Sarevok wrote:1. A starships reaction drive is it's greatest weapons. You don't NEED nuclear weapons if your drive is capable of interstellar flight. The starships propulsion system makes it a potential planet killer weapon should they wish to just do a final solution on the Pandora problem.
Why? Are you assuming that the starship's unspecified and unexplained method at FTL will somehow make the starship a very potent kamikaze kinetic weapon? And even without FTL... Why on Earth, or why on Pandora, has the discussion reached using interstellar ships as kamikaze weapons on a bunch of blue-skinned alien space catpeople, anyway?
The fact that "final solutions" are being discussed just means that it's gotten so bad that the blue hippy space catpeople are actually bleeding human breasts and masticating mighty military marine mammaries to the point where such an option is being considered by the now-nipple-less humans.
2. Even without apocalyptic relativistic missile attacks they have plenty of tactical options ! Their ship sits in high orbit. Anything aimed at the surface could impact with more destruction and precision than any non nuclear weapon.
3. Tactical orbital strikes followed by gunship raids should be enough to clear a large radius devoid of any hostile lifeforms. The miners can work there uninterrupted in peace.
Just like how the USAF was able to launch precision tactical attacks on the Viet Cong guerrilla positions, despite the horribly thick planet-wide jungle and flying islands all over Vietnam, to utterly decimate them to the point where the US military was able to conduct operations uninterrupted in peace?
I personally think the humans are being stupid. I think if they used Gundams, their mecha-sized giant laser swords could cut down vast portions of jungle growth and using variable-fighter technology the mecha can also cover more ground by transforming into fighter jets. Just kidding!
"DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source) shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN! Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people - PeZook Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic Pink Sugar Heart Attack!
Sarevok wrote:1. A starships reaction drive is it's greatest weapons. You don't NEED nuclear weapons if your drive is capable of interstellar flight. The starships propulsion system makes it a potential planet killer weapon should they wish to just do a final solution on the Pandora problem.
Why? Are you assuming that the starship's unspecified and unexplained method at FTL will somehow make the starship a very potent kamikaze kinetic weapon? And even without FTL...
Without considering the movie for a second, he is right, Shroomy.
Any starship's main reactor is going to be focused on one central thing: making the ship go. As such, whatever comes out the back of the ship is going to be as powerful, if not more so, than any subsidiary weapon system the ship has that derives its power from the reactor (i.e. missiles with independent warheads are a separate matter). Any drive capable of pushing multi-thousand ton starships to near-FTL speeds on the timescales implied by the situation in the movie is going to be pretty potent. Pointing it at a planet would be...bad. It's not about using the ship as a kinetic kill vehicle; any reaction drive is basically also a particle beam weapon.
Yeah, I thought he was talking about using magic-FTL, which he wasn't though.
But geeze, man. This talk of using nukes or asteroids or orbital strikes, man. That's just like those guys talking about sending the SAS to Hogwartz, or John Smith giving Pochahontas smallpox, or using ASROC nuclear depth charges to ruin Free Willy's shit or a Seawolf taking on Jaws or something. As much as "harmless natives beat big bad modern meanies" is cliche'd, the "guize thinking up of ever creative overkill ways to militarily massacre harmless native protagonists" is kinda getting overdone.
"DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source) shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN! Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people - PeZook Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic Pink Sugar Heart Attack!
All of this is steering back towards fantasy versus reality or what people want to view as such. Most of it comes down to how the trailer portrays certain common story plots and some people have their nerves grated by it. Honestly, you cannot discuss too much because you haven't seen any of it barring the small portal, and that very few are applying honest logic to the situation.
It's better to discuss why you think it'll be a good or bad story for you and see if others agree rather then go "Mecha suck, stoopid natives, fire the MASS device into them!".
MM /CF/WG/BOTM/JL/Original Warsie/ACPATHNTDWATGODW FOREVER!!
Sometimes we can choose the path we follow. Sometimes our choices are made for us. And sometimes we have no choice at all
A short clip narrated by Signourney Weaver, concerning the astronomy and ecology of Pandora. If you're avoiding spoilers, this video pretty much lays out the alien creatures we'll see during the film, and shows various views of the jungle and flying mountains at night. It also has the first shot I've seen of the human starship in its entirety.
