Avatar

[Terxpahseyton]

They were named after the sound made by ducks, and spelled after this poem in the book Finnegans Wake:

Dame it!

 

[jUmpSt0p]

Unobtanium is a definitely a silly name, and it took me out of the movie when I heard it.

on the other hand... seems like Cameron is hinting at a world where corporations are extremely dominant (go figure). so some catchy, focus-tested, commercial friendly name like Unobtanium really isn't that farfetched. I mean, I can totally picture a bunch of marketing types coming up with a name like that.

just look around at some of the names we have for Medicine, or Automobiles...

so in a way, it's silliness makes it more realisitic.

and to put it in perspective, we already have some elements with silly names:
-Californium
-Berkelium
-Seaborgium
-Europium (your opium?)

 

[Graceheart the Leopard]

Okay. Question

The Unobtainium was in those giant floating mountains right? Where no natives lived? Can someone explain why they didn't just mine those first, and avoid casualties.

Visually spectacular, but some really insanely bad glaring plot holes very much bother me

From the It Just Bugs Me page for Avatar on TV Tropes:

I believe it was stated in one commentary or another that they did try to mine the flying mountains. Guess what happens when you take the "air" out of a fifty ton flying rock with billions of dollars of mining equipment and personnel on it?

And for the question for whether removing Unobtainium would cause a small descent:

Archimedean lift in water works either up all the way to the surface or all the way down to the bottom or, if you manage to balance gravity and archimedean lift exactly, you stay in exactly this or that depth. It works differently in the air because air has variable density. And as for trying to extract something, imagine a huge electromagnet: a core of, say, iron, very thick winding made of copper and a huge current coming through that winding. It's working, and you know it contains copper you want to extract. So you start extracting little bits of copper. First nothing visible happens, and you go on. After you have extracted some amount of copper, cross-section of the cable in this place becomes smaller and resistance goes up. As resistance goes up, so does the heat generation in that place, so you risk being fried. And if you manage to cut the cable completely, you risk athmoshperic discharge and being electrocuted or, if that didn't stop you or didn't happen, you break the circuit and electromagnet suddenly loses its magnetic field. Bottom line: behavior of said floating mountains during extraction depends heavily on exact mechanism of antigravity. Unless JC volunteers more information about how it works, no conjecture can be considered valid.

 

[Impaler[WrG]]

It seems theirs a copy of 114 page original screenplay for Avatar (called Project 880) available on the net and this blog gives a blow by blow of all the significant changes between it and the final movie.

http://chud.com/articles/articles/21969/1/PROJECT-880-THE-AVATAR-THAT-ALMOST-WAS/Page1.html

880 reads as a much better plot with a lot less cliche and more original plot elements such as dealing with the other members of the Avatar project and their loyalties, the dystopian situation on Earth and the legal structure under which the 'Company' operates, other Avatars project members who went native before the events of the movie. Na'Vi being captured by humans and rescued by the Protagonist. And in my opinion the best piece, the Avatar projects real aim is to teach/coerce the Na'vi into becoming the workforce for the whole mining operation thus freeing the company from the logistic cost of bringing humans to the planet. This REALLY brings home the colonialism angle and explains why such money is being poured into the whole Avatar project when the Company really doesn't care about relations with the natives.

Also it seems that the screenplay has the Unobtanium and mining operations in the floating mountains (which is why they float) not under the Big Tree. In the screenplay the Tree is destroyed purely for 'shock and awe' purposes. This is clearly a 'plot scar' ware compression of the screenplay has left a detectable flaw in the movies logic.

Cameron basically had to compress a 5 hour screenplay into 2 hours 40 minutes which is actually impressive when you think about it. But it feels like something which while derivative of its body of inspirational works (what Cameron calls the 'going native' story) is still quite original into something that feels like a distillation ware every plot point is cut down to its most cliche core in order to keep the story skeleton intact in the required time frame. If they do a full novelization I'd be quite interested in reading it.

 

[Defiant47]

It seems theirs a copy of 114 page original screenplay for Avatar (called Project 880) available on the net and this blog gives a blow by blow of all the significant changes between it and the final movie.

http://chud.com/articles/articles/21969/1/PROJECT-880-THE-AVATAR-THAT-ALMOST-WAS/Page1.html

880 reads as a much better plot with a lot less cliche and more original plot elements such as dealing with the other members of the Avatar project and their loyalties, the dystopian situation on Earth and the legal structure under which the 'Company' operates, other Avatars project members who went native before the events of the movie. Na'Vi being captured by humans and rescued by the Protagonist. And in my opinion the best piece, the Avatar projects real aim is to teach/coerce the Na'vi into becoming the workforce for the whole mining operation thus freeing the company from the logistic cost of bringing humans to the planet. This REALLY brings home the colonialism angle and explains why such money is being poured into the whole Avatar project when the Company really doesn't care about relations with the natives.

Also it seems that the screenplay has the Unobtanium and mining operations in the floating mountains (which is why they float) not under the Big Tree. In the screenplay the Tree is destroyed purely for 'shock and awe' purposes. This is clearly a 'plot scar' ware compression of the screenplay has left a detectable flaw in the movies logic.

