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#1: Its all relative
#2: Or that's what they are suppose to be, ya know noble? Plus its all relative, should read what the Chinese people saw in the movie
#3: Ummmm okay thats your opinon
#4: They have hunters, priests, wisemen, presumably healers and fishermen and people that tend to the banshees and direhorses. Nertyi mentions a female with a beautiful singing voice so presummably singers would matter or else that wouldn't be a selling point for a mate
#5: One of the hunters that "arrested" Jake was female. One of the hunters that was taking the test was female, Nertyi mentions a female hunter. You don't see other parts of their society cause those parts don't concern Jake. Might as well complain about where they go to the bathroom
#6: Whats the problem here? That life can become something more then just one animal or one plant?
#7A: Its the whole point of the movie, to get to connect to the natives to better understand them to get them to move off the mining sites. Its been roughly 25 years since they got to Pandora, a lot can happen in 25 years.
#7B: The Avatars are test tube babies. Grown 100% in a lab.
#8: Well for one thing, private enterprises are make more headway in spaceship designs and concepts then Nasa is, and for the other thing Jake says that he's been hearing about Pandora since he was child. First Contact has come and gone.
#9: Ya I got nothing here. Only thing to make it seem possible is that 200 KM is the range of the mining equipment, or that they don't want a supply line of more then 200km or that the entire speech was an exaggeration.
#10: This is all relative. Some say they were very good and human villians and others say they were transparent and predictable.
#11: So?
#12: It may be possible to burn it down but that would take an aweful lot of time. When Jake gets back to his body the tree is still burning long long after it fell. Plus the tree is made up of something other then just wood. It is a alien environment after all you can't just expect it to be exactly like Earth trees
#13: Not the messiest means but it is quieter. A nuke from orbit is gonna leave paper work(several missiles can be used in training ops or in a side engagement), and you can't forcibly remove something that simply won't leave not even at gunpoint.
#14: The gunship couldn't. The mech bays aren't big enough to drop the payload and it's not fast enough to drop and then get outta dodge before the explosion hits them
#15: Well there are several arches over the Tree so height probably wouldn't of done much to bypass that
#16: You missed the part where it was in the flux zone where all guidance stopped working. So only way to accu
#17: Ya I got nothing here. The only possible reason is that the mechs are not combat mechs and are for manual labour in dangerous enviroments which makes sense.
#18: The arrows fired at the Dragonfly where fired from bad angles against stronger, smaller windows(the bigger the window the easier it is to shatter/break) While the ones fired at the Helicopters are fired from high up off a diving animal a strike the large windows at a direct angle. You might as well complain about shells bouncing off the front of a Abrams but the smae ones penetrating the sides and rear
#19: No reason given but they could of been there to contain the Na'vi forces so that the bombs will kill everyone
#20: You do know that animals that evolve on another planet wouldn't have the same bone density and strength of a animal evolved on Earth? How do you know it doesn't have naturally occuring carbon fiber bones like the Na'vi?
#21: Jake was neither wounded nor was he parrying blows with ease. Every hit knocked him down or to his knees. He also didn't stand there and take it he moved around a lot. Did you miss the part about natural carbon fiber bones?
#22: It was hinted through out the movie that Eywa was real. And that Eywa IS the planet.
You didn't watch the movie did you?
Ziggy Stardust
Absolutely Sane
Yeah, the Aliens send out a sort of 007 alien to the dropship parked way over somewhere else, so the 007 alien first had to track down that ship without a clue where to search.
Logical.
In reality the movie needed the crew to stay on the planet, so they pulled the Alien out of the hat trick.
BasketCase
Username sez it all
Yes, I have. More than once, too. I first saw Avatar thirty years ago as a kid, and I've seen it many times since. Because Avatar is the same old theme a million other movies have already done, and done better.
I'm definitely gonna go see this particular version, just for the pretty pictures--mostly because I snagged a corporate box office ticket and can see it in IMAX for free. As someone else in this thread said way back: turn off your brain and watch the pretty pictures.
Because then Cameron wouldn't have had a movie.
Ziggy Stardust
Absolutely Sane
Patroklos
Deity
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Relative to what? That makes no sense.
I don't think you understand what the term "relative" means. Regardless of what the Chinese thought the Navi remain a racist steriotype.
No, that is pretty much science fact. I am totally open to you explaining how that happened though.
PRESUMABLY, or in other words there is no evidence of this whatsoever. The fact is we are trying to be sold on the Navi being a peaceful race however we are never given any evidence of this in any form. Warriors of old were valued for their singing voices too, regailing the collected warriors in the king's hall of there last rape and pillage via song. Sorry, no dice.
