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THE SCIENCE MOMENT by E.C. McMullen Jr. and Kelly Parks |
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!!!SCIENCE MOMENT!!! SPOILER ALERT on AVATAR and THE ABYSS |
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Page 2 !!!THE SCIENCE MOMENT!!!: AVATAR vs ALIENS
 SCIENCE MOMENT BY E.C.MCMULLEN JR. |
TECHNOLOGICAL
- Continued
I wanted to love AVATAR. As readers can see by our SCIENCE MOMENTS of THE TERMINATOR, ALIENS, TERMINATOR 2, as well as our constant reference in OTHER movie reviews to the high bar that James Cameron set with those movies, that all other movies must reach toward, there would have been nothing I'd love better than enjoying and praising another J.C. movie.
What's more, I'd have accepted it if it was any one thing or even a few missteps. But there are So Many Things from a guy who created the standard for having his cinematic shit together! EVENT HORIZON is a pretty decent movie for Paul W. S. Anderson (possibly the best thing he has ever done or can do). If James Cameron had directed it, you'd be rightly shouting WTF?
For AVATAR, there was hardly a scene among the humans and their tech that wasn't ridiculous. Most of us in the audience had more advanced technology turned off and in our pockets. In AVATAR, they have robotic suits that walk and even move their arms for you. But a paraplegic like Jake Sully has to use a manually operated wheelchair design from the 20th Century?
1986 - The Sulaco from ALIENS. It looks nothing like actual spaceships then or now. It remains futuristic.
(20th Century Fox - Designed by Syd Meade)
In AVATAR, we have the technology to keep our Avatars remotely connected to our humans from many miles away. But we've lost the ability to remotely fly unmanned drones? We've lost the ability to precisely target an object from thousands or hundreds or at least, a few miles away, and must place our manned machines within yards of harm's way of our Own Explosions to shoot at ANYTHING?
We have giant, hulking, virtually indestructible (certainly from wooden spears and arrows) manned robot machines that can act as towering foot soldiers. But we still need armed soldiers on foot, walking on the ground all around the massive crushing feet of these manned robots? When our aircraft attack, they have to be in a formation so tight that if one of them should get hit by anything, it will invariably tilt and crash into the next aircraft? And we need all of this in our fight against a life form so primitive that they haven't advanced beyond wooden spears and arrows?
Are you freaking KIDDING ME?
According to AVATAR, the latest 2154 tech in military aircraft will be 20th Century Vertical Take Off and Landing (VTOL) craft. And even though they are propeller driven, they'll sound like helicopters (THE INCREDIBLES had the same type of VTOL and they got the sound right).
Then consider the mining of the Unobtainium, the magical stuff that will solve all of earth's energy problems (ahem).
Think about that.
In the 22nd Century we can fly 4.5 light years in a matter of months (imagine the energy expenditure for that) and drill and mine deep into ANOTHER world, but we can't just drill down to the geothermal surface of our OWN planet, the mantle, and harness the geothermal energy there (we reached earth's mantle in 1993. Geothermal energy is available from every square inch of the earth), or use the geothermal energy of ANY of the planets in our solar system (I'm not even counting the ridiculous ignorance of ignoring the massive energy output of not one, but four different stars along the way!)! Our 22nd Century energy solution only exists in one place and that is under a single tree at least 4.5 light years away. GAH!
What's more, we've lost the ability to both mine or drill from up to a mile away and excavate what we need below without damaging or weakening the integrity of the surface. In other words, we've even lost 19th Century horizontal drilling and mining technology that we perfected in 1929 (not to be confused with directional drilling, also from the 20th century)!
I'd make one UGLY Na'Vi!
We can no longer mine or drill something over Here from way over There and still Drink Their Milkshake!
Holy Freaking CRAP, man!
Cameron has never made a science fiction movie so devoid of science and so exhaustingly stupid. And he even made THE ABYSS!
Just in the human technology designs alone, AVATAR already looks dated. Once the novelty of the amazing 3D animated cgi aliens is gone, that will be it.
BIOLOGICAL
by Kelly Parks
 SCIENCE MOMENT BY KELLY PARKS |
You have four limbs. Have you noticed that? Pretty much all large land animals on Earth have four limbs. I have to specify "large"* because 80% of the animal species in the animal kingdom are insects. But mammals, amphibians, reptiles and birds all have four. Even snakes have four vestigial limbs, visible when you see their skeletons.^ That's the norm for Earth.
James Cameron did a very good job of creating a whole ecology full of strange and wonderful beasts on Pandora. And they all look like different branches on the same evolutionary tree because they all have six limbs - four in front and two in back. Well done, James.
Except, of course, for the Na'vi. They are utterly humanoid, with only four limbs (among many other humanoid features). In other words, they don't fit. It's clear that either:
A) They didn't evolve on Pandora and thus are as alien to that world as we are.
or
B) Cameron overlooked a detail!
You be the judge.
SCIENCE MOMENT BY E.C.MCMULLEN JR. |
* Or you can just say vertebrates. Tetrapods will also do.
^Chordates is also acceptable.
- Feo
The answer is B).
Cameron overlooked a detail since the four limbed Na'vi evolved the same neural "hairs" as the other six limbed varmints.
A Na'vi uses their ponytail neural hairs to "plug in" to a varmint and control the animal's mind.
That's an evolutionary trait within the logic of AVATAR, and since evolutionary neural hairs favors dominance to the Na'vi, they should have six limbs as well.
But they don't.
Return to AVATAR SCIENCE MOMENT Page 1 - Page 2
END
This article copyright 2009 - 2010 by E.C.McMullen Jr.
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