The vibrant world of James Cameron’s Avatar movies is a stunning work of special effects mastery, but it wouldn’t be possible without the real locations that inspired it. The natural beauty of Avatar’s alien world, Pandora, is essential to the film’s success. Not only does it provide a stunning backdrop to the mythic story of Jake Sully’s gradual embrace of the Na’vi way of life, but the striking beauty of Pandora is one of the largest factors in Jake’s choice to fight for the planet. It’s necessary that the audience is able to recognize this beauty in order for Avatar to work.
Avatar is a movie decades in the making. Cameron dreamed up the concept in 1995, but his ambitious vision for the film caused him to wait until digital technology caught up with his ideas. There’s an endlessly vast lore to Pandora, one that will certainly be explored further in the upcoming Avatar 3, as well as other sequels. However, the core of Pandora’s appeal lies in its familiarity. Rather than depicting a remote alien planet with an unfamiliar ecosystem, Cameron’s Avatar world functions by expanding on the vivid beauty of the real world. To do this, the Avatar team took influence from some of the most magnificent sites on Earth.
1 Luminous Lagoon, Jamaica
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Bioluminescence is one of the most striking features of Avatar’s Pandora. In Avatar: The Way of Water, the vibrant glow of algae gives many of the underwater scenes an otherworldly beauty. However, the feature originates on Earth. Jamaica’s Luminous Lagoon is likely the inspiration for Avatar’s glowing water. The meeting of two bodies of water creates the perfect living conditions for bioluminescent microorganisms, which cast a blue glow when disturbed. There are only four known sites in the world where this phenomenon occurs, and Luminous Lagoon is the most famous — and the only one where the reaction can be seen 365 days out of the year.
2 Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, China
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The introduction of Avatar’s floating Hallelujah Mountains incite an important character moment for Jake Sully, whose journey to joining the Na’avi begins when he starts to understand the staggering natural beauty of Pandora. The moment wouldn’t be possible without the visual inspiration of the mountains of China’s Zhangjiajie Nation Forest. The Avatar team confirmed that the mountains, which appear to float when clouds of mist obscure the bases of their pillar formations, served as an influence for Avatar’s floating mountains (via Gizmodo). In 2010, one of the 3,500-foot pillars was even renamed “Avatar Hallelujah Mountain” in honor of the blockbuster.
3 Waitomo Glowworm Cave, New Zealand
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Another prominent bioluminescence site is the Waitomo Glowworm Caves in New Zealand. While Avatar: The Way of Water heavily features water luminosity, the phenomenon is first encountered on land in the original Avatar. The glowing nightlife is one of the first things Jake notices about the alien planet, and it’s this distraction that gets him into trouble with some of Pandora’s most powerful creatures. The Waitomo Caves are among the most famous bioluminescence sites in the world, with their distinctive glow caused by a type of glowworm found only in New Zealand. Avatar filming took place in New Zealand, so the team was likely familiar with the location.
4 Mount Roraima, Venezuela
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Another geological feature the Avatar design team confirmed as an influence on their floating mountains is Mount Roraima, one of the flat-top mountains of Venezuela. These stunning landforms are topped by totally flat plateaus that go on for miles, often enriched by trees and lush greenery. The largest and most well-known Tepui is Mount Roraima. The mountain’s extreme elevation often places the top of its plateau over the clouds, forming another illusion of a floating mountain like Pandora’s Hallelujah Mountains. The unique mountain has also served as inspiration for other works of fiction, including Pixar’s Up and the Arthur Conan Doyle novel The Lost World.
5 Angel Falls, Venezuela
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The vast scope of Pandora’s natural landscape encouraged Cameron and the Avatar team to take reference from real-world locations with their own imposing scale. One such spot is Venezuela’s Angel Falls, the site of the world’s largest uninterrupted waterfall. Before Jake captures the flying Toruk beast in Avatar, he first has to learn to fly an ordinary Ikran. The sequence in which he does takes place in an environment heavily reminiscent of Angel Falls. The extremely long, uninterrupted waterfall in the background subtly enhances the dizzying height of the environment, thus heightening the tension of Jake’s first flight.
6 Wisteria Tree At The Ashikaga Flower Park, Ashikaga, Japan
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The most sacred Na’vi location in Avatar is the Tree of Souls. The enormous tree, draped with luminous, purple-hued tendrils, allows the Na’vi to interface with Pandora’s sprawling and interconnected biosphere. The tree’s aesthetic is heavily influenced by the Japanese wisteria, a plant with long, leaning tendrils that flower into great tendrils of vibrant white, pink, and purple. The great wisteria tree at Japan’s Ashikaga Flower Park is particularly comparable to the tree of souls. The tree, which is dated to 1870, is the largest wisteria in Japan. Its vast canopy and draping purple flowers are intensely reminiscent of the Tree of Souls.
7 Waipoua Forest, New Zealand
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For the rich forests of Pandora, Avatar draws inspiration from numerous forests throughout the world. One forest on the North Island of New Zealand, where much of Avatar was filmed, likely influenced Avatar’s home tree. While every Na’vi clan in Avatar has a home tree, the movie focuses on that of the Omaticaya clan. The massive, thousand-year-old tree is the generational home of the tribe. The Waipoua forest, which was taken from New Zealand’s indigenous Māori people, is home to the rare and culturally important kauri tree. Significantly, the forest houses the largest kauri tree in New Zealand, dubbed “Tāne Mahuta” or “God of The Forest.”
8 Kauai Rainforest, Hawaii, USA
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The dense, lush greenery and varied ecosystem of the Kauai rainforest served as a direct inspiration for Pandora’s own rainforest. Cameron even chose the forest as the site of a so-called “sense-memory odyssey.” The director told Variety that he took several Avatar actors to the Hawaiian island, where they “lived in the rainforest for a few days,” cooking in underground fire pits and drinking water from leaves. Cameron reports that his intention was to give the actors as much sensory detail as possible, so that they could summon the memories of being in a real rainforest when acting on Avatar‘s blue-screen soundstage.
