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[Keylime]

No, sometimes they have fake guns in the cockpit don't they?

Regardless, there's nothing to suggest they were ever meant to shot anything.

Pretty sure we see one of the evil dudes in his mech holding his hands in the air as if he were holding a gun, with no physical object in his hands.

 

[StuBurns]

I just saw it last night. Their mimicking holding a gun. That's what is so silly.

I edited my post, regardless, there is nothing in the film to suggest these machines were meant to fire guns. It's a mining complex. To me it appeared they were just like the loaders, an industrial tool, that is later used to an other purpose.

 

[Tobor]

I edited my post, regardless, there is nothing in the film to suggest these machines were meant to fire guns. It's a mining complex. To me it appeared they were just like the loaders, an industrial tool, that is later used to an other purpose.

A throwaway line would have established that, but there was nothing. The first time you see a mech in the film, it's holding a rifle on guard duty as the marines come down the plank. It's not a stretch to assume that's normal behaviour.

 

[BruceLeeRoy]

Seems like the biggest feature of the mech was the full mimicking of the user's actions. All of the rider's fingers were used to control the fingers of the mech, how would he press a button? I figured not having a mounted gun allowed for a much more versatile machine. The mechs weren't intended for complete military usage and thus need the ability to manipulate complex objects in the most natural way possible.

I was thinking that too. The whole design of the mech suits seems to be more suited for handing materials and objects in a very efficient way and was kind of adapted to enable military usage.

 

[∀ Narayan]

At the theater now. LieMAX screen isn't so bad. Got a fucking PERFECT seat. Should be good.

 

[StuBurns]

A throwaway line would have established that, but there was nothing. The first time you see a mech in the film, it's holding a rifle on guard duty as the marines come down the plank. It's not a stretch to assume that's normal behaviour.

However there is a lot of them, and it is a mining facility. I never thought they were designed with the military in mind, they always just seemed like general purpose power suits for work around the base and mining areas. They aren't at war when the movie starts, there is no real reason for military war machinery to be there like that.

A lot of one liners could have explained a lot of things in that movie, "The ubotanium name has just stuck" etc. But of my issues with the film, the mechs certainly aren't one of them.

 

[Count Dookkake]

Avatar ended up grossing more on Sunday than what was estimated: 77.3 mill for the weekend, Will Smith dethroned.

Haters piss their pants.

WELCOME TO PANDORA!

[punch]

 

[Truant]

Yes. This film is simple to understand really.

Yikes. I meant like slightly more than just 'remote controlled bodies'.

 

[R2D4]

However there is a lot of them, and it is a mining facility. I never thought they were designed with the military in mind, they always just seemed like general purpose power suits for work around the base and mining areas. They aren't at war when the movie starts, there is no real reason for military war machinery to be there like that.

A lot of one liners could have explained a lot of things in that movie, "The ubotanium name has just stuck" etc. But of my issues with the film, the mechs certainly aren't one of them.

The mechs were military. They were there to protect the miners. The animals on Pandora are huge. If the 12 foot tall Navi are hunted by those 6 legged dog things then I'm sure the miners are too. So they need the military and those mech suits to do it. You don't see the mech's do anything else. You don't see them in any type of mining role. Only the military has them in the movie.

 

[Tobor]

However there is a lot of them, and it is a mining facility. I never thought they were designed with the military in mind, they always just seemed like general purpose power suits for work around the base and mining areas. They aren't at war when the movie starts, there is no real reason for military war machinery to be there like that.

A lot of one liners could have explained a lot of things in that movie, "The ubotanium name has just stuck" etc. But of my issues with the film, the mechs certainly aren't one of them.

Well, I wanted to hard science nerd out about it, so thanks for the discussion.

 

[StuBurns]

The mechs were military. They were there to protect the miners. The animals on Pandora are huge. If the 12 foot tall Navi are hunted by those 6 legged dog things then I'm sure the miners are too. So they need the military and those mech suits to do it. You don't see the mech's do anything else. You don't see them in any type of mining role. Only the military has them in the movie.

