Here’s the real story behind Avatar. The key idea - the creation of the Nav’i - isn’t original. I got it from someone else (I can’t remember who). I’ve just elaborated on it, paying special attention to Bruce Sterling’s “The Swarm”.
A human exploratory mission lands, looking for a harvestable source of unobtanium. The planet-spanning “brain” notices - it has eyes everywhere. From inevitable deaths and other cell-shedding encounters, it gains access to the invaders’ biochemistry.
It has learned the best way to repel such invaders is not to swarm them indiscriminately but to use invader-specific tactics. For that, it needs the brain of one of the invaders who knows how to fight its kind.
So it spins up a species of beings. Instead of following the planet-standard six-legged template, this new species is patterned after the invaders. (But made different enough to be alien.) Moreover, its culture and physiology are designed to be appealing to any technological, machine-heavy civilization: strong, fast, nimble, with a culture of the sort a post-industrial civilization mythologizes. It’s a culture that’s centripetal instead of centrifugal, that values ritual and tradition and individual accomplishment, that is stable rather than fluid. (So the complaints reviewers make about the Nav’i being obviously idealized Native Americans isn’t a film-maker’s use of clichés. It’s a planet’s use of truly universal cliches - because they work. That’s why they’re clichés.)
The planet waits. The invaders (like many but not all) have avatar technology, which makes things easier. For a while, all the avatars are disappointingly clumsy and unaggressive, but then one appears who’s clearly a fighter. The world-mind recruits the nearest female to be his temptress and covers him with seeds so that she doesn’t kill him. She takes him home. The world-mind knows that Homo sap. is a status-driven culture (that’s obvious from observation), so it quickly reprograms the female as the child and heir to the leader of the tribe. The human will find it motivating to be competing for the highest-status role. To further increase the motivation, a male Nav’i is configured to be a rival for the woman and leadership.
The human reacts as expected: how could he not? - He’s been placed as the hero in a story he’s heard a thousand times.
In the course of his indoctrination, the human of course mind-melds with the world-mind, which allows it to learn much more. It may also have the chance to do a little reprogramming - I don’t know.
The inevitable provocation happens - a shame for the world-mind, but it’s lost only a tiny bit of itself - and war is on.
The world mind wants to win the war, of course, but it needs to be a little coy. It doesn’t want to be nuked from orbit, so it would be best if the invaders thought they were flukily beaten by a primitive species like them, rather than by an entire planet that’s intelligent.
So the planet lets the Nav’i attack gunships with arrows. In the best case, they’d win. As it happens, they get creamed. But they still cause enough confusion that there’s a decent chance the second, not-controlled-by-humanoids wave won’t be reported as such.
The invaders are expelled. The Nav’i will probably be kept around a thousand or so years (in case the invaders return). Then they’ll be ended and the planet can return to its six-legged status quo.
The End.
