The real Big Damn Heroes are every single large animal on the moon, as well as both Jake and Neytiri each subsequently managing to do it for each other.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Parker Selfridge. The only reason he didn't want to initially genocide the natives is he was afraid of a publicity backlash, though he is quite visibly disturbed by Hometree's destruction.
• Cynical Mentor: Dr. Grace plays this part to Jake, then warms up to him.
• Deadpan Snarker: Dr. Grace. Not even being shot can stop it. "This is gonna ruin my whole day." See Defrosting Ice Queen, below.
  • "I need to take some samples."
  • "You're in number 1, "Beulah". She's the least glitchy."
  • How about Parker Selfridge? "¿Comprende?"
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Dr. Grace, like Dr. Chiba, is considerably more comfortable--nay, downright joyful--as her avatar alter-ego.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Sigourney Weaver dyed her hair red for the film.
• Evil Cripple: The evil humans probably saw Jake as this after he Heel Face Turned against them in favor of the Na'vi.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Jake's (avatar) hair changes after he becomes Toruk Makto. Also, how human Jake's hair grows out from the start of the film as he starts to live more in his other body.
• Expy: Many viewers just can't help comparing Dr. Grace with Ellen Ripley, Trudy with Pvt. Vasquez ( especially since the latter dies a heroic death), and Selfridge with Carter Burke, characters from one of Cameron's previous movies. This is frequently Lampshaded by referencing the said film.
  • In Trudy's case, it doesn't help that Michelle Rodriguez has made a career out of playing characters like Vasquez.
• Fake American: Sam Worthington (Australian).
• Freudian Trio:
  • Jake (Id)- undirected drive
  • Grace (Ego)- issues the orders
  • Norm (Superego)- worries and frets
• Going Native: Jake, without saying. But Trudy herself, although possessing no Avatar of her own, becomes a Navi-Warrior in spirit when she dons their warpaint on herself AND her scorpion to take on Quaritch's dragon.
• Grandma, What Massive Hotness You Have!: Admit it, Sigourney Weaver's character is pretty good looking. Despite the actress being 60 years old (though not a literal grandmother, yet).
• Heel Face Turn: Jake, Grace, Norm, Max and Trudy. Hell, even Selfridge seemed like he was feeling a little bad about everything at the end.
• Honor Before Reason: Lampshaded. "We're going up against gunships with bows and arrows... and I was hoping for a plan that didn't involve matyrdom."
• I Just Want to Be Badass: Part of Jake's motivation. It starts as I Just Want to Be Normal (restoring his legs back to healthy condition), but Jake is implied to have been a pretty badass marine before his crippling wound, and embraces the life of a Na'vi hunter/warrior very quickly.
• It's Personal: After the sky people try to squash him and his girl with a bulldozer, kill his future father-in-law and an unspecified number of future distant relatives, burn down his new home and generally trample all over the Moral Event Horizon, you can be sure that Jake will be hell-bent on revenge.
• Karma Houdini: Parker Selfridge. He doesn't hesitate to keep the bulldozer moving. He's just sent back to Earth after his heartless actions. He does seem very shook up at Hometree's destruction. He seems to at least feel remorse.
• Meaningful Name: The Mad Scientist who performed the controversial experiments on chimpanzees and criminals to create the Avatars? His name's Dr. Lovecraft.
  • Pandora is pretty obvious as well.
  • For more subtle examples, Chacon (Trudy's last name) means "tribe leader" in Peruvian Spanish (foreshadowing her joining the Na'vi side).
  • A name like Grace Augustine is perfect for a merciful and caring character who is perceived as something close to a saint by the Na'vi.
  • Jake's departed twin's name was Tom, or Thomas - which means 'the twin.'
  • Biblical name references abound, there are a few Hebrew words in the Na'vi language. Navi itself means "the prophet," and Eywa usually translates as "Eve," with the meaning "mother of all life." This may also be an approximate anagram for YHWH.
  • Sully is also meaningful, regarding the human actions on Pandora.
  • "Selfridge" resembling "selfish" is definitely no coincidence.
  • Quaritch's first name is 'Miles', which means 'soldier' in Latin.
  • The main port and exchange point between Pandora and Earth is known as "Hell's Gate." The name was given presuming it was opening into Hell, but...
  • Unobtanium. The humans don't get much of it.
• Messianic Archetype: Jake uses a legend he heard to tame a dragon and become this in Na'vi eyes. It's insinuated that this is what all the previous "messiahs" did as well: They knew they needed to unite their people, so instead of sitting around waiting for their goddess to do it for them, they did the one thing they knew would get everyone's attention.
• Mighty Whitey: Whether it is subverted or played straight is subject to some debate.
• Mr. Exposition: Selfridge explains to Grace why they're on Pandora - the $20m/kg Unobtanium. Of course Grace would already know this, yet she doesn't tell him to stop treating her like an imbecile. It's probably more of a sarcastic reminder that unobtanium is the only reason Grace gets to do what she does, so she shouldn't neglect it. It's condescending, but still reasonable for someone to take such a tone in real life.
