Alternate applications of Avatar technology

[Gramzamber]

I am not talking about mundane day to day life on Earth. Avatar glosses over some very important information like.

- What do Earth people think of the Naavi ? We know from other material they will never tolerate atrocities but the movies do not shed light on this.
As silly as the nuke the naavi debate has gotten it begun in the first place because of lack of background information. The reason for why RDA is potentially willing to destroy itself rather than take appropriate measures to defend a very expensive project is never explained.

- Is Earth truly facing a dire situation with respect to unobtainium and environment ? Or are they a very advanced automated society where private companies can own 0.7 C starships and make battlemechs with self contained factories. So for them unobtainium is a value added luxury ? Again this is a crucial information on which rests a pivotal piece of the movies theme and underpinning - it reinforces the gravity of Jakes choice. Is he dooming humanity or is he just a disgruntled worker taking revenge on his unethical company ?

To be fair, they are planning a trilogy are they not? All of that is good sequel material.
It's not dooming humanity in any case anyway, humans will find unobtanium somewhere else on the planet, or just be dicks and drop rocks (yes as unpopular as that idea may be). It would be interesting to see some Earth based groups opposing this. But just not in *this* movie.

[adam_grif]

It is a period of conquest on PANDORA.
BLACKWATER spaceships, striking
from an armored base, have
carved out a niche against
the evil forest creatures of PANDORA.

During the battle, AVATAR
spies managed to steal secret
plans to the COMPANY'S
ultimate goal, the death of the
LIFETREE, a vast living village
sitting on a lode of Unobtanium
with enough net worth to
purchase an entire planet.

Pursued by BLACKWATER'S
sinister agents, JAKE SULLY
races to the LIFETREE within his
AVATAR, to reveal the secret
plans that can save the NA'VI
people and restore
freedom to PANDORA...

Ah yes, the Star Wars opening crawl. Just as lame in exactly the same way every time you watch it.

[GrayAnderson]

I am not talking about mundane day to day life on Earth. Avatar glosses over some very important information like.

- What do Earth people think of the Naavi ? We know from other material they will never tolerate atrocities but the movies do not shed light on this.
As silly as the nuke the naavi debate has gotten it begun in the first place because of lack of background information. The reason for why RDA is potentially willing to destroy itself rather than take appropriate measures to defend a very expensive project is never explained.

- Is Earth truly facing a dire situation with respect to unobtainium and environment ? Or are they a very advanced automated society where private companies can own 0.7 C starships and make battlemechs with self contained factories. So for them unobtainium is a value added luxury ? Again this is a crucial information on which rests a pivotal piece of the movies theme and underpinning - it reinforces the gravity of Jakes choice. Is he dooming humanity or is he just a disgruntled worker taking revenge on his unethical company ?

The second point has been a big mess that we've gone all around the mulberry bush in the movie review thread. I am personally of the view that his actions are doing substantial harm to the human race ("dooming" can mean anything from extinction at the extreme to "just" a major die-off from extinction, infrastructure collapse, etc.), but the movie only hints in that direction. Those hints are quite possibly relics of an old script, but they were left in...so either someone's editing is shoddy (always possible) or Cameron meant to leave at least some of the material in on purpose.

Let me note that there's a tendency of expanded universes to make everything much more grey unless you're dealing with cardboard cutout villains (i.e. James Bond)...not quite sure why, but that does seem to be the case.

[YT300000]

Question.

Is "twenty million dollars a kilogram" factoring in the no doubt enormous cost of transporting everything by relativistic space craft? It seems to me that "20 million dollars a kilo" would be the price of any old lump of rock if you had to ship in in from Alpha Centauri.

In the original Project 880 scriptment, James Cameron wrote that the cost of shipping material from Pandora to Earth is 1 million dollars per pound, which is probably still accurate. So we're still looking at a huge profit.

Oh, I don't know, I felt that the opening shot was sufficiient; the Venture Star with a lot of latticework, the solar panels and sails, the almost-Shuttle-like-shuttles with clear design lineage... all did a great job of setting the the backdrop for the tech level we were working with. They went further by reinforcing the need for cryosleep while underway. Clues like that were all we really needed, I think.

I thought perhaps the best touch was the beeping of the bulldozers when they went into reverse gear. It was more than a little eerie.

[Shroom Man 777]

- What do Earth people think of the Naavi ? We know from other material they will never tolerate atrocities but the movies do not shed light on this.
As silly as the nuke the naavi debate has gotten it begun in the first place because of lack of background information. The reason for why RDA is potentially willing to destroy itself rather than take appropriate measures to defend a very expensive project is never explained.

That's really like asking what the population of Coruscant think of the Rebellion or something. Or, like, watching the Road to El Dorado and wondering what the Spaniard population thought of the Native Americans.

- Is Earth truly facing a dire situation with respect to unobtainium and environment ? Or are they a very advanced automated society where private companies can own 0.7 C starships and make battlemechs with self contained factories. So for them unobtainium is a value added luxury ? Again this is a crucial information on which rests a pivotal piece of the movies theme and underpinning - it reinforces the gravity of Jakes choice. Is he dooming humanity or is he just a disgruntled worker taking revenge on his unethical company ?

