It seems that James Cameron never settles for the easy way out. He could have made Avatar 10 years ago with the existing technology, and had The Phantom Menace level animations. But he developed a new animation technology instead.
He also created a new language. Or rather, he had USC Prof Paul Frommer do it for him.
“The constraint, of course, is that the language I created had to be spoken by humans,” Frommer told LA Times. “I could have let my imagination run wild and come up with all sorts of weird sounds, but I was limited by what a human actor could actually do.”
But even though the language was created with humans in mind, “Avatar” actors still struggled to get the words out correctly. “It was so hard and I was really concerned about it,” said Zoe Saldana. “I didn’t think I could get through it. I’m not good with languages. All the actors, we worked together. It was the only way.”
It is impressive enough to think that an entire language was constructed for the characters to speak instead of just paying attention to detail to make sure their babbling sounded a little more structured.
Not since Klingon earned itself a dictionary has a language been laid out so specifically in film. Even the very convincing sounding “Divine Language” that Milla Jovovich spills in Fifth Element didn’t make sense grammatically, but it was there.
This attention to detail fascinates me and scares me at the same time. Does Cameron really think it would be worth it to create a fictional language just to add a level of credbility to the movie?
Wouldn’t semi structured babbling do just as well?
