First photo from Avatar

Peter Sciretta at /Film scored a coup from an anonymous email offering today, with this first official photo from Avatar. If you want to remain clueless about the basic premise of the film you should skip Peter’s description of what’s depicted:

Sam Worthington plays Jake Sully a paraplegic war veteran, who gets the opportunity to travel to another planet, Pandora, to work with a mining operation. Because the planet is so harsh, traditional armor and envirosuit solutions are not good enough to protect miners, and a clone program has developed in which DNA from humans and Na’vi, the natives that inhabit Pandora, are combined. The result is essentially a cloned Na’vi that can house the consciousness of an individual with human DNA. This means that Jake will be able to walk again. The photo above shows Sully in front of the tank that houses his Avatar.

The concept of Avatars and consciousness transplanted into other bodies play a significant part in the plot of Iain M. Banks’ Look to Windward, which I happen to be reading this week (on sartre’s recommendation). The parallels are a pleasant surprise.