Avatar review thread

[Shroom Man 777]

But Gordon Ramsay, he betrayed his military warrior ethos espirit de Marine Corps Hooah! It is just like those SS men who surrender, or those Stuffenburger guys who betrayed their duty to Fuhrer and Fatherland and fell in love with the treacherous Jewess Lilith and led the Hebrews on their dragon-alien-steeds against the Wermacht war machine (and tried to make Hitler explode on the 4th 20th of July)!

Betraying or breaking military oaths don't matter when those militaries you promised your service to are committing atrocities. Or when those militaries are, uh, actually a bunch of greedy flea-bitten amoral mercenary assholes.

[Nyrath]

I find it interesting that there was no FTL drive or communication - an interesting touch of realism.

And the starship had heat radiators!

There is a reason that there was no FTL drive or communications. Cameron hired Dr. Charles Pellegrino as a technical consultant. That's why the Avatar starship was based on Pellegrino's Valkyrie design.

Why did Cameron hire Pellegrino? Well, they had worked together before. As it turns out, Pellegrino is one of the leading expert on the Titanic.

[Guardsman Bass]

I just saw it, and it was pretty damn beautiful. The simple plot drawn in lines so thick they could probably be seen from orbit actually helped the film IMHO; a more complicated plot might have distracted away from the pretty scenery.

A couple of questions, though. That gas giant looked pretty fucking huge in the atmosphere, and there were some obvious moons that were even closer (we see one of them cast a shadow on the gas giant). Since I know that the movie aimed for a more hard sci-fi feel in some of its elements (like the space travel), would the moon (Pandora) have some rather unpleasant tidal forces and the like? Did that come up in any of the secondary source materials that accompanied the movie?

[adam_grif]

I find it interesting that there was no FTL drive or communication - an interesting touch of realism.

And the starship had heat radiators!

There is a reason that there was no FTL drive or communications. Cameron hired Dr. Charles Pellegrino as a technical consultant. That's why the Avatar starship was based on Pellegrino's Valkyrie design.

Why did Cameron hire Pellegrino? Well, they had worked together before. As it turns out, Pellegrino is one of the leading expert on the Titanic.

Word on the street is that it has a low bandwidth instantaneous comms system that uses quantum entanglement. As I understand it, this violates the No Communications Theorem.

I remember coming up with a "quantum Morse code" device for use in fiction when I was like 15, then somebody dropped that on me. I was so crushed. Apparently ~50,000 people all thought of similar things long before I did

[Ford Prefect]

Quantum entanglement being used for communication is really common. Stephen Baxter uses it and calls it impossible in the same sentence in one of the Xeelee Sequence novels.

[adam_grif]

Yeah, I've seen / heard about it being used several times in fiction since then.

[Drooling Iguana]

I'm still trying to decide whether the mechs in Avatar are more or less silly than the ones in The Matrix Revolutions. On the one hand, the ones in Avatar have actual enclosed cockpits (although their windshields seem needlessly large and are shown in the movie to be easily broken) but on the other hand they also have actual articulated hands that fire their mech guns by pulling their triggers. Their designers seem to have decided that it was a good idea for the pilot of a machine to push a button that causes that machine to push another button that makes another machine to what the pilot wanted it to do. At least the guns on the APUs were just part of the arms.

Of course, the entire control scheme on the Avatar mechs was moronic. "Hey guys, let's design our walking battlemech so that if the pilot has to scratch his nose the robot will punch itself in the face! It's win/win!"

[DarkAscendant]

(although their windshields seem needlessly large and are shown in the movie to be easily broken)

If their windshields aren't large, how can they get a clear field of vision of everything around them? This is like arguing that a aircraft's canopy is too large.

[Gramzamber]

Not to dredge up a topic mentioned at the beginning of this thread, however those of us who asked why there was no orbital bombardment did so from the point of view that these are amoral colonial assholes, not because of "rar rar human techwank!"
Yeah yeah in hindsight "lol no WMDs". Yeah, cause the evil baby eating puppy kicking corporate jerktards in deep space are really going to care about that. It's a plot contrivance, whether you accept it or not doesn't change that.

[Soontir C'boath]

(although their windshields seem needlessly large and are shown in the movie to be easily broken)

If their windshields aren't large, how can they get a clear field of vision of everything around them? This is like arguing that a aircraft's canopy is too large.

Cameras can be installed for one thing. As for aircraft, it's more likely to be hit in the larger rear part where the engines, etc are than the front. A mech with a gigantic window that encompasses a large part of the torso in direct view of enemy fire is idiotic.

[Shroom Man 777]

Must be why Humvees have Chobham armor plates for windshields.

[Soontir C'boath]

Must be why Humvees have Chobham armor plates for windshields.

Right, because Humvees' role is to fight in the front lines instead of being a personal light transport that it was suppose to be.

