Avatar - James Cameron Returns! (Spoilers in thread, obviously!)

Mark Harris said:
Ha ha, people have a problem with waterfalls on the floating mountains and no problem with the...floating moutains? :)
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You know, one producer with whom I've worked has suggested that basically you can expect the audience to grant you One Big Gimme. That is, one free pass to insert something that you either need for narrative or want for effect - or both - without apparent explanation of how exactly it works - warp drive, the Force (and notice how much less fun that one was, after being explained...), etcetera.

Another much more famous one once offered a theory of comedy (which I think also works pretty well as a theory of science-fiction and adventure films): One foot must remain firmly on the ground, no matter what color sock the other foot is wearing.

Floating 'unobtanium' is a Gimme. It's macguffin for the Bad Guys to come and rip out of the ground (because you could say with absolute accuracy that any known element - that is, not-unobtanium - can be more cheaply and safely mined from asteroids, once you have ya-ya RDA technology). If the dialog had said aluminum or uranium or nickel or whatever real name you choose, it would actually come off making less sense: why invade a hostile everything-wants-to-eat-you world, for stuff you can find easily and safely in space?

The commercial-interests-riding-roughshod-over-everything-to-get-their-profits angle is a sufficiently familiar - and realistic - foot on the ground, which I think kind of gets things past the unobtanium sock being worn on the other foot.

Rodney V. SMith said:
Mind you I DO love the mountains and the waterfalls but just thinking of the waterfalls poo pooed with my head in a major way.
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Well, the waterfalls actually work just fine, with known physical rules. Like Mark pointed out, the weirdness is the mountains...
 
Mark Harris said:
Ha ha, people have a problem with waterfalls on the floating mountains and no problem with the...floating moutains? :)
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Eh, Siguorney said something about a vortex. That's all the explanation I need. I get annoyed with people who take a lack of an explanation for something as there not being a plausible explanation (not talking about you Mark). If Cameron took the time to address every single scientific question a viewer might have about the film it would be eight hours long.
 
I simply tell myself that "Physics" is a set of "rules" that a simply a derivative we've created based on our own observations of our own environment. They are really little more than our attempt to explain to ourselves the world we live in. Until something has been observed, we can hardly begin to explain it, so how can we hope to universally and unequivocally explain something we've never observed. In that interview linked ave, James Cameron said that he was told by one of his techs about one part of the process "I can't think why it wouldn't work", without knowing - or even simply observing - the systems of Pandora, how can we begin to question why it couldn't work.

Just because something hasn't been seen or done, doesn't make it impossible.

- Mikko
 
Although in order to absorb the story, and be in the story, the audience has to find the story and world credible and consistent on their own terms. If they're having to remind themselves, well, we don't know everything, so why not then I think there's been something of a failure in storytelling.
 
Sad Max said:
Although in order to absorb the story, and be in the story, the audience has to find the story and world credible and consistent on their own terms. If they're having to remind themselves, well, we don't know everything, so why not then I think there's been something of a failure in storytelling.
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True, but the reasons the mountains float is not important to the story. It's backdrop. I'm saying there's a finite time to tell your story, you can't stop and illuminate every single detail with an explanation if it's not important to the narrative. Like I heard someone complaining why Quaritch's power suit had a giant bowie knife in it. There might be a good reason, but how are you going to explain that without slowing down the action.
 
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Batutta said:
Like I heard someone complaining why Quaritch's power suit had a giant bowie knife in it. There might be a good reason, but how are you going to explain that without slowing down the action.
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I thought the giant knife had two perfectly logical reasons for being in the film.

1) The jungles of Pandora seem to be very thick and exotic compared to the jungles of Earth, that even in an AMP suit, what's to say you don't come across some really thick bush that needs to be hacked through?

2) If the big gun that the AMP suit drivers use runs out of ammo, then it makes sense to have a secondary weapon that doesn't rely on ammunition reserves.
 
