Avatar review thread

[Shroom Man 777]

Space dollars, goddamn it. For all we know it could be Chinese Dollars, or Indian Dollars!

But yes, I'll comment on the oddness of the lack of manportable rocket weapons even though their helos did have rocket pods. But I think they really weren't equipped to deploy actual-factual troops out in the bush, notice how their ground troops only numbered in the few dozen at most? Aside from the helicopters and the deployable mech-suits, they really didn't seem to have much "power projection" capabilities. Precisely because they WEREN'T military.

[PeZook]

They probably figured that since the Space Dinosaurs were highly territorial, they shouldn't attack mining equipment as long as it stayed away from its habitats. And if they did, a gunship would just shove a missile down its throat and be done with it.

Note that Sigourney Grace Ripley (man, I love how it sounds ) had to take a helicopter deep into the jungle to be threatened by one.

[Shroom Man 777]

They probably figured that since the Space Dinosaurs were highly territorial, they shouldn't attack mining equipment as long as it stayed away from its habitats. And if they did, a gunship would just shove a missile down its throat and be done with it.

Besides, shit, why bother sending soldiers to the ground where they can be killed by the trees when you can kill the stupid animuls from your VTOL birds* with Marines riding the side-guns on hunting safaris, hovering under the tree line (which 1950s turboprop birds CAN'T DO! HAHA!) and stuff?

(Of course, a tactical orbital strategic multiple-independent reentry vehiclularized variable geometry swing-wing delta-V hypersonic hydromatic automatic ultramatic greased lightening turboscramramfanjet interceptor with long-loiter low-visibility over-the-horizon active-electronically-scanned amphibious inflatable camera-equipped supercruise vectored-thrust canard-maneuvering foreplane foreplay foreskin forehead forecast capability would be good too... and more military-industrial technical jargon would be even better!)

Hell, that's one of the reason why they started the whole Avatar program - aside from creating bodies that resemble the Na'vi as part of cultural integration and stuff, those Na'vi bodies are practically the only thing that can survive out there in the wild without entering the bush in platoons decked out in craploads of body armor, guns, and gas masks with limited O2 supplies.

Note that Sigourney Grace Ripley (man, I love how it sounds ) had to take a helicopter deep into the jungle to be threatened by one.

Yeah, and she had aerial backup in the form of Michelle Vasquez Rodriguez in case if that happened and someone had to tell those Space Dinosaurs to GET AWAY FROM HER YOU BITCH!


* I just realized that, yeah, the VTOLs and helicopters both are more capable than fixed-winged aircraft and strategic asteroid orbital bombardment platforms based on suggested 1950s designs. But, mang, geddit! Guess which one has a wider rotor diameter, the VTOL or the helicopter? Which one has main rotors and tail rotors that can get snagged on bushes and shrubs and vines and trees, the VTOL or the chopper (hint: it's the chopper)? Which one has its rotors contained in two ring-like structures that limit its size and protect it from snagging on trees, while nonetheless allowing the aircraft to perform just as well as helicopters if not moreso while allowing for HUEG GUNSHIPS like the Dragon (hint: it's those VTOLs)?

[PeZook]

Actually, those movie gunships (I refuse to call them VTOLs: they're effin' helicopters, just with an exotic rotor arrangement!) lose to classical helicopters in the "rotor diameter" category because of the way their rotors are arranged. Of course, those rings probably do make the blades a bit safer in case of them hitting something.

[Shroom Man 777]

I thought their rather small VTOL rotors were not quite as wide in diameter as the rotors of the helicopters, which seem wider.

EDIT:

Blackhawk helicopter rotors are 16 meters in diameter. The Pandorapedia says that those Scorpion gunships are just 8.7 meters wide. Moreover, while the Scorpion gunships' rotors are contained on those two ring-thinggies, a helicopter's rotors spin all around the helicopter, increasing its overall area 'coverage' compared to the relatively confined Scorpion gunship rotors. The gunship rotors would have less chances of hitting foreign objects compared to a Blackhawk helicopter.

[andrewgpaul]

I think what he's getting at is that two of those rotors side-by-side is wider than a single large rotor.

One small thing that bothered me is that each engine pod had coaxial contra-rotating rotors in it. That makes sense for a normal helicopter, but not for those designs; all the coax rotors do is weigh the thing down with unnecessary extra engineering.

[NecronLord]

Unobtainium. 500 million dollars, and that's the best they come up with?

In the grim darkness of the future, inflation doesn't exist.

