"The na'vi look too human to be believable as an alien species"
This criticism has been something I've always felt pretty blasΓ© about; as in, I personally see no issue with their designs (love them in fact) but I can see why some people don't like them and I've never been bothered by fanmade redesigns (I find some to be rather cool actually).
However, since the release of TWOW, I've been rolling my eyes at this "critique" (nitpick imo) as well as redesigns because the movie actually provides a non-humanoid race of alien people: the Tulkun. In the film, as well as supplementary material, the Tulkun are described as being a group of people with their own culture, language, belief system, art, music, poetry and law. Sure, they're a whaling metaphor, but as opposed to portraying them as really smart whales, they're actually a native community of people.
Yet, let the people who watched the movie β fandom or otherwise β tell it, and they're just really smart big fish the Metkayina bonded with π people talk about Payakan like he's a wild animal Lo'ak tamed and not a person he befriended, I've even seen fanwork where they humanize Avatar and have Payakan be a pet he adopts or a feral animal he tames and not a guy he forms a friendship with. I remember reading a oneshot where the writer claimed Lo'ak named him and I was like? No, Payakan introduced himself to him!
People claim that Ronal losing Ro'a is some sort of parallel to Neytiri losing Seze, but β not to downplay Seze's death btw β based on Ro'a being an actual person and a familial bond to Ronal, wouldn't it be more of a parallel to Neytiri losing Sylwanin? You know, her actual sister? Or her son Neteyam? It's like saying a character losing their pet hamster is the same as a another character losing their twin sister. π
Idk, I just wonder if the people who claim the na'vi look "too human" would have actually empathized with them if they looked more alien and less humanoid, because if the Tulkun are anything to go by, it was a great decision to anthropomorphize them because people would have dehumanized them if they hadn't been (at least, more than they already do). Audiences seem to struggle to empathize with or humanize characters that don't look anthropomorphic in any way.
Sorry for this long ass yap session π this is just something that has bothered me for a while and I needed to get it off my chest.
Bonus point: It becomes more horrifying when you acknowledge that historically, indigenous and native populations having their body parts/organs harvested by colonizers and invaders for medicinal and ritualistic purposes is actually a terrifyingly common phenomenon. Indigenous people having their skulls, scalps and organs harvested by settlers, mummified egyptian people having their bodies stolen and consumed, and many more examples of this happening make it so claiming the Tulkun to be "just a whaling metaphor" feels deeply reductive. Yes, they are a whaling metaphor, but it's a lot deeper than that, yet no one acknowledges it because they look like whales I suppose.
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