Cameron basically had to compress a 5 hour screenplay into 2 hours 40 minutes which is actually impressive when you think about it. But it feels like something which while derivative of its body of inspirational works (what Cameron calls the 'going native' story) is still quite original into something that feels like a distillation ware every plot point is cut down to its most cliche core in order to keep the story skeleton intact in the required time frame. If they do a full novelization I'd be quite interested in reading it.

Thank you for that! It seems the original storyline is much more sophisticated...

 

[warpus]

To be honest, considering how quirky science is, I wouldn't be surprised that some material will eventually be named unobtainium. I mean, quarks, really?

Quarks sounds way less silly than unobtainium!

 

[warpus]

Thank you for that! It seems the original storyline is much more sophisticated...

I wonder how much better the director's cut is going to be.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Might Avatar be remembered on a similar scale as the first colour movie, or the first one where people actually talked? Maybe a bit more - it is making a lot of money after all.

I think it will be as transformational as Star Wars was in the 80s. It is moving the movie business one big step further from the need for human actors and real locations.

 

[Yeekim]

I'm basically agreeing with the consensus that the Visuals were a mind blowing 12 (on a scale of 10 which must now be recalibrated) but the plot was a mediocre 5 due to its predictability and juvenile character.

This.
I saw it yesterday and while I am not disappointed, it is solely because I had never seen a full-length 3d movie before.
Don't waste your time on a 2d copy though.

 

[El_Machinae]

I liked 'unobtanium'! It was a total nod to the fact that a lot of sci-fi is 'hand-wavey'.

 

[warpus]

I think it will be as transformational as Star Wars was in the 80s. It is moving the movie business one big step further from the need for human actors and real locations.

As far as I know all the major characters in the movie needed actors to help bring them to life.

 

[Bill3000]

I wonder how much better the director's cut is going to be.

more na'vi sex

 

[Earthling]

I wouldn't be surprised that some material will eventually be named unobtainium. I mean, quarks, really?

Scientists are far, far more austere about their work than cheezy pop-culture fiction though so I doubt it. Even mithril and adamantium have better chances before that. But I do agree on how the names truth and beauty should really have stuck on.

 

[Kozmos]

After seeing it again, in 2D this time...I have to change my opinion from meh to bah. The visuals are nothing that spectacular really. 3D just makes it seem bigger and makes some things right in your face which I must say is nothing new. Story remains craptacular.

 

[mitsho]

I just saw it finally (which was spectacular, as after the movie, you had to walk out into a snow storm). What really made the movie die for me is that they had to kill of Michelle Rodriguez, Come on, give the girl a movie/tv series in which she doesn't have to die/go away after a few scenes. And we got the "Bad girld which knows how to handle guns", she deserves some other non-character roles.

Back to topic, I find it funny how people do overanalize in a scientific way things like floating mountains, STOP ;-) What's the point?

And I do must say that the story would have had potential, despite the many many plot and other holes. (but that's why I am going to have a look at "project 880" now)

 

[Kozmos]

Flying mountains belong on heavy metal album covers or fantasy....not a movie that is trying to pass itself off as SF.

 

[jUmpSt0p]

I just saw it finally (which was spectacular, as after the movie, you had to walk out into a snow storm). What really made the movie die for me is that they had to kill of Michelle Rodriguez, Come on, give the girl a movie/tv series in which she doesn't have to die/go away after a few scenes. And we got the "Bad girld which knows how to handle guns", she deserves some other non-character roles.

she probably wet her pants with joy to get this role. and if she wasn't the "bad girl who knows how to handle guns" type, then she wouldn't be James Cameron's type either, would she?

 

[aronnax]

Their were some pondering earlier on how their was no 'colonialism' because no humans were trying to live on the planet permanently, its 'just' a resource-grab. That's the point, they stripped down the evils of colonialism to its most unambiguously evil parts. Actual Colonization as in people leaving some miserable place to start new lives in a new land isn't even evil to most Americans, neither is converting the natives. But pure unadulterated resource theft is cut and dry evil, they intentionally don't say what the unobtainable is FOR (cures cancer perhaps?) because that could introduce some moral ambiguity, its just psudo-gold.

The history of Colonialism isn't just people starting their lives anew. Most colonisation is paired with the evils of imperialism and capitalism. The original colonies in the new world, be it them escaping religious intolerance or something else were all funded by capitalists who invested money in colonies to see more money be rerouted back to their pockets.

 

[classical_hero]

Okay. Question

The Unobtainium was in those giant floating mountains right? Where no natives lived? Can someone explain why they didn't just mine those first, and avoid casualties.

Visually spectacular, but some really insanely bad glaring plot holes very much bother me

That was my feelings also. So much of the plot got left out and made way for the visuals. IF you read Impaler's link, you can see a much better movie or movies, if you wanted to keep it to the script.

 

[Harbringer]

Flying mountains belong on heavy metal album covers or fantasy....not a movie that is trying to pass itself off as SF.

Did you just quote that review you just posted and try to pass it off as your own witty line? Show me one heavy metal album cover that has floating mountains