The simple fact is that we are introduced to no other strata of Navi society other than priestess and warrior, one of each holding dictatoral power.
There were no females in the test, stop making things up. Hunters and warriors are very different things. What we see on screen is Cameron idealizing a native society that necessitates things like male dominated warrior culture, and then him trying to shoehorn in a heroin after the fact. It is an unnatural fit, yet another reason why the Navi are an attrocious mary sue.
What does this comment have to do with the critism? What is the MECHANSIM!?!?!
Thats the whole point. Unless the Navi routinely sacrifice individuals in order to perpetuate others, THEY HAVE NEVER BEEN IN POCESSION OF AN EMPTY BODY BEFORE TO DEVELOPE THIS PRACTICE!!!
1.) You first claim is demonstrably false. Private enterprise has barely succeeded in getting payloads of a few pounds into orbit by themselves, while organizatons like NASA and the ESA are sending probes throughout the solar system and beyond.
2.) He heard about Pandora, which was obviously discovered long before the Navi. It is irrelevant though, the idea that there would be no goverment involvement in an enterprise of this size is ******** on its face. The idea that there would be no government involvment in contact with a sentient alien race whether it be 1 year or 1000 years after first contact is far more ******** on its face.
Those people are wrong, and I am right
Originality, directors are supposed to be artists. This isn't a big deal though, I already praised him on making his technology seem as if it could be real and functioning and thus designs that have those attributes are going to mimic each others forms.
If the tree is made up of something other than just wood we are never told so during the film. And no, the time doesn't matter. The objective wasn't to destroy the tree, it was to remove the Navi. So if you can just burn the tree int a useless heap of ashes why not. I am not sure if you have ever seen something burn but it takes very little time and there is no reason to think that letting that thing burn for a few days would matter.
1.) How exactly is manually traking down the natives and killing them one by one, with thousands of witnesses, less messy that a burned patch or forest?
2.) Of course you can forcibly remove something that simply won't leave at gunpoint. That is exactly what we saw happen.
???
1.) As a matter of fact the gunship was more than big enough. The mine esplosive bombs were just a regular pallet in size. We watch the gunship dislodge two rows of Mechs standing side by side which individually are far bigger than the pallet.
2.) Obviously it could get away because the gunship was with the orbital transport THE WHOLE TIME, there was never any pretext of sending in the orbital transport without the gunship at its side. As a matter or observed fact, when the bomb is dropped the gunship is right there and nothing happened.
???
That is irrelevant, if those archers would have escaped an explosion from ordinance dropped at 20K feet they would have escaped the same explosion from ordinace dropped for 1K feet. The ordinance is the same, the only difference is the level of risk the attackers expose themselves to.
Except we watch the gunship kill things with tracking missiles in the ending battle, and laser guidance requires no signals, it is all by sight. There is no way to jam laser illumination other than physical obstruction, and since none of the characters seemed to have any trouble seeing in those areas why would lasers designators and trackers be affected?
You would think that, except that it is made quite clear throughout the movie that the humans are the big bad militarists.
They were all combat vehicles, these windows would need to withstand bullets, there is no way in hell an arrow fired from any angle would have those effects. Its a plot whole, plain and simple.
Possibly, but in reality it was just a vehicle for an action sequence, Cameron probably having realized his awesome mechs didn't get any screen time due to the actual plot.
They could be made of pure carbon fiber, it wouldn't matter. Carbon fiber is strong, but it isn't strong in the ways that would make it resist bullets.
Welcome to the 30mm round: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_mm_caliber
The 30mm is the same calibre used by the Thunderbolt II, the one that turned Iraqi tanks into swiss cheese in the Gulf War.
1.) Not wounded, he had just had his ass kicked via falling off of crashing aircraft!
2.) Moving to his knees vice being thrown clear to the horizon like he should have been you mean?
3.) Carbon fiber bones are irrelevant. Momentum is momentum.
Sucks to be the Navi then, knowing that you can be physically commendeered to do Eywa's bidding at any moment like the rest of the wildlife apparently.
Oh I did, sorry I had to dispell your Avatar worship with observed flaws.