• Mr. Fanservice: Most of the major male characters.
• Ms. Fanservice: All three major female characters (Neytiri, Trudy, and Grace) are not immune. Neytiri spends the entire movie almost naked, Trudy's military outfits underscore her chest, and Grace walks around in tight tank tops and shorts in her Avatar form and is shown nearly nude in her human form before she dies. Extra points for Sigourney Weaver being 60 years old..
• Must Have Nicotine: Grace.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Not stated, but implied with a few instances of Parker feeling some slight guilt over the actions he's taken. Watching on a monitor, He's forced to look away at the bloodshed of the final battle and Grace and Jake get through to him enough that he allows them a final chance to negotiate peace before they destroy Hometree.
• Naive Newcomer / Audience Surrogate: Jake is this both to the Avatar program and Na'Vi society, introducing the audience to the world.
• No New Fashions in the Future
• Office Golf: Selfridge does this, despite being on a moon where they probably don't make golf clubs.
  • He probably did have it made on-world, given how insanely expensive interstellar travel is. Or alternatively, he is simply self-obsessed enough to have brought them there with him despite the cost.
• Oh Crap: Jake does this when he pisses off a Titanothere. He recovers...and then immediately does it again when attacked by a Thanator.
  • Grace almost literally does this when she learns Jake and Neytiri are mated.
    • Exact words: "Oh shit!"
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Grace wrote the book - literally - on Pandoran botany, but she also appears to be a sociologist. And a xenolinguist. And a schoolteacher.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Sam Worthington swings wildly back and forth between an American accent.
• The Rival: Tsu'Tey. Somewhat of a Jerkass towards Jake, and he ain't exactly his biggest fan. Considering the entire reason Jake is there, you can't really blame him. And Jake mated with his girl.
  • Norm understandably feels this way at the beginning, when he, the Ph.D who's spent years studying Na'vi culture and the Avatar program, gets showed up by the unschooled, last-minute replacement jarhead. Eventually, he puts the research above his own ego and assists Jake.
• Rousing Speech: Jake gives one to the Na'vi after becoming Toruk Makto.
• Sacrificial Lion: Grace, Trudy.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right: Trudy.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Jake at the beginning of the movie. Surviving human soldiers at the end.
• Sigourney Weaver: Yeah, she's in this movie. And there's a lot of Actor Allusion for her most famous role. More than one role.
• Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Trailer: Speaking of Sigourney Weaver, for a big name star, she gets no mention at all in at least some of the trailers.
• Smug Snake: Selfridge. Honestly, guy seems completely oblivious (quite possibly willfully) to anything that doesn't have metaphorical dollar signs painted on it. To the greedy bastard's credit, his humanity finally bled through when Grace reminded him that Quaritch was going to kill babies if he doesn't stop the bloodthirsty general, and showed genuine horror and sadness when Quaritch did, but was absolutely powerless to stop it from happening.
• Spicy Latina: Trudy.
• Suit with Vested Interests: Selfridge, providing the motivation for the above.
• Took a Level in Badass: Jake takes about ten levels during the movie, going from poking Pandoran flora just for the hell of it to riding the moon's biggest aerial predator and taking out two huge gunships, almost single-handedly. It's possible that he is simply restoring his badass levels from his human life - he used to be a tough marine who served in Venezuela before his spinal injury left him wheelchair-bound.
  • Norm. Consider that he's merely a scientist and played by the guy who thought he was a robot in Grandma's Boy. So, naturally, he ends up on the frontlines during the climactic battle and even takes a few with him. Even after his avatar body is killed, he regathers himself in the station, grabs a gun and breathing mask, and goes right back into the fray. And survives. Also punched a soldier when being placed into custody for good measure.
• Training Montage: When Jake goes native and learns Na'vi customs the hard way.
• Transhuman Treachery: The entire Avatar program goes to the native side and stays there. Of course, this is portrayed as a good thing.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Jake jumps off his Banshee, which has paired with him for life, to catch a bigger ride. His Banshee is never seen again for the remainder of the film. Made even more obvious by Neytiri's obvious distress at the death of her own Banshee later in the film. At the end Jake narrates that the Toruk Makto is no longer needed, and indeed the Toruk is shown flying away. Jake probably "explained" the plan to his Banshee ("You're not gonna like this...") and they reunited after Toruk left.
  • That's what's implied at the end of the film when the Toruk flies away without a rider.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Quaritch directly asks Sully what it feels like to betray his own race for a bunch of aliens. To which Jake replies to with a hiss.
• You Monster!: Grace calls Selfridge one when Quaritch destroys Hometree.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: Col. Quaritch thanks Jake for giving him a perfect excuse to blast the Na'vi and their tree to smithereens. Naturally, Jake is not amused.

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1. ↑ Of course besides sentimental reasons, he has very practical reasons for this as well: he's not getting any reinforcements for several years to come. Every soldier lost is gone for good. Having good relations with your men in such situation means a difference between life and death.