There are no military people in the movie so you're wrong in that sense at least. And we only see one scene of any mining anyway.

Well, I wanted to hard science nerd out about it, so thanks for the discussion.

You're most welcome, once I finish the scriptment, if it tells me anything interesting about it, I'll bump the conversation.

 

[R2D4]

Why do they need the Avatars in the first place? Is this ever explained? It's not the Europeans dressed up like the Native Americans when they would meet with them. Unless they were used to spy on the Navi.

Also is the only time Jake wasn't in his Avatar was when it was suppose to be sleeping? Did he time all his meetings with the army commander at night? When did Jake sleep?

 

[Ferrio]

There are no military people in the movie so you're wrong in that sense at least. And we only see one scene of any mining anyway.


You're most welcome, once I finish the scriptment, if it tells me anything interesting about it, I'll bump the conversation.

Wait people think those people were military? They were obviously mercenaries.

 

[R2D4]

There are no military people in the movie so you're wrong in that sense at least. And we only see one scene of any mining anyway.

What do you mean there are no military people in the movie? They were the mining companies military. Or a hired military or whatever you want to call it.

 

[Tobor]

There are no military people in the movie so you're wrong in that sense at least. And we only see one scene of any mining anyway.


You're most welcome, once I finish the scriptment, if it tells me anything interesting about it, I'll bump the conversation.

Now you're just being arbitrary. You knew what he meant by military. Replace it with mercenary and his point still stands.

 

[CassidyIzABeast]

the mining areas are all fenced off with sentry guns posted to kill anything that gets close. the miners are safe. its when they transport the unobtanium back to base that they get attacked by navi.

 

[Solo]

Why do they need the Avatars in the first place? Is this ever explained?

Did you miss the part where the atmosphere was uninhabitable to humans?

 

[Speevy]

Maybe they need the avatars because the Na'Vi are large enough to crush human beings in their bare hands, and the alternative is a scary mech suit.

 

[The Librarian]

I agree with whatever Tobor is saying.

 

[StuBurns]

Why do they need the Avatars in the first place? Is this ever explained? It's not the Europeans dressed up like the Native Americans when they would meet with them. Unless they were used to spy on the Navi.

Also is the only time Jake wasn't in his Avatar was when it was suppose to be sleeping? Did he time all his meetings with the army commander at night? When did Jake sleep?

They don't explain Avatars no, the main guy says "you look like them so they accept you" or something, but the purpose of Avatars is nonexistent to me.

His 'reports' probably aren't always face to face.

Now you're just being arbitrary. You knew what he meant by military. Replace it with mercenary and his point still stands.

He was being 'arbitrary', we see ONE shot of mining in the film, the lack of mechs there really proves nothing at all.

 

[Count Dookkake]

Wait people think those people were military? They were obviously mercenaries.

Jake even explicitly tells us in VO.

 

[R2D4]

Wait people think those people were military? They were obviously mercenaries.

Same thing. Instead being paid by a country they are paid by a company.

 

[R2D4]

Did you miss the part where the atmosphere was uninhabitable to humans?

Yet they walk around with gas masks on so that isn't a valid reason.

 

[Solo]

Same thing. Instead being paid by a country they are paid by a company.

There is very little "the same" between a national military and a PMC.

Yet they walk around with gas masks on so that isn't a valid reason.

That is the reason. Either walk around with a cumbersome gas mask that eventually runs out of oxygen, or use an avatar. Not to mention how dangerous the jungle is. A Navi's size and physicality is much more likely to survive than a human.

 

[Speevy]

Yet they walk around with gas masks on so that isn't a valid reason.

Would you trust insect-like people walking around with oxygen masks?

 

[Keylime]

Also is the only time Jake wasn't in his Avatar was when it was suppose to be sleeping? Did he time all his meetings with the army commander at night? When did Jake sleep?

You see Jake getting more and more exhausted in "Jake" form as he spends more time with his Avatar.

Basically he spends his entire day asleep in a tube, but his mind was wide awake for 16+ hours in another body.