[Broomstick]

(although their windshields seem needlessly large and are shown in the movie to be easily broken)

If their windshields aren't large, how can they get a clear field of vision of everything around them? This is like arguing that a aircraft's canopy is too large.

Cameras can be installed for one thing.

Didn't Jake demonstrate the vulnerability of cameras?

As for aircraft, it's more likely to be hit in the larger rear part where the engines, etc are than the front.

I don't know why you'd conclude that. The front of an aircraft tends to arrive first at wherever it's going, and therefore has a high likelihood of meeting any object in the way of the machine. That's why airline builders test fire chickens at airplane windshields, to make sure they won't instantly shatter at first impact.

And, in fact, the windshields on the AMP's don't normally break at first impact. That's not what we saw in the movie. Keep in mind, the Humans are limited to what they can make on the planet itself. There's no doubt a trade off between material requirements, including transparency and resistance to anything caustic/corrosive in the Pandoran atmosphere as well as resistance to impact. They aren't just combat devices, we clearly see them being used to move cargo and no doubt they have other uses as well. The fact they have limitations is actually more realistic than making them uber-weapons.

A mech with a gigantic window that encompasses a large part of the torso in direct view of enemy fire is idiotic.

Unless, of course, most of the use of the AMP's on Pandora is not against intelligent life forms but defense against animals, clearing brush (some of which may be toxic to unprotected humans), moving cargo, doing heavy construction work, and so forth. And we do, indeed, see AMP's used for some of those purposes in the film. Yes, they have a combat use but equally clearly they are used for multiple purposes.

[PeZook]

Right, because Humvees' role is to fight in the front lines instead of being a personal light transport that it was suppose to be.

Are the mechs supposed to fight on the front lines, either? Because Hummvees frequently find themselves under attack today despite being designed for something completely different.

What makes people think they even have the capability to make milspec armored glass on site with rapid prototyping 3D printers? It's not like we need industrial facilities and complex processes to do that on Earth or anything...

EDIT: Same for the guns. If the mechs are used primarily for heavy labor, it may be simpler to just load your standard rifle design and tell the software "build it 2x as large" than modify the mechs extensively to sport integrated weapons.

[Drooling Iguana]

Even if the guns aren't standard equipment (although I don't recall ever seeing one of those walkers without one) it's still incredibly stupid that they didn't have some way to attach weapons and tools to it other than building an extremely intricate and doubtlessly maintenance-intensive system of small moving parts to imitate a body part originally evolved to help us climb trees. They could have simply bolted it to the side of the arm and used a USB port to tell it when to fire, which would both allow it to be attached more securely to the vehicle and cut out the enormous point of failure that a big mechanical hand represents. Hell, even if they insisted on putting hands on the thing for manipulating objects, bolting the gun on would still have made more sense than putting it in the robot's hand as it would leave that hand mostly free even when the gun was in use.

[Nephtys]

Why shouldn't the windshields be needlessly large again? This is a planet that's heavily forested, that produces a lot of things that interfere with active sensors. A large canopy provides increased visibility, for when the only thing that really threatens you are large rhino and elephant sized fauna. They clearly didn't see the Na'vi arrows and spears as a threat, because they weren't.

[Drooling Iguana]

It still didn't need to be one huge pane of glass. The larger the pane, the easier it is to break. A couple of cross-braces wouldn't have interfered with visibility any significant amount and would improve its durability significantly.

[Shroom Man 777]

When did the glass impact shatter, anyway? During the combat scenes, none of the Na'vi got close enough to fire at them, they were too busy dying to break any cockpits. What shattered the Main Marine Bad Guy's cockpit canopy, again?

[Highlord Laan]

It still didn't need to be one huge pane of glass. The larger the pane, the easier it is to break. A couple of cross-braces wouldn't have interfered with visibility any significant amount and would improve its durability significantly.

Doing so would require a more intricate, though by no means difficult, design, more materials, and more time. All adding up to more money spent, and this is a facility owned an operated by a corporation. Though I don't think it's mentioned,, theres probably "cost saving" procedures all over the place.

[starslayer]

When did the glass impact shatter, anyway?

It never did. The arrows fired in the first pass of the final battle just penetrated, leaving bullet-like holes.

What shattered the Main Marine Bad Guy's cockpit canopy, again?

I think it was that giant animal Sully's love interest (I forget her name) was riding. Either that, or Sully's knife or something. It wasn't the arrows the love interest ended up firing, though.

[Broomstick]

Even if the guns aren't standard equipment (although I don't recall ever seeing one of those walkers without one) it's still incredibly stupid that they didn't have some way to attach weapons and tools to it other than building an extremely intricate and doubtlessly maintenance-intensive system of small moving parts to imitate a body part originally evolved to help us climb trees. They could have simply bolted it to the side of the arm and used a USB port to tell it when to fire, which would both allow it to be attached more securely to the vehicle and cut out the enormous point of failure that a big mechanical hand represents. Hell, even if they insisted on putting hands on the thing for manipulating objects, bolting the gun on would still have made more sense than putting it in the robot's hand as it would leave that hand mostly free even when the gun was in use.