And when I'm sad, you're a clown
And if I get scared, you're always a clown
Not to dissuade you from enjoying yourself wanking to words like "tactical" and "orbital strike", but all that is completely irrelevant. The movie has a plot you do not yet know, so saying "lol it's stupid because they don't use <milwank>" is asinine. There may be (actually, there are, but whatever) very good reasons why the humans can't just go space Nazi on innocent creatures, and there may be (actually, again, there probably are) valid ways to make the locals put up an effective defence.
Don't be a bigger retard than you already are. The humans can do anything from destroying a small structure to shattering the planets crust. Their starships speed and the fact it sits in orbit gives them a wide range of options. Whether they will not due to politics back home or loss of unobtainum mines is another issue altogether. So is the issue of exactly how much firepower can brought to bear from space until unobtainium deposits are threatened. Small scale strikes like the hypothetical THOR platforms should be very much useful given they are already willing to use guns and explosives.
Except you know, they are a private company and if they break the law than the government can just revoke their contracts, freeze and then nationalize their assets and indite the executives.
Although the young Na'vi males resent him, Jake learns quickly and earns his stripes by successfully piloting a giant flying banshee. After three months, however, just as the colonel is ready to send his young charge back home, Jake crosses over and, inspired by his intimacy with Neytiri, goes native. It's "A Man Called Horse" all over again, with Jake, believing he can help the clan repel the invaders, taking up the role of a resistance leader against overwhelming odds.
Final stretch is devoted to the ferocious battle between the Earthly maurauders, with their huge airborne battleships and mighty arsenal, and the nearly naked home team, armed mostly with bows and arrows. Despite the latter fighting on friendly terrain, the mismatch is just too great, and the way things pan out strikes the one somewhat discordant dramatic note in the picture, resulting in a bit of final-reel deflation; surely, a more complex but believable climax and aftermath could have been found.
Thematically, the film also plays too simplistically into stereotypical evil-white-empire/virtuous-native cliches, especially since the invaders are presumably on an environmental rescue mission on behalf of the entire world, not just the U.S. Script is rooted very much in a contemporary eco-green mindset, which makes its positions and the sympathies it encourages entirely predictable and unchallenging.
So, yeah. Bullshit. It's really too bad. After watching some of the technical featurettes, I was getting interested in the movie from a purely methodological point of view. But if this is what the story ends up being, it's going to be a waste of three hours. The world doesn't need more movies with a hard-on for luddite attitudes.
1-There must be a sugnifigant industrial presence on Pandora, More than just Ore Processing considering the scale of the Starship and that of some of the mining equipment they have on hand.
2-That and since there is a ten year round trip between Pandora and Earth and the threat that simple attrition could pose to the total workforce/garrison, would it not make sense to try to bolster the Workforce using more natural human means?
Zor
HAIL ZOR!WE'LL BLOW UP THE OCEAN!
Heros of Cybertron-HAB-Keeper of the Vicious pit of Allosauruses-King Leighton-I, United Kingdom of Zoria: SD.net World/Tsar Mikhail-I of the Red Tsardom: SD.net Kingdoms WHEN ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE ON EARTH, ALL EARTH BREAKS LOOSE ON HELL Terran Sphere The Art of Zor
Watching "Avatar," I felt sort of the same as when I saw "Star Wars" in 1977. That was another movie I walked into with uncertain expectations. James Cameron's film has been the subject of relentlessly dubious advance buzz, just as his "Titanic" was. Once again, he has silenced the doubters by simply delivering an extraordinary film. There is still at least one man in Hollywood who knows how to spend $250 million, or was it $300 million, wisely.
"Avatar" is not simply a sensational entertainment, although it is that. It's a technical breakthrough. It has a flat-out Green and anti-war message. It is predestined to launch a cult. It contains such visual detailing that it would reward repeating viewings. It invents a new language, Na'vi, as "Lord of the Rings" did, although mercifully I doubt this one can be spoken by humans, even teenage humans. It creates new movie stars. It is an Event, one of those films you feel you must see to keep up with the conversation.