When he wakes up he's well rested, but mentally fatigued, meaning he probably wants to sleep, but his body doesn't want to sleep because he just slept for 16+ hours.

They don't really get into it, but Jake makes off-handed statements about the days blending together and not really knowing what day or time it was.

 

[kaching]

Did you miss the part where the atmosphere was uninhabitable to humans?

Did you miss the part where a simple oxygen mask fixed that?

 

[Solo]

Did you miss the part where a simple oxygen mask fixed that?

Read my last post. An oxygen mask is incredibly limited.

Not to mention that they wanted TO STUDY THE NAVI. Who are they more likely to trust? Someone who looks like them, or an alien?

 

[Tobor]

There is very little "the same" between a national military and a PMC.



That is the reason. Either walk around with a cumbersome gas mask that eventually runs out of oxygen, or use an avatar. Not to mention how dangerous the jungle is. A Navi's size and physicality is much more likely to survive than a human.

Kaching touched on this beautifully. The scientists are already seen as a nuisance and expendable, and the bottom line was all that mattered. Sending them in with masks is much better for the bottom line than the prohibitively expensive avatar program.

 

[Snowman Prophet of Doom]

Did you guys miss that it was the researchers using the avatars? It seems to me that the program was developed to help the researchers get in good with the Na'vi by making them more easily acceptable and without the encumbrance of oxygen tanks/masks.

 

[Solo]

Kaching touched on this beautifully. The scientists are already seen as a nuisance and expendable, and thbottom oine was all that mattered. Sending them in with masks is much better for the bottom line than the prohibitively expensive avatar program.

Yes, but remember that the PMC was trying initially to display an acceptable social front. As such, the Avatar program is an easier sell than telling people you're going to send mercs in and slaughter the natives. "We formed a peaceful and mutually beneficial relationship with the natives" sounds better than "we successfully rounded up the unobtanium through genocide".

 

[Tobor]

Yes, but remember that the PMC was trying initially to display an acceptable social front. As such, the Avatar program is an easier sell than telling people you're going to send mercs in and slaughter the natives. "We formed a peaceful and mutually beneficial relationship with the natives" sounds better than "we successfully rounded up the unobtanium through genocide".

I understand that, it's just at complete odds with the way the corporation seemingly does business. Sending the researchers in with masks has the potential for success at a greatly reduced price, and if it fails, you can still say you tried without having to explain the cost of the Avatar program to shareholders.

Augustine must have been far more charming and persuasive in her younger years.

 

[CassidyIzABeast]

Kaching touched on this beautifully. The scientists are already seen as a nuisance and expendable, and the bottom line was all that mattered. Sending them in with masks is much better for the bottom line than the prohibitively expensive avatar program.

they already tried that I'm assuming. Doesn't work. Especially when you come digging giant holes in the planet.

They trust the avatars because they are associated with Grace and Grace to the navi is a good human. At least that's how I see it going down.

 

[Solo]

I understand that, it's just at complete odds with the way the corporation seemingly does business. Sending the researchers in with masks has the potential for success at a greatly reduced price, and if it fails, you can still say you tried without having to explain the cost of the Avatar program to shareholders.

Augustine must have been far more charming and persuasive in her younger years.

But you're just looking at the Avatar project as an expense and a loss. Surely the company would rake in revenue by licensing the technology out to other corporations/research facilities.

 

[Keylime]

I understand that, it's just at complete odds with the way the corporation seemingly does business. Sending the researchers in with masks has the potential for success at a greatly reduced price, and if it fails, you can still say you tried without having to explain the cost of the Avatar program to shareholders.

Augustine must have been far more charming and persuasive in her younger years.

Is it so cut and dry that the entire reason for humans coming to Pandora in the first place was to harvest unobtainium?

I guess in my mind the Avatar program could have been founded and underway well before the mass harvesting of unobtainium really got underway.

 

[JGS]

The avatar program holds a lot of incongruencies for me in relation to the rest of the plot and the setting and given how pivotal it is to the entire story, that's a big problem.