As has been mentioned somewhere in this thread, even assuming the currency doesn't get reset at some point (and frankly, inflation forever is stupid too) it's still worth ten times more than uranium is now. IE Quite expensive. Expensive enough that corporate assholes will happily kill you for it.

He's saying that for 500 mil on the budget, they could have come up with a better mcguffin, or at least a better name.

[Companion Cube]

Here's a [PDF Warning] script which reflects the final movie much more than the scriptment I posted previously. Lots of extra material here, as well.

MO'AT
(subtitled)
Neytiri will test this “warrior.” He may
learn nothing -- but we will learn much.

EYTUKAN
You speak truth. We must understand
these Sky People if we are to drive them
out.

GRACE
Neytiri was my best student. She and her
sister Silwanin. Just amazing girls.

JAKE
I didn’t meet the sister.

GRACE
(quietly)
No, she’s dead.

[hongi]

If Earth's future is contingent on mining large quantities of the stuff, then xenocide is morally acceptable as a means to perpetuate our own survival.

Unacceptable. At some point, you have to come down on the side of right or wrong. You are advocating a form of utilitarianism, but taken to extremes (as here), that justifies monstrous behaviours. If the future of Earth was contingent on wiping out the Jews by extermination camps, is it morally acceptable to do so? Or is it just plain evil to throw babies into fires and we should rather die as a species than do it?

I completely disagree with people who argue that human lives should take preference before other sentient alien lives.

[NecronLord]

Apparently the sequels will feature other moons which suggests pretty strongly that they're life-bearing. That may make it even more difficult to retaliate. For all we know, there's a million-year old superior technological civilization on one of the other moons, and any attempt at RKVs etc may draw their wrath.

[Shinova]

I'm gonna skip all those pages and just come here, after having just seen the movie.


I think it's entirely correct to equate unobtanium with oil. After all, both are absolutely vital to maintaining the current, easy and cheap state of commerce and society. Perhaps Cameron was trying to go for that angle as well.


Now clearly humanity does not need oil to survive. It does make a life a lot easier though. It ALSO is a crutch that we are in dire need of getting over due to the fact that it's a very limited resource.

In the same way if the unobtanium that allows such an interstellar society to exist can be found currently only on Pandora, then Earth had better looking into better and more-lasting alternatives as opposed to repeating the same mistake they must've, by the time period, already made with oil on Earth.


Again as probably already mentioned lots, some people seem to be equating unobtanium as key to earth's survival. It is NOT. It is simply currently the key to maintaining a relatively cheap, high-convenience interstellar civilization; in the same way oil currently allows us to maintain a relatively cheap, high-convenience global civilization.

[PeZook]

Of course, movie humans don't need to maintain interstellar civilization, since the only reason to do it is...to get unobtainium. There's enough resources in the solar system to last us pretty much forever, so we can easily take a century figuring out places to get unobtainium/ways to get it without slaughtering the natives on Pandora.

[Shroom Man 777]

Apparently the sequels will feature other moons which suggests pretty strongly that they're life-bearing. That may make it even more difficult to retaliate. For all we know, there's a million-year old superior technological civilization on one of the other moons, and any attempt at RKVs etc may draw their wrath.

How on Earth does that work? They just pop out of nowhere without any mention in the first movie? Are those critters on those moons going to be similar to the Na'vi? Mang, that's very odd.

[Gramzamber]

Maybe sequels will feature the Na'vi civilisation having advanced way ahead in technology so they're now in space plundering their neighboring moons because.. uhm.. because Eywa says so and now THEY are the evil Sky People!
No wait this is James Cameron not a hack writer for The Outer Limits.

[NecronLord]

Apparently the sequels will feature other moons which suggests pretty strongly that they're life-bearing. That may make it even more difficult to retaliate. For all we know, there's a million-year old superior technological civilization on one of the other moons, and any attempt at RKVs etc may draw their wrath.

How on Earth does that work? They just pop out of nowhere without any mention in the first movie? Are those critters on those moons going to be similar to the Na'vi? Mang, that's very odd.

"I'd heard of the Amazon of course, but I didn't expect to ever be going there" doesn't preclude the existance of places on Earth that aren't the Amazon.

[Shroom Man 777]

Fair point. Though it's going to be quite a drastic departure from the original film's premise, won't it? I mean, geeze, man, the other moons? Man, what on Earth could be out there? Woah. What's gonna happen? What's James Cameron got planned? Should we wait half a decade for the squeakuel?

I'm so solemnly relieved that Cameron still has his shit together, I kinda thought he hit menopause after True Lies, but man he just pulled through. These sequels are definitely intriguing.