BasketCase
Username sez it all
DOH! I completely passed up a golden opportunity.edit 2: I also saw the Southpark, Dances with Smurfs, Cartman = Glenn Beck episode just a few days ago for the second time. Only this time I had seen avatar. I
Here's South Park the way I woulda wrote it:
Spoiler :
One Na'Vi breaks into the zoo and tries to plug into a lion--grabbing his tail, naturally, at which point the lion turns around and bites the Na'Vi's face off. Another Na'Vi tries to plug into the monkeys, who of course throw stuff at him which I can't mention here. 
Yes. I do, in fact, have WAY too much free time on my hands......
Winner
Diverse in Unity
Funny, I saw it just 2 days after you, for the same reason.
No objections here, now to the rest (bwahaha)
No, it didn't. It was simple, but not in the negative sense. More brainpower left to enjoy the CGI and the virtual world.
I think you got it completely wrong. Na'vi are presented as being similar to some Terran hunter-gatherer (from now on abbreviated as H-G) societies. There are also clear differences - such as that women seem to be equally capable of hunting, whereas on Earth there usually is a strict sex-based division of labour. Na'vi are similar to Neanderthals in this respect - they were also much stronger than us and had little gender-defined roles for males and females.
The point is that in practice, there is little difference between a hunter and a warrior. In H-G societies on Earth, no such distinction exists simply because there is little social stratification in the first place. H-G societies are usually extremely egalitarian (one could even say democratic in the extreme), a by-product of their lower population density and little overproduction of food.
So, your description of the Na'vi society as "hereditary theocratic monarchy dominated by a warrior culture" is nonsensical, because there is no specialized warrior class and no strictly defined ruling class, in other words little social hierarchy - these things are only present in sedentary agricultural societies.
2.) The Navi are nothing but a big racial stereotype. The nobal savage warrior in love with the environment who never does anything that is motivated by the same base goals of their technologically superior rivalsIts the same thing people do to the Native Americans and it is just as stupid.
For some reason, such a thought would never have occurred to a Czech. When I first read a critique from an US author who was making this assertion (that the film is racist), I couldn't believe how anybody could be so... pitifully narrow-minded and hopelessly obsessed with political correctness.
There is no such thing on Earth. That doesn't mean it couldn't exist elsewhere. Earth is naturally an imperfect world, our climate doesn't allow for optimum biological utilization of habitats. We have large areas almost devoid of life - deserts, polar wastes and so on. On Pandora, everything is covered by dense vegetation, the closest thing to our deserts are some steppe-like habitats. The gravity is lower and the air is denser and moister, which makes it easier for animals to fly and for plants to colonize every niche on the surface In such an environment teeming with life, it is certainly possible that such a connection between lifeforms could advance further than on Earth.
Lastly, Alpha Centauri system is at least 1 billion years older than ours. The life has had 1 billion years more to evolve - which is about twice the time complex life exists here on Earth. Try to imagine what kind of things could evolve in such a long period of time.
4.) Apparently the Navi have warriors, warriors, warriors, and a priestess. No body makes baskets or pottery, nobody is growing or preparing food, no teachers, no functioning economy of any sort. So why are we supposed to believe the Navi are anything other than a brutal warrior culture dominated by blood lust? Their whole society, as seen on screen, is nothing but warriorand the simple fact of the matter is that you do not have a society composed entirely of effective warriors unless you have lots of practice at it.
As I already told you, there is no distinction between hunters and warriors in H-G societies. That nobody is growing food in a pre-agricultural society is pretty obvious and the fact Cameron didn't show us the more mundane activities (cooking, basket making, etc.) doesn't mean the Na'vi don't do that. It's likely that all members of the society are multi-functional, they don't have narrowly defined jobs. Little social stratification, as I said.
I read on Pandorapedia that the Na'vi clans practically don't fight each other, because (a) their population is constant and (b) the abundance of food and other resources in their environment makes it pointless to fight. What would they fight for?
No, in order to attain manhood, they must become hunters. Which is again pretty common in H-G cultures where you can't do anything else for a living
Rites of passage are also very common in "primitive" societies here on Earth.How you concluded that they are patriarchal is beyond me - Neytiri (or how it's spelled) seemed to be as capable as the Na'vi males and have probably gone through the same rite of passage. The only "patriarchal/matriarchal" aspects could be seen in the characters of the main chief and the main priestess.
Yes, it was clearly showed that Eywa (the name of the collective mind) was pretty conscious. Up to the point of it realizing the danger coming from humans and intervening in order to protect itself. Why does it surprise you, it was one of the most obvious parts of the film
It has been mentioned that when Na'vi die, their mind is uploaded to the planetary consciousness, so they really don't die. I guess it isn't that hard for Eywa to reverse the process, although it seems a bit far-fetched that it mastered the human physiology so fast. Especially given that humans are genetically closer to garden slugs than to the Na'vi whose genetic structure and biochemistry is completely different. On the other hand, Avatars are a mixture of both made purposedly in a way to make them compatible.