For one, the tech/science is too perfect relative to everything else on display in terms of humanity's achievements. On display is perfect hybridization of human/alien genome into a vessel that can be perfectly operated by a human brain interface to appear almost completely native except for culture/language. This despite the fact that the human researchers clearly show little understanding for the Pandoran ecosystem, biology and the mental processes of the Navi even after years of study. And this human/avatar bond can be controlled wirelessly over seemingly unrestricted distances without any interference whatsoever from anomalies that affect other human technology, like the flux vortex. Finally, it's apparently very low power as it can be administered via whatever power supply can be squeezed into the closet of an RV.

It's simply too difficult to square such a breadth of massive achievements like this against the fact that we have apparently allowed Earth to go "brown", according to Jake. We are apparently incapable of understanding our own home planet's biology and ecological systems well enough to have protected or restored them from destruction, yet we make contact with an sentient alien species and immediately divine enough about them to make perfect physical copies that can host human brain patterns perfectly over large distances with no interference, all in a rather brief space of time.

Second, it's apparently incredibly expensive, for what amounts to a native outreach program. So expensive that it's cheaper to send for a replacement human operator across light years, rather than just grow a new avatar and link to one of your staff already onsite. Its incongruous why they would have solved all those other MAJOR scientific problems so perfectly yet can't also force grow avatars more conveniently and cheaply.

If you want to play cynicism to the hilt about corporatism like Cameron seems to want to in this movie, it's hard to justify the avatar program ever being used in the first place by a corporation driven by the bottom line. Sending humans in with breather masks for native outreach is cheaper, by far, and likely to have much better return on investment.

And as far as it's use for intelligence gathering, I don't think they really needed Jake's assistance to figure out that shooting a whole bunch of missiles at the base of the tree would ultimately do the trick.

I don't know if it's Cameron just trying to be true his younger self that originally wrote this, despite the naivete of it, but it is probably going to make any additional viewings fall flat for me, unless I treat it strictly as fantasy.

The wireless thing I get except wireless communication wasn't hindered by the flux as the military were still able to talk to each other too iirc.

However, the cost thing is completely justifiable. In fact we see companies spend gobs of money now in the hopes of making more of it or saving a bunch of it in the future. It is much cheaper to build a Na'vi just basing it off of current events. Somewhere along the line in the imaginary boardroom of Unobtainium Inc, someone made a cost comparison analysis.

It would basically state that the cost to create a Na'vi is for hypothitical purposes $1,000,000,000. The cost to transport someone & pay them a salary is negligible in comparison to the cost of creating, but let's say it adds anoth 2,000,000.

That's a lot of money, but the cost of war would be a multiple of that therefore it is more economical to create an expensive Na'vi considering you have to pay the military, the equipment, both current and replacement, the firepower, replacement of manpower, plus the pubilicty/legal costs. Those costs would be in addition to normal operating expenses. Na'vi's would be cheaper unless the cost is truly ungodly.

Spoiler

Also, they need Jake's intel because there was more to it than being a big tree. They had to figure out where to hit it or it would just be surface damage.

 

[PhoncipleBone]

My guess is we discovered the planet and wanted to learn as much as we could about the natives, etc. They were hesitant to trust us, so we develop the avatar program, but it is expensive. Then we discover this wonder element called Unobtainium and want it all. The unobtainium pays for all the scientific research that goes on while the company rapes the land. Then the money got in the way of the science.

At least that is how I am thinking about it.

 

[Tobor]

But you're just looking at the Avatar project as an expense and a loss. Surely the company would rake in revenue by licensing the technology out to other corporations/research facilities.

Maybe, but the movie goes out of it's way to describe the program as nothing more than an expense and a loss, so it's hard not to make that conclusion.

 

[StuBurns]

Is it so cut and dry that the entire reason for humans coming to Pandora in the first place was to harvest unobtainium?

I guess in my mind the Avatar program could have been founded and underway well before the mass harvesting of unobtainium really got underway.

But the film does say that unobtainium is 'paying for the whole party' including her 'puppet show'. I got the feeling it was a compromise. But some scientific research would be done on a new found planet like that anyway, maybe it's just privately run because of the excessive cost.

