Avatar's Na'vi Originally Avoided Certain Human Gestures (Until They Didn't)

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An unspoken theme of the "Avatar" movies is that Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), who is the worst, may be accidentally undermining the Na'Vi from within. Over the course of Cameron's three "Avatar" movies, we've seen Sully's presence among the Na'vi lead to increased human attacks and the destruction of several villages. His family with Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) has been displaced, and even as they move about Pandora, the humans always come looking for him. Jake's children carry some of his human DNA (avatar bodies, recall, are cloned using human DNA), meaning several of his kids have five fingers on each hand instead of the usual Na'vi four. 

In "Avatar: Fire and Ash," we see the human teenager Spider (Jack Champion) bond with Pandora's goddess Eywa, allowing him to become infested with a magic fungus that allows him to breathe Pandoran air. By the end of the film, he'll also being able to have psychic visions via a newly grown kuru (that little psychic cranial "tail" that Na'vi have). For a character who valued the pure, untainted, human-free paradise of Pandora, Jake Sully doesn't seem to notice that Pandora is becoming more human every day. 

Another detail of the "Avatar" movies is that the Na'vi, over the course of the three movies, have also adopted several hand gestures and head movements from Jake and his human compatriots. It's subtle, but even things like nodding for "yes" weren't originally part of Cameron's movies. The changes were remarked upon, by Cameron, in Joe Fordham's new book "The Making of Avatar: Avatar, Avatar: The Way of Water, Avatar: Fire and Ash." The "humanizing" of the Na'vi was done only partially as a cultural commentary, however. Mostly, the changes were made for reasons of practical clarity.

Cameron's original plans for the Na'vi were, it seems, far more thorough. Cameron envisioned the alien species as having unique customs and gestures all their own, ensuring that they felt like a fully grown people. It makes sense that nine-foot, blue-skinned, semi-psychic aliens wouldn't necessarily nod their heads to indicate "yes," or give a thumbs-up to signify approval. Cameron wanted to make sure that the Na'vi not only spoke their own language, but also formed other communicative tics. As he said in "The Making of Avatar":

"We had certain rules for the Na'vi. [...] They never nodded their heads 'Yes.' That's a human gesture, and it's cultural. Certain cultures don't nod for 'yes'; they nod for 'no!' Assent — meaning, 'I agree with you' — from a Na'vi, has the head going back with a click of the tongue in the roof of the mouth. Or, if they close their eyes for a second, that's a solemn agreement, like a contract. Some of those rules fell by the wayside much later, because the dramatic demands of the scene ultimately were more important. And when an actor was the moment of a feeling, I didn't want to interpose too much on that."

The decision to cut back on Na'vi gestures made sense, seeing as the bulk of the people seeing the "Avatar" movies were likely human. If a dramatic scene arose, and a (human) actor forgot the Na'vi mannerisms and merely nodded dramatically, Cameron knew it would read to the audience. JoAnn Jansen and choreographer Lula Washington came up with a lot of the Na'vi gestures and movements, however, so when the actors nailed it, we have them to thank.