Now you're just kidding
RDA - the evil company - is, according to the backstory, so interwoven with the government that it makes little sense to distinguish between the two. In this future world, governments are probably about as powerful as the UN today. And you don't take the UN representatives with you every time you travel somewhere, right?
And a fixed surface base from which they operate, and thus a limited range of operations. They can't simply move to a different part of Pandora. It's likely they chose that spot because it's one of the richest in unobtainium. The rest is just corporate greed - knock, knock, is anybody home? Criticism of this is another obvious part of the film
It was. From the RDA's corporate perspective, the Na'vi were a nuisance, an obstance that needed to be removed in order to make more money. If you cared to take a look at the practices of multinational logging companies here on Earth (which often devastate large swathes of land and displace whole tribes in order to get to precious wood), you would know that such an despicable behaviour is far from being far-fetched.
The concept art for the film are said to have been in the making for at least a decade, so perhaps it's the other way round. Most likely it's just a coincidence - with the number of novels, movies and computer games on the marked, pretty much everything has already appeared somewhere.
Since the Na'vi bones are made of natural strengthened carbon nanotubes or something liek that, I imagine the trunks of these giant trees are reinforced with similar stuff. Remember, 1 billion more years of evolution, it can do miracles.
13.) More villain retardedness. So, the reason for not just forcibly moving the natives or simply nuking them from orbit in the first place is the bad press. Yet, they decide to do just that by the most messy means possible
Really? The intention wasn't to kill them, just to drive them out and raze their hometree so that they couldn't return. The fact that the green-brain head of security screwed the whole operation is another thing.
Perhaps because it was the only thing with the lift-capacity+range to transport their superbomb? Or maybe they needed the gunships to transport the ground forces and didn't have a spare one to deliver the bomb at the same time?
You're nitpicking and you suck at it here
I understand that the main target (the neural hub of the planetary consciousness) was in the middle of a powerful magnetic flux making electronic navigation useless and a field of unpredictable flying mountains. One would think it's not a good idea to fly into that straight from the orbit
As for why they wanted to use the superbomb - the main villain made it clear he wanted to do it as an act of terrorism (in the military sense of the word). A bigger boom -> natives more scared. Simple. Kinda like using artillery against Native Americans, just for the effect.I take it the mechs in Avatar were far from being purely a military equipment. Their name was "amplified mobility platform" and they were seen being used for hauling heavy things. Besides, you want them to scare the natives who don't have advanced weaponry.
More likely it depends on the angle and distance (and thus energy of the impact). When they were shooting arrows near the Hometree (for the first time), they were shooting up in the air (which is denser on Pandora), the targets were pretty far and the arrows were impacting the windows in sharp angles. I remember only one scene where the arrow penetrated, and there it was shot down from a very short distance and impacted the glass at almost perpendicular angle.
Nothing impossible, when you actually think about it
I take it they were there to cut off the fleeing Na'vi.
Actually, it's perfectly possible given that their natural armour is made of pretty strong materials (perhaps even better than steel) and they're way bigger. If they also have smaller brains (like the big dinosaurs) and lots of fat-like materials under the armour plates, it would be HARD AS HELL to kill them QUICKLY. Sure, you'd probably mortally would them with the first burst, but it would take a long time for them to die. In the meantime, they'd just be more angry. Also, they were controlled by the planetary consciousness, so they probably ignored pain and went on.
Ehm, what? Jake was simply deflecting some blows and evading others. At no point was it postulated that he was physically stronger than the machine.
I think it is pretty obvious the planet decided to SAVE ITSELF. I'd do it if someone was pointing a gun to my head and slowly pulling a trigger. It decided to do it only after one human consciousness (Grace) joined it and made it clear that the humans indeed presented a grave threat to its very existence.
As for the mechanism - it wasn't explained, but it was hinted on many occasions during the film, so it was kinda predictable. I imagine some sort of combination of electromagnetic waves from the planetwide neural web or pheromones could accomplish it. All animals have these natural links, so they probably use them for other things than communication with the Na'vi - the planet could have simply released pheromones that made them link with the planetary consciousness, after which it gave them their orders (find and kill bad humans).
