Summary
Back at Trudy's ship, Jake's team searches for him, but Trudy insists that they have to get back to the base. Grace thinks that Jake doesn't stand a chance of surviving the night on Pandora, as the scene shifts to Jake. That night, Jake turns a long stick into a spear by sharpening the end, when suddenly we realize he is being watched by a Na'vi in the tree above. When the Na'vi goes to shoot Jake, a small lit-up creature called a "seeds of Eywa," the Na'vi goddess, lands on the bow, which discourages the Na'vi from shooting.
A group of viperwolves surround Jake. His only line of defense is dipping his spear in some sap-like substance and lighting it on fire to fend off the wolves. The viperwolves attack Jake, and as he begins to lose ground in the fight, the Na'vi who was aiming to shoot him earlier comes to his rescue. She kills some viperwolves, and the others retreat, before saying prayers for the wolves she killed. When he follows her, she knocks Jake to the ground and scolds him for causing such unnecessary violence, before telling him to go back to wherever he came from.
Jake is confused to be met with such scorn and asks the Na'vi why she helped him, to which she responds, "You have a strong heart. No fear, but stupid!" As the Na'vi climbs up a nearby tree, Jake follows and asks for help, but she insists that "Sky People" cannot learn. "No one can teach you to See," she says. He follows the Na'vi and asks if she learned to speak English at Grace Augustine's school, but she tells him he's not supposed to be there. Suddenly, more of the seeds of Eywa, the Sacred Tree, appear, falling down from above. When Jake asks what they are, the Na'vi tells him they are "very pure spirits." As they surround Jake and land on him, it seems like a sign. The Na'vi decides to help him and tells him to follow her.
As they leap over branches, Jake falls, ensnared by a trap set by other Na'vi. A group of Na'vi warriors surround him, ready to shoot, but the female Na'vi orders them to calm down and tells one of them, Tsu'tey, that there has been a sign, adding, "This is a matter for the Tsahik." The warriors grab Jake and bring him to their leader.
They bring Jake to the rulers of the Na'vi, Eytukan and Mo'at, the parents of the female Na'vi who rescued Jake. The female Na'vi's name is Neytiri and she explains what happened. "My father is deciding whether or not to kill you," Neytiri says to Jake, and as he goes to shake Eytukan's hand, the Na'vi pounce on him. Mo'at approaches and asks Jake about himself, before pricking his chest and tasting his blood to assess him. She proclaims that it is decided by Eywa that Jake is to live with their tribe, the Omaticaya. She orders a resistant Neytiri to help teach Jake their ways.
Afterwards, Jake arrives at a meeting of the tribal members dressed in Na'vi clothes and sits beside the fire, awkwardly. At the end of the night, he climbs to his leaf bed in the "Hometree," the tree in which the tribe lives. He tries to engage with Neytiri, but she ignores him, curling up into her leaf to sleep.
When Jake falls asleep in the leaf, he wakes up in the lab, with Grace shining a flashlight in his eyes. At breakfast, everyone is anxious to hear Jake report on what has happened, but Norm is upset, because he expected to be the one to get to know the Na'vi.
He visits with Quaritch, Selfridge, and the Marines, who are also excited because they know that Hometree is hiding a huge unobtanium mine, and they think he will be able to help them get it. "Killing the indigenous looks bad, but there's one thing that shareholders hate more than bad press, and that's a bad quarterly statement," says Selfridge, basically intimating that if Jake cannot get the Na'vi to move, the Marines will have to kill them. Quaritch tells Jake he has three months until the bulldozers will arrive, and Jake says he will get to work.
As he prepares to go back to sleep and infiltrate the Na'vi again, Grace quizzes Jake on the various members of the tribe. Eytukan is the clan leader, and Mo'at is the spiritual leader, "like a shaman," as Grace puts it. Tsu'tey, the warrior who tried to kill him, is in line to be the next clan leader, and is engaged to Neytiri, Jake's rescuer. Jake asks her who Eywa is, and Norm gets frustrated, telling Jake that Eywa is their goddess, "made up of all living things." Jake gets in the pod and goes back to the Na'vi village.