 

[kaching]

That is the reason. Either walk around with a cumbersome gas mask that eventually runs out of oxygen, or use an avatar. Not to mention how dangerous the jungle is. A Navi's size and physicality is much more likely to survive than a human.

Those masks hardly look cumbersome and I'm sure they can offer sufficient oxygen for hours at a time, in the 22nd century. Or, why not apply that wondrous genetic technology we apparently have to create physiologically perfect Navi bodies and use it to adapt human lungs to breath Navi atmosphere? Gene therapy has to be more practical, cost effective solution than full genetic engineering of a Navi avatar.

It was shown early on that the Navi form really conferred no significant additional benefit to Jake in surviving Pandora, not without significant help from native Navi.

Not to mention that they wanted TO STUDY THE NAVI. Who are they more likely to trust? Someone who looks like them, or an alien?

They still knew it was the "sky people" in Navi form and clearly many of them regarded this as an abomination ("demons"). Grace had already gotten her ass kicked out of their village despite whatever benefit Navi form supposedly confers.

 

[Sharp]

Pretty by-the-numbers plot, but the visuals were ridiculously good. I may see it again (this time in IMAX 3D) just to drool over Pandora some more.

 

[Keylime]

But the film does say that unobtainium is 'paying for the whole party' including her 'puppet show'. I got the feeling it was a compromise. But some scientific research would be done on a new found planet like that anyway, maybe it's just privately run because of the excessive cost.

I guess in my mind it isn't really clear why they came to Pandora in the first place, or how the Avatar program came about in relation to the hunt for unobtainium...so I don't really feel comfortable making assumptions about the purpose of the Avatar program in general.

It seemed like the Avatar program was entirely research oriented from what we see in the movie.

 

[Solo]

They still knew it was the "sky people" in Navi form and clearly many of them regarded this as an abomination ("demons"). Grace had already gotten her ass kicked out of their village despite whatever benefit Navi form supposedly confers.

Grace got kicked out because of the mercs killing people, not because her work was a failure.

 

[StuBurns]

I guess in my mind it isn't really clear why they came to Pandora in the first place, or how the Avatar program came about in relation to the hunt for unobtainium...so I don't really feel comfortable making assumptions about the purpose of the Avatar program in general.

It seemed like the Avatar program was entirely research oriented from what we see in the movie.

It's said Grace's job is to find a diplomatic solution to the humans need for unobtanium, that's her 'mission statement' as far as the movie goes. I get the sense she didn't care about that, and just wanted to study the moon, but that was why she was allowed to do it anyway.

 

[Zeliard]

"We were doing a science fantasy, not true science fiction. We're not really predicting that there will be humanoids" on other planets, Cameron said. "When I write the novel of `Avatar,' which I'm going to do as soon as the dust clears on the film release, I'm going to deal with the issue of why they look so much like us. Because there needs to be an overarching explanation of that, which I have."

Hmm... I wonder if it's similar to the K-Pax "bar of soap" metaphor.

 

[JGS]

Maybe, but the movie goes out of it's way to describe the program as nothing more than an expense and a loss, so it's hard not to make that conclusion.

The avatar project would be specific to Pandora and would have little value anywhere else so would be a money loser, like most R & D and goodwill costs, unless they ran into peaceful aliens that live in a similar deadly atmosphere.

For all we know, half of the earth are just clones at that point so the technology itself is patented and old, just not the Na'vi part. After all, Jake was getting his legs from somewhere.

 

[Rhino]

So for someone who was totally dissapointed by the trailers and thought everything looked completely "cartoonish".....I just ate a nice big pile of crow.

Well done Cameron you've done it again :]

Also I want a Banshee soooooooooo bad.

 

[StuBurns]

After all, Jake was getting his legs from somewhere.

They were just going to fix his spine, the 'get your legs back' thing is not literal.

Just read an interesting thing about the amp suits, originally they did have mounted guns, and were controlled by a similar linking system than Avatars.

 

[GhaleonEB]

The avatar program holds a lot of incongruencies for me in relation to the rest of the plot and the setting and given how pivotal it is to the entire story, that's a big problem.

