How James Cameron Feels About The Theory That Avatar's Eywa Is A 'Benevolent Skynet'

James Cameron's "Avatar" movies have become such global phenomena partly because they're determined to show you something you've never seen before. Since 2009, Pandora has taken up some of the world's biggest theater screens with some of the most beautiful environments in contemporary science-fiction filmmaking. We become engrossed in this fictional planet where bioluminescent plant life, floating mountains, and magnificent bird horses are all treated with awe. The Na'vi demonstrate reverence and respect to their majestic home and, most importantly, to Eywa. The Great Mother's spiritual essence forms a connection with the ecosystems and living beings on Pandora that create a cycle of energy that flows into one another.

Talks of Eywa being such a crucial component in how Pandora operates come with the concern that she could be seen as a threat of sorts. After all, it appears Varang (Oona Chaplin) in the upcoming "Fire and Ash" is against the Great Mother because she remained mysteriously absent when called upon to save her clan. When Cameron was asked a fan question about whether Eywa is the "Avatar" universe's benevolent equivalent to Skynet from "The Terminator" franchise, he offered a different perspective (via Empire):

"I think that the Skynet allegory is true up to a point, although Skynet was created by humans to fight wars, and Eywa evolved naturally. She's basically a network in the mycelium of the forest. Each tree is essentially a neuron, and some perform input/output duties like the Tree of Souls and the Spirit Tree underwater. Some are just storage, some are processing. And then the mycelium is kind of the network, or what I call the Eywa-net. It's a global supercomputer. Not an artificial intelligence, but probably analogous in a lot of functionality to a computer network."

Eywa may be this deeply entrenched force of Pandora, but the key difference between her and Skynet is that of creation and intent. Skynet is a computer system that was created at Cyberdyne Systems for the military. With it came the birth and inevitable consequences of artificial intelligence. Skynet ultimately ended up seeing humanity as a threat, and therefore thrust the world into an apocalyptic nuclear wasteland. Every "Terminator" in some way deals with the system snuffing out the remaining sects of the human Resistance with weapons, skeleton soldiers, and time travel technology. It shouldn't have come as a surprise that a rogue AI would gain consciousness and wipe out the human population, considering it was built as a form of destruction.

Eywa possesses a similar function in that it is a database of sorts made up of the passed-on souls of the Na'vi. She doesn't seek to harm, but make connections. The main difference between Skynet and Eywa is that the latter is a natural resource of Pandora. Eywa is an environmental system that essentially acts as a fantastical parallel to how our ecosystems communicate. The Great Mother has seen how the Na'vi treat their planet and responds with an unbreakable bond. We know how Earth's environments have rapidly responded to how we exploit it. All energy on Pandora is borrowed because Eywa holds all children in her heart. She's a completely natural being that the villainous RDA can't quite fathom, yet recognizes Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) possessing the spirit of the Na'vi enough to fully become one. Time will tell if there's more to Eywa than meets the eye.

The first two "Avatar" movies are streaming on Disney+. "Avatar: Fire and Ash" is now in theaters.