Avatar is about capitalism

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Sorta. By then, the rules on thinking machines have been somewhat relaxed, but people still don't like being around computers. There are machines that can navigate FTL safely without relying on spice. The Bene Gesserit are still dependent on it, though, and they don't like how it binds them to either the Tleilaxu or surviving sandworms.

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isn't wood a hard to find resource?

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One time I unmatched someone from a dating app because the second avatar movie was coming out and they said that it was weird of me to say that the alien people were supposed to represent Native Americans because "they're just blue aliens why would you compare them to real life?"

Apparently media literacy makes you a weirdo?

qyron

That depends. Although massive deforestation throughout the planet, tree farms are a thing. So...

But haul wood over who knows what expanses of space? It would be cheaper to build greenhouses on barren planets and moons. The biggest challenge would probably be to prevent the oxygen in those enclosed habitats to eat away the building materials.

I remember following the advances on an experiment, during the 90's, where a team of scientists designed and built a fully self contained habitat, with only plants inside. I think the objective was to measure if the plants could/would survive in very limited resources conditions.
Well, the plants survived. After an initial shock, the plants self regulated and the habitat stabilized into a fully enclosed ecosystem.
Things became weird when the oxygen levels rose to a point where the ciment of the walls started to come apart. They had to hastily coat the walls with very thick rubber paint to prevent more damage.

qyron

Doesn't invalidate the point made: at some point, a previously irreplaceable resource was synthesized and mass produced.

I still have to find the time and motivation to read the entire Dune but if at some point they start mass producing the stuff that literally held them prisoners, as there is no going back once spice is first taken, they are literally a civilization of drug addicts, willingly.

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Oh! The bit where they fire dozens of rockets at a giant tree was also an allegory?!

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I saw the film in a theater with someone who wanted to impress upon me that someone pointed out to her how alike it was to what happened to indigenous peoples in the Americas (someone else had pointed that out to her, so she assumed I wouldn't get it on my own). I was like, if you think that's a novel observation, you really need to be hit in the face with concepts to understand things. It couldn't have been more obvious.

But maybe that highlights how much some people just aren't observant or introspective or whatever else. It would explain a lot.

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Yes it definitely makes you weird. Turn the brain off and consume the media like a good little sheep (/s if it wasn't obvious)

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Difference being the colonists of our world left perfectly habitable areas. In avatar the earth isn't habitable to most and so the colonists are actually kind of sympathetic. The real bad guys never have to leave earth but because it's Cameron it falls on the poors to play the bad guys

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The word you're looking for is imperialism, and that's definitely not unavoidable human nature

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You know the point I'm making though: there are indeed precious resources that can't be mined from asteroids. It is not inconceivable that there are organic compounds out there with unique properties that can't simply be made in a lab (e.g. ancient wood properties compared to new forest) and exist in a state that is economical for easy extraction.

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Avatar is just recycled CGI Fern Gully anyway

qyron

It's not inconceivable but I will insist on the point that technology is the right tool to solve such issues.

It was inconceivable a few decades ago - even a couple of years ago! - several medical advances that are today used routinely.

It is a fun theoretical discussion to entertain but we would reach no real conclusion.

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Thx. Thought I missed something

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Or when they blast a few square kilometers of forest from orbit to make space for an alien whale refinery. It may say something about us and I hope to understand it one day.

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This annoyed me also.

If the Avatar universe has physics like ours, which it looks like it does from the way things move etc..

The protoplanetry disk that the planet formed from, must have had the unobtanium, since it is so evenly spread around the later formed planet.

Yes, there are higher concentrations in various places, which could have come from impact events in the past; if this is the case the impactors are likely from the local asteroid belt or equivalent.

The unobtanium must be available, in a much easier to extract form, in asteroids in the soloar system or the moons of Pandora.

Either way, a mineral is a terrible maguffin for a space faring civilization.

In the second movie, the whale brain juice is a much better maguffin, but still kinda stupid for a technologically advanced species.

Assume that to get interstellar travel, with the suspended animation and brain beaming tech we are shown, humans are a good 200 years ahead of where we are now....given that they can also make fully functional alien bodies from scratch, that can breed and pass on genetic material to what look like viable offspring. The level of synthetic biology expertise must be insane, and they can't make this brain juice....it is just stupid.

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Are there even any indigenous people in Tarzan? I haven't read the book, but from the movie I only remember his gorilla buddy and the little elephant. I think Tarzan is more about rebelling against civilization in general, instead of colonization in specific (which James Cameron's Avatar is). It's very post-industrialization in that sense.

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That was not a subtle theme...

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Tbf, the air on Pandora is toxic to humans. That was the entire point of using the avatars in the first movie... Wouldn't exactly call that suitable for sustaining the life of our species

And that material they found in the planet was some fictional things humans had never encountered before.