---
So, to conclude, your criticism is poorly though through, incoherent, grumpy and sloppy. In your own words, LAME LAME LAME. I repeat, LAME LAME LAME
Winner
Diverse in Unity
... which gives me a really pleasant warm feeling that I succeeded in showing you that logic and commons sense are a double-edged sword
Ziggy Stardust
Absolutely Sane
It's good to see you back Winner, I look forward to being called a Chamberlain in the near future
Winner
Diverse in Unity
BTW, there are some things I didn't like about the movie, purely from my nerdy point of view.
1) Unobtainum. It's one cliché I am really sick of - the miracle element/mineral that's only present in one place and we can't replicate it. The name varies (Elerium 115 in X-COM series, turbinium in Total Recall, dilithium in Star Trek, etc.), but it is still a pretty weak plot device. At least in Avatar, it wasn't something you put in reactors to make electricity, that would really be lame.
From scientific point of view, it makes little sense - which is perhaps why Cameron used the mock term "unobtainium" in the first place
It's supposed to be high-temperature superconductor. Fine. It's a mineral. Uh-uh - if it is made of available elements (like iron, nickel, platinum, whatever), we should be able to replicate it. It might be expensive, but I dare to say that manufacturing anti-matter as propellant for the starship would be MUCH more expensive.I read some backstory for it, supposedly it was created during the early periods of Pandora's formation, when something struck the proto-moon's iron core and the debris interacted with the parent gas giant's strong magnetic field and blah blah blah blah. It's technobabble, but it is plausible. The problem is that it fails to explain why we can't produce it artificially.
Sigh. At least they could say it is some sort of strange exotic matter mixed with usual rocks (perhaps something involving magnetic monopoles?) which got there gods know how. As A.C. Clarke said, when you can't think of a plausible explanation for your miracle technology, don't try to explain it and leave it to the readers
2) Polyphemus (the gas giant) - now I am nitpicking, but our observations of the Alpha Centauri system discounted any large gas giants in close orbits. Orbital simulations show that stable planet orbits around either Alpha Centauri A or B need to be within ~2.5 AU radius from the parent star.
That's a good thing, no gas giants means no disruption of the habitable zones, which means there probably are rocky earth-like planets near each of the stars. We just don't have the technology to find them yet, but many people are working on that.
But the concept of a living moon is very intriguing, I've been playing with this idea for years when I was imagining my own fictional words. Now nobody will believe me that I didn't take that idea from Avatar
3) Day and night cycles - I saw the gas giant moving in the Pandoran sky. In reality any such moon would be tidally locked, showing just one side of it to the parent planet, just like our Moon. From Pandora, the gas giant would seem nailed to the sky and it would never move.
But theoretically, if Pandora's orbit was a very elliptical one, there could be some resonant spin similar to that of Mercury allowing different rotation... uhm...
Winner
Diverse in Unity
See, I *think* you're making a Star Wars reference, but since I am totally indifferent about that fantasy series, I can't tell for sure
Winner
Diverse in Unity
Avatar with its floating mountains and blue humanoid hot aliens is still about 100 trillion times more believable than Star Wars, sorry
Martacus
World's Greatest Warrior
I still haven't seen this movie, and from what I've heard about it, I don't think I will. Kyle Maclachlan loked so much better in service of the same story. And I might add, that movie was a horrible, ugly, atrocious mess.
MagisterCultuum
Great Sage
It makes sense for mountains containing large amount of superconductive materials to float when placed in a region of strong magnetic fields, or for mountains containing high levels of magnetically polarized minerals to float over superconductive materials. This is explained by the Meissner effect.
The Force is a lot harder to explain scientifically.
The Force is a lot harder to explain scientifically.
Patroklos
Deity
- Joined
- Feb 25, 2003
- Messages
- 12,721
That, however, is not the explaination given. In fact, there never was an explaination given in the movie they just showed you floating mountains and we are supposed to be too busy oooing and ahhhing that we never bother to ask why there are floating mountains.
In any case the unobtanium was not in the floating mountains, it was under the the Navi village on the normal surface.
Even if there was a plot mechanism given for the floating mountains (and again their isn't), they would act as gigantic sails being pushed all over the place by the wind. In fact, in all reality they would probably be constantly crashing into each other and thus pulverized in hours. LAME LAME LAME.
[/quote]
I don't need a scientific plot mechanism, just a plot mechanism. Psychic powers and telekinesis are common themes and much easier to explain away, and saying it is "the Force" works just was well as invoking magic. But again, there was no mechanism provided at all in Avatar.
And its not like those floating mountains had ANYTHING to do with the plot whatsoever either. They served absolutely no purpose.
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