Except an AMP is NOT a robot!

Yes, giving an AMP a hand mimicking a human hand seems needlessly complex... except that they are operated by humans as remote manipulators. What is the manipulator most familiar to human beings? A hand. An AMP is designed as a multi-use device, not a highly specialized one. A manipulator that makes sense intuitively to the operator (as it mimics a limb possessed by the operator) that can do many things makes a lot of sense. As we see in the movie, AMP operators (Quaritch and others) use their AMP limbs to gesture much as they would their own natural arms. I'm assuming some sort of feedback control for the operator as well.

As noted, in many ways you just scale up tools already designed for human hands, including weapons. A non-attached gun has potential advantages - if it malfunctions just drop it and pick up another, using it is like using a gun in a flesh and blood hand. You could make AMPs as a standard model that doesn't include weapons (since clearly they have many other uses) and just have an AMP operator who needs a weapon pick one up. It is easy to change weapons, and quick. Likewise, any weapons or tool that's no longer needed or non functional can simply be dropped, it doesn't require tools to remove, and it leaves the AMP minimally encumbered.

Yes, a hand is complex, but it is also multipurpose.

[Broomstick]

It still didn't need to be one huge pane of glass. The larger the pane, the easier it is to break. A couple of cross-braces wouldn't have interfered with visibility any significant amount and would improve its durability significantly.

The more panes of glass you have the harder it is to maintain an airtight seal. That's pretty important on a world with a toxic atmosphere.

[Drooling Iguana]

Doing so would require a more intricate, though by no means difficult, design, more materials, and more time. All adding up to more money spent, and this is a facility owned an operated by a corporation. Though I don't think it's mentioned, theres probably "cost saving" procedures all over the place.

Yet they still build and maintain fully-functional five-fingered robot hands for each of their mechs when the benefits of such would be marginal at best over a simpler design.

It would be one thing if they were in an environment where humans simply couldn't operate, or would need cumbersome protective clothing to go outside their base. Then you could justify the hands on the mechs as they would be the only things available to do delicate work. But since humans on Pandora are shown to be able to get by just fine with only a breath-mask they'd be able to do that work with their own hands and just use the mechs for heavy lifting, making complicated robot hands completely pointless.

The more panes of glass you have the harder it is to maintain an airtight seal. That's pretty important on a world with a toxic atmosphere.

Maintaining an airtight seal is only difficult when the outside and inside pressure are significantly different. This doesn't seem to be the case on Pandora; they've got an atmosphere about as thick as ours, it's just made of different stuff.

[Broomstick]

Doing so would require a more intricate, though by no means difficult, design, more materials, and more time. All adding up to more money spent, and this is a facility owned an operated by a corporation. Though I don't think it's mentioned, theres probably "cost saving" procedures all over the place.

Yet they still build and maintain fully-functional five-fingered robot hands for each of their mechs when the benefits of such would be marginal at best over a simpler design.

It would be one thing if they were in an environment where humans simply couldn't operate, or would need cumbersome protective clothing to go outside their base. Then you could justify the hands on the mechs as they would be the only things available to do delicate work. But since humans on Pandora are shown to be able to get by just fine with only a breath-mask they'd be able to do that work with their own hands and just use the mechs for heavy lifting, making complicated robot hands completely pointless.

Right, just discount the utility of their use as forklifts, or the fact that the AMP hands are unaffected by plant toxins, corrosive fluids, or insect stings.

The more panes of glass you have the harder it is to maintain an airtight seal. That's pretty important on a world with a toxic atmosphere.

Maintaining an airtight seal is only difficult when the outside and inside pressure are significantly different. This doesn't seem to be the case on Pandora; they've got an atmosphere about as thick as ours, it's just made of different stuff.

Oh, bullshit - you've never encountered a leaking window? I spent a fair part of the summer recaulking windows on houses. I've seen leaking window seals on all manner of vehicles. Not a big deal on Earth, but serious shit on world where the normal atmosphere is toxic.

[mr friendly guy]

Remember folks, its a plot contrivance that

a) the Government doesn't allow a private company to have their own WMDs, yeah like which company in real life gets that

b) not all humans at home are amoral assholes - what a big shock

c) companies are worried to a certain extent about PR, and how far they can spin this - well if they are not a financial institution that is.

Its a plot contrivance that they don't orbital bombard them with WMDs that they don't have and not worry about the PR disaster at home. Man, its like every sci fi villain must have their own equivalent of the Deathstar or something or else it will be a plot contrivance.