3) Because active-duty infantry personnel sat down with the engineers responsible for the suit and told them: if you're going to give me giant mechanical hands, I want a four-foot combat knife to swing in them.
 
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All good explanations...but because there wasn't one in the film this person took it as being implausible. It's that kind of nitpicking that annoys me. I see it CONSTANTLY over at AICN. The Avatar talkback there has gotten so obnoxious I've finally decided to boycott that whole place.
 
I'm not saying I need an explanation for it. All I was saying that I spent too much time THINKING about the source of the water. I loved the effect and eventually shrugged it off as unimportant especially to the story. I accepted the floating mountains after all. If anything it was more about how my mind works and focuses on the weirdest things. Like the source of the water and completely ignoring the damn big floating mountains.

My mind is screwed up is all. Personal observation of me.
 
Rodney V. Smith said:
I'm not saying I need an explanation for it. All I was saying that I spent too much time THINKING about the source of the water. I loved the effect and eventually shrugged it off as unimportant especially to the story. I accepted the floating mountains after all. If anything it was more about how my mind works and focuses on the weirdest things. Like the source of the water and completely ignoring the damn big floating mountains.

My mind is screwed up is all. Personal observation of me.
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I had that same thought of where is the water coming from but I put it out of my mind. I'm sure if I pondered it I could come up with an explanation but why expend the brainpower.
 
Sad Max said:
You know, one producer with whom I've worked has suggested that basically you can expect the audience to grant you One Big Gimme. That is, one free pass to insert something that you either need for narrative or want for effect - or both - without apparent explanation of how exactly it works - warp drive, the Force (and notice how much less fun that one was, after being explained...), etcetera.

Another much more famous one once offered a theory of comedy (which I think also works pretty well as a theory of science-fiction and adventure films): One foot must remain firmly on the ground, no matter what color sock the other foot is wearing.

Floating 'unobtanium' is a Gimme. It's macguffin for the Bad Guys to come and rip out of the ground (because you could say with absolute accuracy that any known element - that is, not-unobtanium - can be more cheaply and safely mined from asteroids, once you have ya-ya RDA technology). If the dialog had said aluminum or uranium or nickel or whatever real name you choose, it would actually come off making less sense: why invade a hostile everything-wants-to-eat-you world, for stuff you can find easily and safely in space?

The commercial-interests-riding-roughshod-over-everything-to-get-their-profits angle is a sufficiently familiar - and realistic - foot on the ground, which I think kind of gets things past the unobtanium sock being worn on the other foot.



Well, the waterfalls actually work just fine, with known physical rules. Like Mark pointed out, the weirdness is the mountains...
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Oh I got not problem with floating mountains in a film like this. I'm all about internal consistency in a film. I was just breaking Rodney's chops about the waterfalls.
 
Mark Harris said:
Oh I got not problem with floating mountains in a film like this. I'm all about internal consistency in a film. I was just breaking Rodney's chops about the waterfalls.
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The waterfalls will poo poo with your head!

You've been warned.

EDIT: Oh yeah.. seeing waterfalls in IMAX 3D tonight... now if THAT doesn't **** with my head more, I don't know what will...
 
Batutta said:
All good explanations...but because there wasn't one in the film this person took it as being implausible. It's that kind of nitpicking that annoys me. I see it CONSTANTLY over at AICN. The Avatar talkback there has gotten so obnoxious I've finally decided to boycott that whole place.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson(one of my heros) tells a great nit-pick story about seeing Titanic.

http://www.cinematical.com/2009/09/...st-convinced-james-cameron-to-re-edit-titani/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAD25s53wmE#t=26m12s
 
I often wonder where the the endless flow of water from the waterfalls up in the rockies at 12,000 + feet comes from without much above them around where I live.

Those were some pretty sizable mountains, and that was a very lush, lush land... Seems like water would be pretty abundantly available. I wondered more about the floating mountains if I were nitpicking. I do think a line or two of dialog about their known/suspected origins might have been cool as they were flying up on them for the first time. It was a pretty far out visual to take in.

later,
Jason
 
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