The Tale of Jake Sull-I-Mean, T'van the Terran

"I Rewrote The Highest-Grossing Film Ever And It's Somehow Even More Problematic."

Once upon a time, in a galaxy that was just a hop, skip, and a multi-billion-dollar cryosleep journey away, there was a lush, neon-drenched jungle moon called Pandora. It was a real fixer-upper, if your idea of "curb appeal" included six-legged panthers that could eat your face and trees that could upload your consciousness into the cosmic wi-fi. The local residents, the Na'vi, were a charming, azure-skinned people who were, as all indigenous peoples in these stories are, in perfect harmony with nature. They had zero percent body fat, wore very little clothing, and could plug their hair-braids into just about anything, which is a feature I'm sure would be wildly popular on Earth.

Our hero, T'van, was a former Marine who couldn't feel his legs. A real sob story. He was recruited by a shadowy, underfunded, and completely altruistic corporation known only as "The Consortium" for a top-secret mission. Their goal? To gently persuade the Na'vi to move out of their incredibly valuable, spiritually significant, and conveniently resource-rich home tree. The Consortium's head of operations was a man named Parker Self-Moreorless, who communicated primarily through sneers and the clinking of stock options.

T'van's job was to pilot a genetically engineered Na'vi body, or "avatar," because apparently, "giant blue alien suit" was already trademarked. He'd jack into this thing and run around the forest, and oh, what a surprise, he could feel his legs again. It was a medical miracle, or, as the script called it, "Plot Convenience A."

He's assigned to the fiercest warrior tribe, led by the stern Chieftain Eyecan'ttakethisanymore and his daughter, the lithe and deadly Ney'avi, whose name literally translates to "She Who Is Unobtainably Exotic For The White Guy Protagonist." Ney'avi is tasked with teaching T'van the Ways of the People, which mostly involve a lot of running, jumping, and plugging their hair into glowing plants. It's all very intimate.

"To truly see," Ney'avi would whisper, her voice like the world's most expensive ASMR video, "you must connect with Eywa, the great mother."

"Right, the planetary network," T'van would reply, desperately trying not to get his braid tangled in a vine. "What's the password? Is it 'password'?"

Through a series of montages set to soaring music, T'van learns to ride the six-legged horse-thing and, in the story's most dramatic turn, tames the biggest, baddest, most iridescent pterodactyl in the sky. This, of course, makes him The One. Because nothing says "chosen one" like having a slightly bigger flying lizard than the other guys.

Torn between his mission to secure the Unobtanium (yes, that's really what the MacGuffin is called, the screenwriter was so proud of that one) and his newfound love for the culture and his blue-skinned girlfriend, T'van faces a moral quandary. "Do I help the greedy corporation destroy this beautiful world," he ponders, "or do I become the messianic leader of an insurgency? Hmm. Such nuance."

Naturally, he chooses the path of most resistance, which involves a rousing speech to the Na'vi. "They're not going to take your land!" he yells, his giant blue body gesticulating wildly. "We will fight! And we will win, because our spiritual connection to this tree is stronger than their... you know... spaceships and high-explosive ordnance!"

The final battle is, of course, a masterpiece of cinematic irony. The primitive natives, with their bows and arrows, defeat the advanced military force because the local wildlife suddenly decides to join the fray, having received a strongly-worded memo from the planetary consciousness. It's like if all the squirrels in Central Park suddenly organized and took out a tank battalion. Totally believable.

In the end, T'van permanently transfers his consciousness into his avatar body, gets the girl, and becomes the new chief. The remaining humans are sent packing, back to their dying, polluted Earth. The End.

👉 “Want to see how the Treadflow stacks up against more versatile options? Check our post on The Siege of Kerak (The Wedding Interrupted)

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