What if the hometrees grew preferentially above unobtanium lodes? 
Then the Navi need to either acquire some business acumen and/or military grade weaponry, or get used to living in the forests away from the unobtanium lodes, I’d say.
Reviews and blogs I’ve read seem to have mistakenly assumed that the US/Earth military has anything to do with the goings-on in Avatar. They don’t. The entire project is run by the company, and the soldier guys are just a private military force hired by the company comprised mainly of ex-military dudes looking for real money (future version of Blackwater).
That being the case, they wouldn’t have the same motivation to return as would be the case with a true military. If being there were a government action and the natives attacked us and kicked us out, we could declare war on them and carpet-bomb the planet surface and take the shiny rocks. Revenge is an acceptable pretense, and the money could be summoned from the ether to pay for such an invasion. Instead, it’s just a company that had invested in a mining operation in hostile territory and was forcibly evicted by the natives. Revenge shouldn’t be a huge motivator for a corporation, their only interest would be in profit. They’ve already paid a ton of money to set up shop on the planet once, I doubt they’d double-down on the investment.
And perhaps the shrewd company man learned his lesson at the end.
The real problem with the ending is that the gruff Marine guy didn’t say “What, I thought you wanted to get your legs back” and then Avatar-Jake didn’t say “I’ve got my legs” and then he didn’t kick the gruff Marine guy in the face.
If the superconductor keeps gasoline prices below $1.00 per gallon in 2009 money, they’ll be back with nukes and smallpox blankets.
Of course the scriptwriters can set things up however they want in order to make a re-invasion and conquest of Pandora unfeasible. A number of factors that could come into play have already been mentioned.
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Economic. The project was run by a corporation, which has just lost an enormous investment in equipment and infrastructure. They may find it difficult to raise enough money to come back in force.
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Political. Even initially, the corporation was reluctant to garner bad publicity by maltreating the natives. There would surely be an inquiry upon the return of the remnants of the expedition in which the near-genocidal activities of the corporation would be revealed. If they were there under a UN charter, the UN could revoke it. If mining unobtanium were essential, the charter could be turned over to another company.
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Deus ex machina. There may be some unknown capabilities of Pandora and the Na’vi (possibly due to a planetary integration triggered by the initial conflict), that would make them able to defeat an invasion. This could be the most likely scenario for a sequel.
It holds up the giant gunship with the tiny little rotors … .
It’s good for keeping mountains in the air.
The smarmy corporate guy said that unobtainium was worth some obscene price per kilo. Just how do they weigh a rock that floats?
I think it’s a room-temperature superconductor, which would be worth an obscene price per kilo. It was floating in a magnetic field above the display base on Smarmy Corporate Guy’s desk. Switch off the magnetic field, plunk, weigh as normal.
It’s originally a sci-fi concept I believe, referring to materials that authors create that have unlikely properties. For example if an author creates a spaceship made out of “supersteel” that’s a 10mm thick hull that can stand up to the pounding any object would receive from space debris while travelling at near light speed. You could refer to that as “unobtanium” since it is effectively a magical material.
Hate to admit to having seen this movie, but in The Core the vehicle they use to dig through to the Earth’s core (groan…) is made of unobtanium.
The Nox.
The only way to keep Pandora safe would have been to have the Kind Hearted scientist tell Earth in a message that a unexpected plague has wiped out the colony. Everyone is dead.
Then… you have to sell it that somehow the unobtainium itself might be the cause of the plague, that the reason for going there in the first place was going to kill everyone in the human race.
Then… you would have to kill all the humans on Pandora and destroy their oxygen producing equipment. And leave the site. Some warriors would have to watch and see if any more earthers arrived. If so, you would attack and kill them at once.
And you have to do this until it became too expensive to keep sending people to Pandora.
Otherwise, it would indeed be death from above, orbiting bombardments until the planet was lifeless. they are only interested in the mineral wealth anyway. Why bother with the natives?
Because, if you’d watched the movie more carefully you might have noted that the people on the ground were a private company. They were working under the permission of the governments of Earth. They had strong limits on what they were doing. They had only defensive weaponry (to the extent of having to jury-rig a bomb) and they were working along side scientists who were studying the planet.
It’s beyond silly to assume that the governments of Earth are going to accept a genocidal campaign of orbital bombing against the only other sapient race known. There simply wouldn’t be the political will.
Why don’t we win Afghanistan tomorrow? We could turn that country into green glass covered mountains before the sun set. We could kill every human within the borders at trivial cost. Why don’t we? I mean if life is as simple as you’re suggesting, why are we wasting time on the ground with surgical strikes?
Why don’t we nuke the Saudis and roll in to take their oil? Why, if as you suggest it’s an easy thing to garner the political will to commit genocide?
Your argument is beyond silly. I’m sure there will be voices calling for going back with more force, but they’ll have their work cut out for them.
Wow. How’s that caffeine-free diet going?