Neytiri teaches Jake how to ride a direhorse, a horselike animal. Neytiri tells her that the one he is examining is female and teaches him how to ride it, by connecting the neural tendrils in his long Na'vi braid to the horse's tendrils. "That is shahaylu. The bond," Neytiri tells him, advising him to feel the direhorse and instruct her using his mind. As he launches the direhorse forward, he falls into the mud, just as Tsu'tey and some others approach. They tell him to leave, but he says he's sticking around.
Back in the base, the human Jake tells the Marines about Hometree and the ways it can be infiltrated. It is 1000 feet tall and though Quaritch wants to destroy, Jake insists that they ought to find another way. Max Patel watches their interaction from the hall, and when Jake returns to the lab, Grace has a plan to relocate the lab to the Hallelujah Mountains, far away from Quaritch and Selfridge's influence. "The legendary floating mountains of Pandora, heard of them?" Norm says to Jake. Trudy flies the scientists to the mountains, a marvelous sight.
In the new lab, Grace smokes a cigarette and assigns bunks, playing nice with Jake because she knows he can help the scientists' cause. When he links up with his avatar once again, Jake observes as Neytiri mimics a birdcall and summons a large dragon-like creature, an ikran, and feeds it, telling Jake not to look in the creature's eyes. She tells Jake that in order to become a "makto", or a hunter, he must choose and be chosen by an ikran. Climbing on top of her ikran, Neytiri flies away, as Jake watches, smiling.
Back in the lab, Jake makes a video log about his experience. He says that the days are starting to blend together, it is tough learning the Na'vi language, but he is getting better. We see a montage of Neytiri teaching Jake various lessons, and telling him that he is a skxawng, meaning "moron." We also see Jake in the lab talking to Norm, who is kinder to him as he teaches him some lessons about the Na'vi. Gradually, Jake improves in his training as a Na'vi.
Analysis
When Jake is separated from his mission, the plot of the film kicks into high gear. Left to his own devices on a planet that is hostile to human life, Jake must be resourceful in order to survive even just one night on the planet. His only hope of making it is his own wits and perhaps the help of the Na'vi creatures on the planet. Having no experience on the planet and a rather reckless approach to his mission more generally, Jake finds himself in a uniquely dangerous position.
Director James Cameron's impressive visual and special effects heighten the suspense of the film, and fully envelope the viewer in the world of Pandora. The special animation, all brights colors and impressive geometries, is visually stunning, and the design for Pandora is fully realized down to the smallest details. As Jake navigates the hostile environment of Pandora, one cannot help but marvel at the film's visual splendor. When Avatar was released, it was shown in 3-D in theaters, which served to only further heighten the impact of the visual effects.
In this section of the film, we are introduced to the Na'vi, a nature-dwelling species of beings that live in the trees of Pandora and live in harmony with nature. In sharp contrast to the "Sky People" who have invaded their moon, the Na'vi do not try to kill or extract for sport. Rather, they live in harmony with their natural surroundings, and use of violence only when it is necessary. In this respect, they are quite different than the humans who have invaded their home.
When Jake meets Neytiri, it seems that there is some kind of mystical force protecting him from harm. When she first goes to shoot him, she sees a seed of Eywa, which discourages her from hurting him. Then later, a number of the luminescent seeds fall from the sky and surround Jake, a seeming sign that he is important to the Na'vi. While it may seem as though Jake does not belong at all—a paraplegic Marine working for science on a planet far from home—these divine signals seem to foreshadow that he is on a hero's journey all his own, that he is special or chosen in some way.
Even though Jake is technically a double agent, working with the military wing of the operation to discover how to infiltrate the unobtanium deposit under the Na'vi Hometree, he begins to integrate more easily with the scientists and the Na'vi as the film progresses. In the beginning, he was a true Marine, impulsive and not terribly concerned with the intellectual or anthropological bent of the mission, but after some time, Jake begins to find an unexpected home with the Na'vi. He even begins to get along with the scientists, who he had previously thought were a little nerdy. Jake's mission becomes more and more complicated as he finds himself transformed by his experience as a researcher.