[Jim Raynor]

I finally saw this movie yesterday. I wasn't blown away by the story (as others have said it's been done before), but the visual effects, performances, and action were terrific. As soon as the Colonel started bailing out on his ship, I was hoping that he would jump in his mecha for a macho one-on-one with the hero. That wish was granted. It's usually hard for movies to elicit strong emotions from me, but I did get upset a few times from seeing the Na'vi's plight. Overall it was a very good movie.

Reading this thread, I'm astounded that so many people are siding with the corporate assholes. Seriously? When I was watching this movie, I kept thinking "Jesus, this Colonel is one over-the-top cartoon douche of a villain." It couldn't have been any more blatant.

Most people saw the obvious parallel between the movie's plot and the historical subjugation of the Native Americans. The anti Imperialist/racist message was a basic one that we all should have been taught in school already...but I guess society and its schools must have really failed some of us here. Insisting that unobtanium must be a critical resource for survival, when no such thing was even implied? Justifying aggression by claiming "eminent domain" over an alien planet, when the humans in the movie didn't even represent Earth's government, but a greedy corporation? What the fuck. These attitudes say a lot about the moral character of some people here, or at least their intelligence if they actually think that these arguments make a lick of sense.

[Shroom Man 777]

I'll quote myself from another forum, to sum up mein own observations regarding this phenomenon:

I can only assume it is because for a whole lot of sci-fi fans, their concept of sci-fi is crucially centered on technological militarism (explaining the prevalence of sci-fi stories that are all just war in space with crushing and gushing of space weapons and power armor and crap) and a movie like Avatar totally threatens that concept by neglecting the technological militarism and, uh, focusing on other more important things like people, the environment, love and peace. Those people enamored with orbital bombardment, Curtis LeMay, Robert Space McNamara and the XB-70 or the Nike-Hercules can't get around that and just detest the apparent flippant emasculation of the weapons they hold sarcosanct, as the gun is good and the penis is evil.

[PeZook]

The scene in the control centre with all the RDA's brass looking at the destroyed Hometree was on of the high points of the movie, IMHO. It was done excellently: even the movie's worst scumbags had a moment when they said to themselves "Jesus, what have we done?!"

One scene, and Cameron avoided painting every single human with the same brush, while still keeping the overall message conveniently black and white. The Colonel remained a hardass douche, of course, as it should be

I liked how he casually drank coffee while his men wrecked the hometree, BTW. Just a normal day at the office for him

[Shroom Man 777]

Seems like being on fire, or being deprived of oxygen and breathing in alien ammonia air were also par the course for him.

[Gramzamber]

I still maintain it's not so much an expectance of military supremacy as the fact that some of us expect the inevitable consequence of a soulless corporation being kicked in the balls will be punitive measures, in this case asteroids on heads. On their possible return anyway.
That is unless RDA doesn't have much pull back on Earth. Which I doubt. Still maybe a sequel will deal with that.

[Shroom Man 777]

Punitive measures like them going bankrupt or being tried by the Space Senate Congress after a whistle blower squeals on the whole affair or after an in-depth investigation is conducted because the government wants to know why exactly the RDA fucked up so badly and the liberal space media ends up spreading the news of their inhumane acts and thus causing a massive scandal? Or is that the bad kind of punitive measure because it ends up with the bad guys actually being punished for their misdeeds rather than, say, the atrocities certain people and their ilk would prefer because they want death to rain down on the nature-loving natives who just trounced their silly inadequate toy war machines?

This is just brillaint, though. You guys should read it, since it seems like it's right up your alley. It has space rocks, too.

[Gramzamber]

You know, I can believe a quasi-sentient planet mind can rally all of a world's natural resources to fight against the bad guys intent on strip mining it.. but I draw the line at bent corporate scum actually getting their comeuppance.
Call me a cynic I guess.

[SAMAS]

More likely, they're gonna dump it all on the executive in charge (and they'd arguably be justified in doing so), and promise their next guy will be more sympathetic to the natives (we swear!). RDA will take a public black eye, but they'd most likely recover.

Worse case, other companies see it as an opportunity to make a move on Pandora themselves. Cue multi-way cold war between RDA, Rival companies, and the Na'vi. Would make a decent setup for an MMO-style game.

[Sky Captain]

Well if the RDA were really big assholes they could have just waited till all navi gathered for attack and then maneuver Venture Star in low orbit that passes over Tree of souls and fire antimatter engine into the planet when ship passes over the target. That thing had a beam core antimatter drive that could pull continuous 1.5 G acceleration. It`s basically a continuous nuclear explosion. It should be more than enough to bathe the whole area in high energy gamma radiation and maybe even start massive forest fires.