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We want the Afghans to be our friends. Otherwise we would be going in and wiping them out. The Saudis are our friends. Which is why we aren’t currently bombing them. But as other friends of ours have found out, we might be bombing them later. Pandora is another planet, fictional, in case that escaped you.
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Think in terms of the American Indians as the parallel to blue giants of Pandora. We wanted them out of the way and they got out of the way. The US Army and ‘a private company’ is a very very thin line. Consider the difference between Blackwater and the US Army. Exactly, Blackwater is better armed, but both are on the same side.
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None of the blue people are human. Killing non-humans is a real easy sell. We call non-humans ‘animals.’ Animals have no rights. And for all we know, they might be great eating too.
4)Who is going to report the destruction of Pandora anyway? The company stooges? The guys from the orbiting platform? How many pilots bombing cities go back and see the damage they caused? How many generals, safely at home, bemoan the loss and suffering of the enemy?
- When genocide is practiced in Africa, boy we sure put a stop to it right away, don’t we? Give or take a couple of years. Depending on what’s happening back home. But hey, we sure CARED a lot, and that made all the difference to the dead.
Sorry, chief, AVATAR ended weakly, and the planet of Pandora is doomed.
wHat aR3 yOu tAlK1ng aBoUt!!!111??
Yes, but you still have a very simplistic view of modern culture. We don’t flatten countries because it would be politically impossible in a modern world.
Do you think the Indians would be treated the same way today? I’ve got news for you, an educated, informed society in the western mold (like the people in Avatar seemed to be) isn’t going to allow their government to nuke an indigenous people into submission. Perhaps ground troops would be allowed, but you can’t use ground troops on Pandora because the local Megafauna is under the control of the planetary intelligence.
Again, you’re living in a fantasy world (heh) if you think the governments of western style democracies are going to allow outright genocide. Sorry, but society would have to change utterly for that to be a possibility.
Again, you have a simplistic view of reality. Another sapient race would be the biggest thing to ever happen on Earth. You’re just not thinking if you assume that modern countries would regard the genocide of them as trivial.
There are scientists on the planet. Presumably they send radio signals back to Earth and let them know what’s happened. Six years from movie time the remaining company persons will end up back on Earth and tell them that the planetary intelligence is in control of the megafauna. This will increase the cost for future attempts to mine the planet. There will be some who will call for carpet bombing but they will be of the simple sort who wanna “bomb all the Muslims”.
Allowing a country to fall to shit isn’t the same thing as deciding to make it fall to shit. Again this is the same thing as deciding that America will bomb Saudi Arabia to get its oil. America wouldn’t do that because it couldn’t absorb the public relations issues.
Sorry chief, you simply have a simplistic view of how politics and reality work.
Someone ought to do a study among those who have seen the film and measure responses: the destruction of Pandora from a right-winger’s view, the destruction of Pandora from a left-winger’s view, and the destruction of Pandora from an average person’s view.
I can almost smell the politics of some people in this and other threads. It kinda stinks.
Sure, but what’s to stop, say, Apple, from raising the capital to do it themselves? As long as it’s profitable, there will be companies willing to go for it. Now if the native resistance is enough to make it unprofitable, then people won’t be coming back, but at the price quoted in the movie, a few extra spaceships to push asteroids off course aren’t going to be enough to end you in the red.
You’re all forgetting a very important player mentioned in the movie - the shareholders of RDA. When that expedition returns with its tail between its legs (can they actually fit everyone on one starship?) having spend billions of dollars on basically nothing, I think the top management is going to be looking for work long before the UN has its first meeting. Clearly the “blow them up real good” approach didn’t work very well, so they’d seriously try the diplomatic approach. Grace seemed to imply that the last attempt wasn’t too serious.
The helicopters might work because the book linked to above says that Pandora’s gravity is 0.8 of Earth, while its atmospheric pressure is 20% higher. Should be great for helicopters.
Ok
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What’s to stop the humans from nuking them from orbit even if they DID kill all the humans?
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The humans ARE NOT more technologically advanced than the Pandorans. You guys are still stuck in the chauvinistic mindset. The highest intelligence is NOT the Navi, the highest intelligence is Eywa, who has access to the memories of a highly skilled scientist and access to two very competent scientists and technicians who stayed behind with Earth technology.
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Some of the humans will report back the atrocities they witnessed on Pandora, so political opinion on Earth will be split.
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There is no reason to believe that Eywa cannot manufacture organic technology that can shoot down things in orbit. Organic railguns anyone?
You need to break your mind away from similitudes. The four limbed monkey-cats are not the apex species of Pandora. That’s part of the brilliance of the film. It puts the viewer somewhat in the view of the chauvinistic humans, and even though it explicitly states that the four-limbed monkey cats are NOT the highest species or even a fraction of its intellectual capacity. You still think that that Navi are the aliens on Pandora. No, Pandora is a giant brain.
EDIT: I must give credit to Sunspace for also comprehending it.