Since I know you guys have barely heard anything about this project, here’s a new featurette for James Cameron’s Avatar. A couple thoughts: first, as much as I want to see it, I can’t stop thinking about this comment about it from the other week:
“Good news, we can fly you to an alien planet and graft your DNA with that of an alien, follow that up with a mind-meld thingy, thereby allowing you to infiltrate their species and take them out.”
“And what about my paralysis? How’s that coming?”
“We’re not miracle workers, dude.”
Kind of a big ol’ turd in the Avatar punch bowl when you think about it. Also, who decided it was a good idea to put Michelle Rodriguez in this? She’s impossible to take seriously. She’s like a female Billy Zane. Except hardcore and Latin (a chill just ran down my spine from imagining a hardcore, Latin Billy Zane). And lastly, I don’t think I ever noticed this before, but the material the humans are supposed to be mining is called “unobtainium.” Seriously. It’s said to be found only on Pandora and in Diora Baird’s panties.
UPDATE on ‘unobtainium':
“Unobtainium” is apparently a common euphemism for “any extremely rare, costly, or physically impossible material needed to fulfill a given design for a given application.”
It’s common in the automotive world, is also the name of a rubber compound trademarked by Oakley sunglasses, and in The Core, it was the joking nickname of a material used to protect a craft from the heat of the Earth’s core (because the real name had 37 syllables, said the inventor). But judging by the featurette, in Avatar, they’re using the term unironically.