I saw Avatar a second time today–again in 3D, but on a bigger screen and this time I sat a little closer so that the screen filled my view. Wow! I liked it before, but this time the 3D effects worked even better for me. I was worried that I might get bored, but the story held up well–maybe because I knew what to expect and was able to just go with it and give more attention to the visuals. Like, I noticed that the humans’ avatars have five fingers per hand, while the true Na’vi have only four.
And 3D aside, I am still amazed at how real everything looked, especially the Na’vi. (Well, as real as a 10-foot tall blue alien can look) When you watch a Pixar movie (which are heavily stylized) or even a Zemeckis motion-cap movie (which seem to aim for realism) you are always aware that you are watching a computer-generated image. With Avatar, I forget that I am watching CGI. In some scenes, it’s hard to believe that you’re not watching real people (in blue paint and the best prosthetic make-up ever) being filmed by a regular camera. Truly amazing! I’m glad I have a huge TV–this will look great on blu-ray.
Sorry, it’s just that enough people (coughMichaelBaycough) are willing to screw up a potentially good story for a chance to mug at the camera that this really annoys me.
Yes, unobtainium is a McGuffin, but only because you’re limited to the events shown in the movie. In the real world you would not have that limitation, so the fact that unobtainium is used to manufacture anti-grav plates or whatever would be part of the “plot”. That’s why calling it unobtainium (extremely useful, extremely difficult to procure) makes sense in-universe but calling it McGuffinium (“advancing the plot” is its primary purpose) doesn’t.
As an aside, I didn’t realise that so many people didn’t realise Cameron did tell us why it’s so valuable. He didn’t even need any words, just that shot in the office showing that it is either a room-temperature superconductor or some sort of anti-gravity material.
I really would have loved it if there’d have been one throwaway line when the material was introduced along the lines of “yeah, apparently some scientist has a sense of humor”. Just give me something so that the name doesn’t hit me like full swing from the suspension of disbelief bat.
To those of us who have no idea what the fuck “Unobtanium” is to you nitpickers, you’re sounding really really really silly. Discussing it is one thing, “hung up about” it is entirely another.
Well, ok, I can only speak for myself, but to me, people hung up on the name are sounding really really really silly. And no, I don’t care what it meant before Avatar so I’m not going to look it up and I don’t care. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the name of the stuff the Avatar characters are interested in. I’m going to figure that some scientist with a sense of humor and steeped in geek history probably named it based on whatever it is you guys are going on about. That’s good enough for me.
Seeing it again tomorrow in 2D. It’ll be interesting to compare.
At any rate, I did some thinking over the movie; I hope one good side effect that it sets the bar for other science-fic/fantasy movies which use CG. And shows what sort of possibilities there could be. Though if LOTR is anything to go by, it is likely we would be bombarded with many crappy Avatar wannabes.
How would you have any idea what the number $20 million means in that time period? If you told someone from the year 1800 that various metals would sell today for X amount of dollars, they’d be shocked. You could buy a farm for the price of X pounds of copper!
The number is just meant to convey that it’s worth a lot of money, and it’s natural enough for the characters to talk in terms of contemporary money.
You know in some (usually older) movies when discussing a salary or a price, they’ll often write a number down a piece of paper and slide it across the table and have the other character react? I always thought that was silly - after all, your audience can try to evaluate the amount in context based on the reactions of the characters… but maybe not.
They gave Sully 3 months to negotiate with the natives, so it wasn’t that hectically paced. After that, it was clear that they would not negotiate for it.
And this comes after years of contact - even setting up schools to educate them in English and make them aware of our culture, etc. It was clear that they exhausted lots of non-violent options.
As far as why the Avatars were necesary - I suppose that probably is a plot weakness. You can fanwank it into xenophobia. Maybe they just flat out refuse to deal with a flesh and blood human (or kill them on site), but they’ll deal with a “dreamwalker”, though with hesistation. Maybe they shoot humans and tolerate Avatars.
Sounds like what America does to the other countries.
You have cool stuff? We want it! Pay for it? Hell NO!
let’s:
Get you drunk,
Screw your women and then pit the “pures” and"half-breeds" against each other,
Kill you,
Give you diseases previously not seen in your culture,
Enslave you.
I think the Native Americans (In what is called the US and Mexico), and Pacific Islanders would agree.
I’d like to point out that Ribisi never said it was 20 million *dollars *a kilo, just “20 million a kilo”. He could be talking about Credits, or ShamOleons, or the Hyperinflated NeoKilodollar.
It was pretty clear that the scientists had been doing science work with the Na’vi for a while before the movie, so the avatar program clearly worked for that.
Whatever the resource is, humans obviously want it and are willing to kill for it - just not kill for in a particularly efficient manner, preferring instead to get all half-hearted about it, transferring the responsibility to gung-ho psychopaths willing to monolog instead of getting the job done.
Of course, if the movie consisted of beautifully rendered nukings from orbit, we wouldn’t get the romantic subplot.
Good point. There’s no reason to belive he was speaking in American dollars. Cameron thought of that in Aliens too. At Ripley’s hearing the company officials kept quoting monery in adjusted dollars.
The book on the Na’vi they showed in the film was written by Grace’s mentor. So it’s implied that there is a body of knowledge on Pandora that goes back at least a few decades.
Exhausted lots of non-violent options? By setting up schools to educate the Na’vi in English and making them aware of our culture? That’s just the problem. The Na’vi were on THEIR world. They didn’t need to learn English or our culture because they weren’t on our planet. They didn’t need or want anything from the humans. We wanted something from them. You make nice by trying to learn the culture and language of the world you need from, not the other way around. Arrogance and a superiority complex are two of humanity’s biggest handicaps. I’m betting the first interactions with the Na’vi made it imperative for scientists to come up with something like avatars to get even close to them going forward.
What do you suggest they do? They were determined to get at the resource - they made legitimate good faith efforts to negotiate a non-violent resolution to the situation, and realized it would never happen. So their options at that point are to pack it up and go home, or take it by force.
You’re reading a message into the movie that wasn’t there. The humans in the film did learn their language. It worked both ways - the avatar controllers spent years in school to learn their language and culture, and they also tried to get get some Na’vi to learn our language and educate them about us. The entire Avatar program was an expensive, time consuming way to better communicate with the natives. They could’ve just come in firing.
They spent years and lots of money trying to negotiate some sort of peaceful deal, but the Na’vi wouldn’t budge. It was only as a last resort that they turned to violence. Now you can say it’s a dick move that they turned violent and didn’t just go home, but it’s very clear that they spent a lot of effort trying to play nice. You want to read a “arrogance and superiority complex” motive that wasn’t supported by the movie.