The story, set in the year 2154, involves a mission by U. S. Armed Forces to an earth-sized moon in orbit around a massive star. This new world, Pandora, is a rich source of a mineral Earth desperately needs. Pandora represents not even a remote threat to Earth, but we nevertheless send in the military to attack and conquer them. Gung-ho Marines employ machine guns and pilot armored hover ships on bombing runs. You are free to find this an allegory about contemporary politics. Cameron obviously does.
Pandora harbors a planetary forest inhabited peacefully by the Na'vi, a blue-skinned, golden-eyed race of slender giants, each one perhaps 12 feet tall. The atmosphere is not breathable by humans, and the landscape makes us pygmies. To venture out of our landing craft, we use avatars--Na'vi lookalikes grown organically and mind-controlled by humans who remain wired up in a trance-like state on the ship. While acting as avatars, they see, fear, taste and feel like Na'vi, and have all the same physical adeptness.
This last quality is liberating for the hero, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), who is a paraplegic. He's been recruited because he's a genetic match for a dead identical twin, who an expensive avatar was created for. In avatar state he can walk again, and as his payment for this duty he will be given a very expensive operation to restore movement to his legs. In theory he's in no danger, because if his avatar in destroyed, his human form remains untouched. In theory.
On Pandora, Jake begins as a good soldier and then goes native after his life is saved by the lithe and brave Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). He finds it is indeed true, as the aggressive Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) briefed them, that nearly every species of life here wants him for lunch. (Avatars are not be made of Na'vi flesh, but try explaining that to charging 30-ton rhino with a snout like a bullet head shark).
The Na'vi survive on this planet by knowing it well, living in harmony with nature, and being wise about the creatures they share with. In this and countless other ways they resemble Native Americans. Like them, they tame another species to carry them around--not horses, but graceful flying dragon-like creatures. The scene involving Jake capturing and taming one of these great beasts is one of the film's greats sequences.
Like "Star Wars" and "LOTR," "Avatar" employs a new generation of special effects. Cameron said it would, and many doubted him. It does. Pandora is bevy largely CGI. The Na'vi are embodied through motion capture techniques, convincingly. They look like specific, persuasive individuals, yet sidestep the eerie Uncanny Valley effect. And Cameron and his artists succeed at the difficult challenge of making Neytiri a green-skinned giantess with golden eyes and a long, supple tail, and yet--I'll be damned. Sexy.
At 163 minutes, the film doesn't feel too long. It contains so much. The human stories. The Na'vi stories, for the Na'vi are also developed as individuals. The complexity of the planet, which harbors a global secret. The ultimate warfare, with Jake joining the resistance against his former comrades. Small graceful details like a floating creature that looks like a cross between a blowing dandelion seed and a drifting jellyfish, and embodies goodness. Or astonishing floating cloud-islands.
I've complained that many recent films abandon story telling in their third acts and go for wall-to-wall action. Cameron essentially does that here, but has invested well in establishing his characters so that it matters what they do in battle and how they do it. There are issues at stake greater than simply which side wins.
Cameron promised he'd unveil the next generation of 3-D in "Avatar." I'm a notorious skeptic about this process, a needless distraction from the perfect realism of movies in 2-D. Cameron's iteration is the best I've seen -- and more importantly, one of the most carefully-employed. The film never uses 3-D simply because it has it, and doesn't promiscuously violate the fourth wall. He also seems quite aware of 3-D's weakness for dimming the picture, and even with a film set largely in interiors and a rain forest, there's sufficient light. I saw the film in 3-D on a good screen at the AMC River East and was impressed. I might be awesome in True IMAX. Good luck in getting a ticket before February.
It takes a hell of a lot of nerve for a man to stand up at the Oscarcast and proclaim himself King of the World. James Cameron just got re-elected.
I don't know, I'm just not especially interested in seeing this. I'm getting a little tired of humanoid aliens, frankly. Today's effects should be able to pull off truly alien aliens, but I guess filmmakers figure people won't be able to relate to something that doesn't have two arms and two legs.
All about the human starship. They've got 12 of these, which make constant round-trips between Earth and Pandora. Also of note: their shuttles can be used as automated gas harvesters, collecting starship propellant from the local gas giant.
And when I'm sad, you're a clown
And if I get scared, you're always a clown
Companion Cube wrote:All about the human starship. They've got 12 of these, which make constant round-trips between Earth and Pandora. Also of note: their shuttles can be used as automated gas harvesters, collecting starship propellant from the local gas giant.
