Why should some corporate douchebag care more about scientific terminology than the Colonel?
Dunno. I’ve already talked about it too much. Best just leave it.
Yeah, what’s supposed to happen to these guys? There’s no indication any of the native flora or fauna is edible for humans (if the atmosphere is toxic, surely every animal who breathes is it likely toxic, too). Are they going to live the rest of their lives on whatever food stores were left behind? I guess if the base population is reduced from 1,000 or so to a dozen, the food would last quite a while, but I don’t recall any sign of greenhouses or farms producing human-edible food. Actually, I don’t remember seeing any of the humans eating at all, but I guess they must have at some point.
Jake eats in a couple of non-avatar scenes.
There’s one scene where Sigourney Weaver’s character is insisting that Sully (in his human body) has to eat something before he goes Avatar again, and that he’s been neglecting his human body too much. The stuff on his plate looked pretty bland, probably reconstituted something-or-other.
Probably cornbread.
It seems like the human scientists who still have Avatars could merge with them, a la Jake. Dunno what happens to Norm (whose Avatar appears to have been killed) and Max (who never had one), though.
The base has facilities for protein and carbohydrate synthesis, using Pandoran flora as raw material, sufficient to feed the entire original contingent (per the book). There is also the implication in the book that at least some of the wildlife may be edible (perhaps again with processing).
I’m glad someone thought that too.
I got that vibe from the ending, just like the Ewoks partied with chunks of the Death Star raining down on them, the Navi celebrated the “birth” of one new member of their race while the humans went home and came back with nukes.
Shouldn’t Cameron of all people have seen the only way to be sure coming 
The extent of Eywa’s abilities is unclear. Heck, it wouldn’t be out of line with what we’ve already been shown for a human and a mortally-wounded N’avi to get mutually fiber-opticked and the human’s consciousness transferred over.
For that matter, could Ewya fiber-optic a living Na’vi and Xerox up a brain-blank copy for the human’s mind to get transferred into? It’s probably best that the humans stay human, though - they’ll more easily be able to operate the base’s abandoned machines and such, since it’s all been scaled to human size.
Yes, that’s right - I’m lending serious analysis to a silly movie.
Yeah, but are the machines easy to use and maintain by the handful of idealists left behind? It’d be a shame if they starved because the various electronics and hydroponics technicians left the planet and a Ph. D. in xenoanthopology proved surprisingly useless.
Sure, just get used to apologizing all the time. Heck, has there ever been a hunter-gatherer society on Earth that was as large as the main Navi tribe, which also included specialist-priests and such? I though such food-gathering methods would tend to limit a tribe’s size to thirty or so, not a thousand plus.
What would be the point of transferring a human’s consciousness into a mortally wounded N’avi? “Yay–it worked! I’m in a N’avi body! Oh crap–I’m dying!”
Well, I had in mind (but obviously forgot to write) that repairs would be included, at no charge.
Okay, but if the body could be repaired, wouldn’t you just save the original N’avi who occupies it? It would be kind of dickish to only save the body if you can have it for yourself.
Answered upthread, but I wanted to add that the plot deal with having the atmosphere be unbreathable to humans was to establish that even with a fertile ecosystem humans would still be dependent on technology to survive there. Otherwise the Corporation™ could have just called for volunteer colonists who could have established a pioneer culture like the old American frontier, eventually displacing the natives.
Regarding hunter/gatherer cultures, the analogy isn’t exact because life on Pandora is different, thanks to Eywa. Given a hyperintelligently-coordinated ecosystem, life there looks to be superfertile.
Tell me where in the movie it was used more than once. Please be specific so I can listen carefully the next time I see the movie. I only remember it being used once, near the beginning, by Ribisi in his office when he’s talking to Grace.
Well, for all we know, Eywa’s a stone-cold bitch.
Nukes aren’t going to do you any good against a dispersed population without any infrastructure or technology, especially if they make the unobtanium radioactive. (At least, they don’t have much advantage over conventional bombs.)
As has been pointed out elsewhere, the company is under some constraints that could prevent it from coming back in force and wiping out the Na’vi. It’s a private company, operating under a UN charter that prohibits genocide; it also has just lost enormous amounts of its capital investment and may have trouble raising more funding. It will also be under enormous scrutiny and possibly political pressure because of its screw-up. The humans who remained on Pandora may have access to equipment with instantaneous communication with Earth, and tell the Na’vi side of the story.
Even if they don’t have instant communication, their radio signals will beat the ships to Earth by two years.
And to agree with what you’re saying about the orbital bombing, we could kill every living person in Saudi Arabia tomorrow with our technology. The reason we don’t just take their oil is because the world is more complicated than, “we’ll come back and nuke them from orbit!”
Yes, you’re quite right, they all starve to death. I’m sure that will be how the sequel will turn out.
This is a movie, of course. If it suits the plot of the sequel for the remaining humans not to starve to death, then there are plausible ways (within the Atavar universe) for them to be able to generate enough food. Sure, you can hypothesize reasons why it might not work, but that won’t happen unless the plot requires it.
Who’s apologizing? I’m mostly just reporting what the book says.
Yes, the size of the Na’vi tribe would be implausible on Earth (though I don’t think it’s near one thousand). However, Pandora has a very productive environment due to its very high carbon dioxide atmosphere and other factors. Its forest produces more potential food per unit area than forests on Earth.