The latest film by the Oscar-winning Canadian director of Titanic, due for release in December, is already creating a buzz.
James Cameron on the set of Avatar. Image credit: Fox
The future sketched out in this new movie by James Cameron (more than 10 years after Titanic!) shows humanity mastering space travel to the point of exploring and colonising other planets. The film focuses on Pandora, moon of a gas giant. Humans cannot breathe its air; it is inhabited by unknown creatures and 10-feet-tall humanoid extra-terrestrials. A soldier sees his spirit projected into an avatar, a sort of copy of Pandora's natives, in order to infiltrate them. But the soldier finds himself facing a moral conflict when the time comes to choose sides, given the humans' desire shamelessly to exploit the resources of this world. The astronautical element, it has to be said, is more a backdrop than the main subject of the film. This is often the case with SF. The issues broached are earthly. 'Avatar' can be seen as an obvious ecological fable (Pandora's inhabitants live in symbiosis with nature), or an allusion to American Indians confronting the first European explorers and settlers, and the visuals occasionally conjure up the Vietnamese War (although admittedly, a more futuristic version) with its jungles and helicopters. Below: trailer for 'Avatar'.
Space as a backdrop? Not only This being said, it would be inaccurate to imagine that James Cameron sees space merely as a backdrop. His passion for the sea bed is common knowledge (he went down in a submarine to film the wreck of the Titanic in person), but it is, in fact, exploration in general that fascinates him, and this comes through in his interviews. Although 'Avatar' is only his second film in an astronautical environment (after Aliens in 1986), space is one of this director's favourite subjects. In 2004, Cameron worked with NASA on designing a manned mission to Mars (he's also an excellent artist). He was said at that time to want to adapt to the big screen, or TV, the famous literary trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson: Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars.
James Cameron (left) and Sean O’Keefe, NASA's Administrator at that time, at the International Astronautical Congress in 2004. Image credit: Olivier Sanguy
For a time, James Cameron even sat on NASA's Advisory Council - a panel of experts and advisers appointed by the American agency's administrator. In 2004, the movie maker accompanied Sean O’Keefe, NASA's Chief at that time, to the International Astronautical Congress. During a joint press conference, James Cameron pleaded the case of enhanced space mission imagery using high-definition technology and, above all, accentuating the human aspect. His pugnacity in defending an ambitious exploration programme earned him recognition from the Planetary Society; in 2005, it awarded him its Cosmos Award for promoting science. During the award ceremony, Cameron declared: "Exploration is not a luxury we can't afford; it's a necessity we can't afford to lose. Pushing farther into the unknown is our greatest endeavor as a civilization and our deepest responsibility to future generations."
Not so very long ago, astronomers were theorising about life on practically every planet in the solar system whereas today the Earth is sometimes envisaged as the only haven for living beings... have the extraterrestrial beings disappeared in-between times?
For several years, entrepreneurs have been aspiring to develop a new approach to the space industry and targeting a reduction in launch costs. Is the private sector going to revolutionise human space flight?
The spaceship from James Cameron’s film is far less fanciful than it appears and even plausibly deals with several problems posed by interstellar travel.