Well i was right on the matter of production.
Zor
HAIL ZOR!WE'LL BLOW UP THE OCEAN!
Heros of Cybertron-HAB-Keeper of the Vicious pit of Allosauruses-King Leighton-I, United Kingdom of Zoria: SD.net World/Tsar Mikhail-I of the Red Tsardom: SD.net Kingdoms WHEN ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE ON EARTH, ALL EARTH BREAKS LOOSE ON HELL Terran Sphere The Art of Zor
I've found Ebert's been a little too easy to impress lately, but I say at least his review raises the floor for what I'm expecting from Avatar from "terrible bomb" to "decent". I feel better about seeing a movie like this mainly for the spectacle, (as opposed to something like Transformers 2) and if it actually is an amazing movie then so much the better.
Reason number 4,345,296,123 why you do not bomb, nuke, drop meteors or distribute copies of Howard the Duck to alien ecologies.
Said alien ecology is likely to yeild numerous valuable biotech goodies. So while you're off trying to get a Resource Management Consent for Asteroid XC1420 don't look suprised when you come down with Alphan Pox care of Biotech R&D.
Don't abandon democracy folks, or an alien star-god may replace your ruler. - NecronLord
dworkin wrote:Reason number 4,345,296,123 why you do not bomb, nuke, drop meteors or distribute copies of Howard the Duck to alien ecologies.
Said alien ecology is likely to yeild numerous valuable biotech goodies. So while you're off trying to get a Resource Management Consent for Asteroid XC1420 don't look suprised when you come down with Alphan Pox care of Biotech R&D.
Which will never happen if you just keep machine-gunning the locals and let them rot on the ground.
BTW what is the chance that this Alphan Pox (designed for an alien biochemistry) would be dangerous to anything Terran?
bz249 wrote:
BTW what is the chance that this Alphan Pox (designed for an alien biochemistry) would be dangerous to anything Terran?
Two schools of thought; either the virus/bacterial as specified for Pandorian organisms to the point where it has no way to attack human cells, or humans haven't ever had to fight it off and have zero defenses against it.
Take your pick.
They say, "the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots." I suppose it never occurred to them that they are the tyrants, not the patriots. Those weapons are not being used to fight some kind of tyranny; they are bringing them to an event where people are getting together to talk. -Mike Wong
But as far as board culture in general, I do think that young male overaggression is a contributing factor to the general atmosphere of hostility. It's not SOS and the Mess throwing hand grenades all over the forum- Red
Viruses typically need host cells with fairly similar DNA for their reproduction, generally why you don't see too many viruses jumping species barriers very easily. They are highly morphic, but if there is no similarity between the species in the first place it's doubtful a virus would do much of anything.
Now, bacteria on the other hand, will infect just about anything, since they don't rely on host DNA for reproduction.
"To make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe."
— Carl Sagan
ok, after watching the trailer again, I noticed something I've seen dozens of timers but never really "noticed"
The Avatar that they grow in the obligatory Vat of goo, the one with the long flowing hair? His hair is BRAIDED
Now I havn;t seen the movie yet, so maybe I missed something. But if your growing/cloning/genetically whatever an organism inside a vat of goo... how in the world did you braid its HAIR?
Praying is another way of doing nothing helpful
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"Outlaw star has spaceships that punch eachother" Joviwan Read "Tales From The Crossroads"! Read "One Wrong Turn"!
Erik von Nein wrote:Viruses typically need host cells with fairly similar DNA for their reproduction, generally why you don't see too many viruses jumping species barriers very easily. They are highly morphic, but if there is no similarity between the species in the first place it's doubtful a virus would do much of anything.
Now, bacteria on the other hand, will infect just about anything, since they don't rely on host DNA for reproduction.
AFAIK the atmosphere is toxic for humans (ammonium based, thus reductive), so most probably Earth atmosphere (oxidative) should be toxic for the local species. This also means that air filtering is a serious issue, so the chance of bringing any lifeforms to the human habitat is quite low.
"
- PeZook
It's not about using the ship as a kinetic kill vehicle; any reaction drive is basically also a particle beam weapon.
