Despite being the biggest movie of all time at the box office, it’s not an unfair assessment to say that James Cameron’s sci-fi blockbuster Avatar didn’t quite leave the same long lasting pop culture footprint that similar sci-fi/fantasy franchises like Star Wars or Harry Potter left behind. However, with four sequels coming up over the next decade, it’s fair to say that Avatar is poised to make a huge comeback into our cultural consciousness, and very soon. Get used to seeing those blue cat people again at conventions, folks.
The first step in this will definitely be Walt Disney World’s upcoming Avatar themed expansion of their Animal Kingdom park, called Pandora: The World of Avatar. Among the new attractions in Pandora will be Flight of Passage, a new 3D ride which allows you to fly a banshee over Pandora as one of the native Na’vi. The banshees of course were those cool looking dragon-like creatures that the natives rode on, the ones that even the biggest Avatar haters out there secretly wanted to fly around on.
As fans of the movie might remember, for normal humans to exist on the planet Pandora and breathe the air, their DNA must be combined with one of the native Na’vi to create a sort of half human/half alien clone of themselves that one can mentally link with. It’s sort of a creepy concept when you think about it, but it’s a crucial part of the overall mythology that James Cameron created, and therefore, a big part of the conceit of the ride as well.
As part of Flight of Passage, as you are waiting in line for the ride, you can see one of the avatars being grown in a giant incubator. Now Inside the Magic have given us our first look at the Na’vi animatronic which fans get to see while in queue, and it is so lifelike its super creepy (although wearing shorts in an incubation tube? Really? Yeah, yeah I know. It’s a family park).
You can check out a detailed video of the Avatar animatronic down below.
Are you thinking of making the trip to Orlando to check our the world of Pandora? Be sure to let us know down below in the comments.
Images: Twentieth Century Fox
