25 of the best fictional planets to visit

10. Pandora (Avatar)

Like many alien planets, you’ll have to keep your wits about you when you visit Pandora. That might be hard, given the intense visuals and strange creatures that abound on the planet’s surface. You might also want to avoid the ham-fisted metaphors about colonization and environmentalism, too. That is hopefully a simple matter of avoiding Avatar writer and director James Cameron when he’s in a talkative mood.

Avatar is the 2009 science fiction film that seemingly took movie theaters by storm. It features Jake Sully, a paraplegic military man who volunteers to take part in the Avatar Program. He travels to Pandora, where humans are mining valuable resources to send back to alleviate Earth’s own energy crisis. Complicating matters are the native inhabitants of Pandora, the Na’vi. They’re not quite on board with the depletion of their home’s natural features and complex environment.

Blue cat people

To either ease things or completely exploit the Na’vi (depending on your point of view), the humans have created the aforementioned Avatar Program. Humans have created Na’vi hybrid blanks, to be piloted by the consciousnesses of human operators. It’s an exciting and unnerving experience for Jake Sully, who suddenly has the use of his legs again and is also in the body of a seven-foot-tall blue cat creature.

Critics of Avatar maintain that the story — where Jake Sully joins forces with the Na’vi against comically evil military men — is so cliché that it slips back into two dimensions. Whether or not you agree, it’s hard to not feel a little urge to visit Pandora. The world looks almost like a Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper cover, with all of the colors turned up to full saturation. Many of the plants and animals on the moon also take full advantage of bioluminescence, adding another level of beauty to the proceedings.