For one, the tech/science is too perfect relative to everything else on display in terms of humanity's achievements. On display is perfect hybridization of human/alien genome into a vessel that can be perfectly operated by a human brain interface to appear almost completely native except for culture/language. This despite the fact that the human researchers clearly show little understanding for the Pandoran ecosystem, biology and the mental processes of the Navi even after years of study. And this human/avatar bond can be controlled wirelessly over seemingly unrestricted distances without any interference whatsoever from anomalies that affect other human technology, like the flux vortex. Finally, it's apparently very low power as it can be administered via whatever power supply can be squeezed into the closet of an RV.

It's simply too difficult to square such a breadth of massive achievements like this against the fact that we have apparently allowed Earth to go "brown", according to Jake. We are apparently incapable of understanding our own home planet's biology and ecological systems well enough to have protected or restored them from destruction, yet we make contact with an sentient alien species and immediately divine enough about them to make perfect physical copies that can host human brain patterns perfectly over large distances with no interference, all in a rather brief space of time.

I don't think this criticism makes much sense. Earth likely went "brown" due to a continuation of pollution, resource consumption and global warming. Leaps in the biological sciences would be unrelated to these events.

Looking at how, today, our understanding of the genome and the ability to create clones stands sharply at odds with other technological developments. Look at what's happened to automobiles in the past 30 years, compared to life sciences. Not all technology moves in lockstep.

Second, it's apparently incredibly expensive, for what amounts to a native outreach program. So expensive that it's cheaper to send for a replacement human operator across light years, rather than just grow a new avatar and link to one of your staff already onsite. Its incongruous why they would have solved all those other MAJOR scientific problems so perfectly yet can't also force grow avatars more conveniently and cheaply.

I didn't see this as a gap. The Avatar program was clearly new. It takes years to grow avatars - Norm says they mature over the course of several years before they can be used. So they had to either a) develop and grow a new avatar, which takes years, or b) get Jake to step in, which also takes years but is much less expensive.

This is a corporation. They were looking for the cheapest way to reuse resources, and made a financial decision that shipping Jake over at minimal incremental cost (just one more body in a ship that was already leaving there) was cheaper than starting over. That very profit-orientated motivation is consistent with what we see elsewhere in the movie.

If you want to play cynicism to the hilt about corporatism like Cameron seems to want to in this movie, it's hard to justify the avatar program ever being used in the first place by a corporation driven by the bottom line. Sending humans in with breather masks for native outreach is cheaper, by far, and likely to have much better return on investment.

The movie established that the Avatar program was essentially feel-good PR for the firm. Many huge corporations such as this one have departments that work on things peripheral to their core operations as a PR screen. I'm thinking of all the Exon-Mobil ads I've seen recently about all this crazy tech they're working on to save the planet. When in reality that's a tiny fraction of their business and is done largely so they can make ads about it.

Grace wrote a book on the Na'vi, and the corporation was worried about public backlash if they killed the natives. Clearly, the science team there was part of a PR effort to make it appear that they were there advancing causes other than just raping the land for resources.

And as far as it's use for intelligence gathering, I don't think they really needed Jake's assistance to figure out that shooting a whole bunch of missiles at the base of the tree would ultimately do the trick.

I don't know if it's Cameron just trying to be true his younger self that originally wrote this, despite the naivete of it, but it is probably going to make any additional viewings fall flat for me, unless I treat it strictly as fantasy.

It was established (several times) that the preferred approach by the corporation was to move the natives off that land peacefully. Plan B was to force them off. Jake was working for Grace on the former and Quaritch on the latter.

It might be because I enjoyed the movie so much, but reading through your criticisms here, all of them were explained in the movie, or are consistent with the internal logic of the movie.

 

[mckmas8808]

Kaching touched on this beautifully. The scientists are already seen as a nuisance and expendable, and the bottom line was all that mattered. Sending them in with masks is much better for the bottom line than the prohibitively expensive avatar program.

How would you know that?

Spoiler

How would guys in masks get the Na'vi to move away from the tree?