The fact that they didn't mention anything about the importance of unobtanium, aside from its dollar worth, should be more than enough. I mean, do they have to spell it out that unobtanium is a luxury? Should a movie about the Spanish conquest of South America have to delve into the details of what gold meant to the environment of Europe, and if Europe would have mass extinction events without gold?

The movie shows things as it is - asshole immoral corporate shits raping the environment of another world. It seems like the only people who require more information are those who can't accept this at face value and who want to construe some sort of contrived bullshit scenario which justifies the RDA's asshole actions so they can get their willies off visualizing the immoral and evil acts of butchery of unarmed and primitive natives.

[Bounty]

What do Earth people think of the Naavi ? We know from other material they will never tolerate atrocities but the movies do not shed light on this.

Yes it does. People on earth most definitely know about the Na'vi (unless Grace published that book for herself) and Sully comments on it being a dream of his to visit the planet one day. I would be very surprised if the common man on Earth was in any way hostile to the Na'vi.

[Coyote]

If unobtanium were vital to Earth's survival, I think at one point Col. Quaritch would have made a point of reminding Sully of that. "Don't you get it, son? If we don't get these rocks out from underneath their tree, everyone back home dies, remember? I'm sorry, corporal, but all life on Earth means more to me that your tree-huggin' alien girlfriend!" He didn't strike me as the type to pull punches.

[Gramzamber]

What do Earth people think of the Naavi ? We know from other material they will never tolerate atrocities but the movies do not shed light on this.

Yes it does. People on earth most definitely know about the Na'vi (unless Grace published that book for herself) and Sully comments on it being a dream of his to visit the planet one day. I would be very surprised if the common man on Earth was in any way hostile to the Na'vi.

I doubt there's a unified opinion. There are likely those who think humans should leave the Na'vi the hell alone, those who think they should be uplifted, those who consider them quaint noble savages to impose their own white-man's-guilt neo mysticism on and those who want to bomb them and take their magic rocks.

[PeZook]

If unobtanium were vital to Earth's survival, I think at one point Col. Quaritch would have made a point of reminding Sully of that. "Don't you get it, son? If we don't get these rocks out from underneath their tree, everyone back home dies, remember? I'm sorry, corporal, but all life on Earth means more to me that your tree-huggin' alien girlfriend!" He didn't strike me as the type to pull punches.

It would be a completely different movie with that in place. All sorts of characters would cease to be such unquestioned bastards, Sully would be less of a positive character, the Na'Vi would become far less noble (provided they knew what was at stake) for refusing to move, etc.

I don't think that's quite the film Cameron wanted to make, or he'd make a point of showing unobtainium is crucial to humanity's survival.

[Gramzamber]

Yeah it seems more a case of unobtanium makes the rich men richer rather than an "us or them" scenario.

[Sky Captain]

As far as technology in Avatar goes the most impressive piece of hardware undoubtedly is interstellar spacecraft. If I had to bet I`d say it`s the most far out compared to other technology seen in Avatar.

Yeah it seems more a case of unobtanium makes the rich men richer rather than an "us or them" scenario.

At least Pandorapedia says access to unobtainium allows to make drive components of interstellar spacecraft much less massive because of it`s unique superconducting properties and enables economically viable interstellar travel. If it`s true then unobtainium has legitimate industrial use and it`s not just novelty item for rich people to decorate their offices.

[PeZook]

At least Pandorapedia says access to unobtainium allows to make drive components of interstellar spacecraft much less massive because of it`s unique superconducting properties and enables economically viable interstellar travel. If it`s true then unobtainium has legitimate industrial use and it`s not just novelty item for rich people to decorate their offices.

This is kind of circular, though. Unobtainium is important so that we can go to Alpha Centauri and...mine more unobtainium! It doesn't really excuse wholesale slaughter of the natives, destruction of their environment, etc.

Whereas if it was important for survival of humanity...well, it still wouldn't excuse it, per se, but the entire situation presented in the movie would be much more gray. For example, if the natives knew that denying us access to the resource (which is useless to them) meant billions of dead people, and were unwilling to strike any sort of deal...well, they'd suddendly become a lot less noble in their savage ways.

[Gramzamber]

At least Pandorapedia says access to unobtainium allows to make drive components of interstellar spacecraft much less massive because of it`s unique superconducting properties and enables economically viable interstellar travel. If it`s true then unobtainium has legitimate industrial use and it`s not just novelty item for rich people to decorate their offices.

Of course it has a legitimate use, nobody's going to go to another star system on a hostile planet to mine shiny floating rocks for their own sake.
However it's not required for humans to survive. Not required for interstellar travel either, as obviously they went to Alpha Centauri without the unobtanium. It simply makes the whole process more efficient and generates billions for RDA.

[Sky Captain]

Of course it doe`t make an excuse to slaughter natives, but what would you expect from a greedy corporation that only cares about profit and has invested enormous capital to start the whole mining operation. If they fail to produce return for their investment they probably would just go bankrupt. I`m fairly sure if in real world some western mining company acquired rights to develop and mine rich (insert whatever valuable resource) deposit in some third world country they would`t give a damn about locals who live there for generations especially if from profitably of that mine depends whether said company survives or goes bankrupt. They would probably just hire some local mercenaries to do the dirty job.