Concept and Tech of the Avatar Program

The technology behind the Avatar program turned out to be more interesting then originally believed.  From all of the trailers I expected the Avatar’s to be like a big mech suit or something, thankfully I was wrong.

The Avatar’s are a biological creation made up from a blending of human DNA and Na’vi DNA.  This creates an avatar for the human to operate that would be entirely biological and can function within the same environment as the Na’vi.

They use a machine that not only uplink the human to it’s avatar but makes a much deeper connection.  The tube that the human sits in gives full neural feedback so the Human feels what the Na’vi feels.  This is like experiencing things in a dream state.

On the plus side if your avatar dies you don’t necessarily die.  But as shown through Norm’s experience the death of the avatar does put a great shock to ones system.

I really loved how the Na’vi viewed the avatars.  They called them dream walkers and demons.  Dream walkers is very fitting first because of the obvious reasons of how unlinking and downloading from the avatar is like falling asleep.

One thing that bothered me some was the need to have the avatar genetically matched.  They introduce this concept early on which at first seems ok.  Unfortunately there is no more justification for this particular need.  I was left with the feeling that the matching was only required to justify why Jake was brought into the program.

What do you think about the genetic requirement?