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this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
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Avatar: The Last Airbender
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I haven't seen the second Bluvatar movie because the first one was just scifi trope: the movie. He actually named the macguffin "unobtanium" ffs. Not even close to what I've come to expect from the person that gave us The Abyss, Aliens, and T2.
Meanwhile, The Last Airbender is the only cartoon to ever make me cry.
The second one felt like an extended visual demo.
I can name 2 characters from the entire movie. And one of them was a side character. Jake Sully and Spider.
The story was inconsequential (meaning everything that happened progressed nothing) and forgettable.
i maintain that cameron should just have gotten david attenburough and made a kickass scifi documentary about pandora, much like how apple did with prehistoric planet
Dude, that would actually be really cool.
Are there scifi documentaries like that? Ones that explore fake worlds as if they're real to basically just show off creativity and the possibilities of life on other worlds?
There's the classic "alien planet" inspired by the wayne barlowe book, which i absolutely adore: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvaCH8OKdjQ
Then there's also a series of modern alien documentaries that i cannot recall the name of, but they were also kind of eeeh so..
Check out The Future is Wild. I don't know if it's streaming anywhere online, but it's a classic
Quarritch, Neytiri, Tuk, Loak, Kiri too.
Shit, the only one I really remember is Neytiri (the costar). Was Loak one of the kids?
Anyway, I came out of the theater impressed by the visuals, but feeling like I couldn't remember one important story beat. I mean, what was even the point if literally nothing changed from the beginning to end except for the locale?
Maybe it'll make more sense as part of the series, like a music album with songs that work better when the album is played straight through.
I think the "unobtanium" was just lampshading. It would come off better if the rest of the plot was more innovative or self-aware, but I think they knew what they were doing for that bit at least.
I would agree if they had actually lampshaded it. They had a couple of sassy characters that could've thrown in a line about how the name is stupid since it means something that can't be obtained in Latin, or how it's ironic given their mission on Pandora. Or how lazy the scientist were they couldn't come up with something new or original (unobtanium is used everywhere on engineering). But no, they never address it at all. It was just there, no one reacted or called attention to it.
Or maybe they did and I don't remember because it has a boring AF script and it is a completely unremarkable and forgettable film altogether.
FYI since you appear to be stuck on this point. Unobtainium is used in science and engineering for a material that can meet requirements but is too expensive, yet to be discovered or inaccessible by any means. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unobtainium
That being said bluvatar was a cookie cutter adventure story. Nothing special but it has mass appeal. For those of us who enjoy movies and television typically acknowledge that ATLA has a rich story, tons of depth and conveyed meanings and somehow doesn't take itself to seriously. ATLA is a work of art, bluvatar was a cash grab.
That was their point. It's a sci-fi trope, a stand-in term that describes a thing that doesn't exist, and Cameron decided nah, it's not a stand-in term anymore, that's just what this blue stuff is called. Most fictional media names it Adamantine, or Vibranium, or Stellarium, or something.
I thought that was the joke? Someone with a sense of humour names it that and there's people unironically calling it unobtanium.
I think that's part of the problem. It's not a joke, it's played completely straight. That is the name in universe of the substance. If this was a comedy named SpaceBalls 2: Pocahontas in Space, sure, that would be a cute and funny detail. But it is an action adventure drama. It's completely out of place and displays a complete lack of sci-fi creativity.
Haven't seen the second one, but honestly the first one was just fine. Like, it's not in my top ten or anything, but it not bad by any stretch. And there's nothing wrong with calling something "unobtanium," have you seen what we've named actual elements in real life? Or what some place names are like?
I used that as an example of how tropey it was. "Unobtanium" is literally the name of the nigh impossible fetch quest trope and has been for decades.
So what?
It's lazy.
What's lazy about it? Again, I direct you to the names of real elements and placenames. Humans have been naming things "simply" forever. It's not lazy.