Human technology looks... outdated?

[General Failur]

My first post here so far...

Have anyone noticed that, according to the film, though more than a hundred years passed since 2010, we humans still continued to rely on:
1. non-direct user interfaces for various electronics (lacking neurochips or something like that)
2. weaponry that shoots bullets (where the #@$% are laser/pulsar/tesla/whatever guns?)
3. helicopters instead of antigravitation for flight (it is theoretically possible if only the Higgs boson is discovered)
4. metal instead of forcefields for protection (btw, a special forcefield could also keep earth-like atmosphere around the bases, allowing to wear no gasmasks)
5. battle robots that need human control (just remember the good old T800)
5a. as a consequence, poor programming techniques (or am I the first one to think about infecting the Eywa with a specially-designed "trojan horse" that can potentially provide humans with ultimate control over the whole planet?)

By the way, I still can not imagine what caused the very crysis on planet Earth... When could we manage to extract all deuterium from the oceans?

[Elyannia]

most of that stuff would be useless in the flux field.

[General Failur]

Hm.
Do you really think that a flux field is able to render, say, a laser beam useless?
Btw, just remember: all systems of Quaritch's exoskeleton except radars remained functional.

[Shatnerpossum]

Directed energy weapons are never as efficient.

Sci Fi generally sets up impossibly huge technical advances, and Avatar doesn't. Its real.

[Probedude]

Per Cameron's interview on The New Yorker

The idea is that Pandora has such a hot, humid climate, with incredibly powerful magnetic fields, that they can’t use sophisticated energy weapons. A lot of the equipment is retrofitted, from their perspective, because it works on Pandora. So you’ve got vehicles that are more consistent with twentieth-century warfare.” His face was flushed and happy. “It’s all just an excuse to do helicopters versus pterodactyls,” he said.

Read more: James Cameron and “Avatar” : The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/26/091026fa_fact_goodyear#ixzz0dglGhVZn)

[Toruk]

The key problems with using lasers as some sort of weaponry is that if you turn up the power that much there is no way to stop the laser so once it hits the object it will continue on and cause a lot of destruction and in 140 years technology doesn't make huge monumental leaps that often space travel was probably where most of the research went not into more efficient killing.

[HufweMakto]

The key problems with using lasers as some sort of weaponry is that if you turn up the power that much there is no way to stop the laser so once it hits the object it will continue on and cause a lot of destruction and in 140 years technology doesn't make huge monumental leaps that often space travel was probably where most of the research went not into more efficient killing.

Which comes to mind, why should sci-fi be linked with lasers?

[Grey Wolf]

Another theory is that the humans might of had all that rubbish, but remember, the trip to pandora takes 6 years in cryo. It's 6 years....for anything to be transported there, it might just not have been possible to get some of the more advanced things there.

[Crickett]

My first post here so far...

Have anyone noticed that, according to the film, though more than a hundred years passed since 2010, we humans still continued to rely on:
1. non-direct user interfaces for various electronics (lacking neurochips or something like that)
2. weaponry that shoots bullets (where the #@$% are laser/pulsar/tesla/whatever guns?)
3. helicopters instead of antigravitation for flight (it is theoretically possible if only the Higgs boson is discovered)
4. metal instead of forcefields for protection (btw, a special forcefield could also keep earth-like atmosphere around the bases, allowing to wear no gasmasks)
5. battle robots that need human control (just remember the good old T800)
5a. as a consequence, poor programming techniques (or am I the first one to think about infecting the Eywa with a specially-designed "trojan horse" that can potentially provide humans with ultimate control over the whole planet?)

By the way, I still can not imagine what caused the very crysis on planet Earth... When could we manage to extract all deuterium from the oceans?



I hate to write this, because I am essentially going to echo a video someone else posted I really am not really a fan of.

It's 2010 and we don't have lasers, force fields, hotels on the moon or flying cars now. Who is to say that in 100 years we will? We still have to drive our cars, some can parallel park themselves, but in general there is no car autopilot. You can get directions to where you're going, but you don't exactly have the Knight Industries Two Thousand driving for you on autopilot.

This right here. This year we're living in right now. When people thought of the future, they thought of this year. Right now. And we don't have any of those things.

Who is to say we will in another 140 years? Maybe we will, but it's certainly in the realm of possibility that we won't.

There certainly are plenty of advancements seen in Avatar, but to me, not making it Star Trek: The Strip Mining Generation was a good choice, not a bad one.

[Atokirina']

1. non-direct user interfaces for various electronics (lacking neurochips or something like that)
Avatars have neurochips on their brains, that's how the drivers control the Avatars.

2. weaponry that shoots bullets (where the #@$% are laser/pulsar/tesla/whatever guns?)
They have, but they can't use them on Pandora due to the flux vortex.

3. helicopters instead of antigravitation for flight (it is theoretically possible if only the Higgs boson is discovered)
Same as number 2.

[Concerned RDA Shareholder]

People can come up with lots of pseudo-technical reasons why the human technology is the way it is in the movie, but Cameron himself has said that he wanted viewers to feel "comfortable" with the human technology. That is, he wanted the viewers to think that the technology was plausible. Because at any point we start seeing stuff that doesn't seem plausible (anti-gravity vehicles or star-wars laser guns), we start to disconnect from the movie because its so removed from reality. It doesn't have as much emotional impact.

[I-Heart-Neytiri]

all the above :)

[reaper217]

That is, he wanted the viewers to think that the technology was plausible. Because at any point we start seeing stuff that doesn't seem plausible (anti-gravity vehicles or star-wars laser guns), we start to disconnect from the movie because its so removed from reality. It doesn't have as much emotional impact.

QFT!

Personally I'm glad that Cameron didn't use "laser beams" like so many other movies have -- it would break the immersion and feel less real to me, and seem "cheesy", too. Unlike how Star Wars and other movies portray energy bolts, they do not move so slowly you can "see them coming" -- they would move at light speed. Which, my brain knows, is ridiculous and so I would need to "suspend my disbelief". Avatar, OTOH, uses bullets and so it feels 1000% more real to me, which is just one more reason it draws me in so much every time I watch it. To sum up, I love Avatar just how it is! :)

EDIT:
BTW, 'Concerned RDA Shareholder', I love your username! It cracks me up! :rotfl:

[Tawtsamsiyu]

I personally think that energy weapons wouldn’t be too useful on a heavily forested moon. Try shooting lasers in a forest, and see what happens to the beams. Heavy machine guns and modern gatlings (miniguns) on the other hand can easily rip heavy vegetation to shreds.

[Crickett]

I personally think that energy weapons wouldn’t be too useful on a heavily forested moon. Try shooting lasers in a forest, and see what happens to the beams. Heavy machine guns and modern gatlings (miniguns) on the other hand can easily rip heavy vegetation to shreds.


You mean like this?

YouTube - Predator (making jungle whole)

[Tawtsamsiyu]

You mean like this?

Good find! I mean exactly like that.

Try doing that with a laser, and all you’ll do is set fire to the forest and incinerate yourself.

[Txon'tsyal]

I am glad that there wasn't any super-advanced technology. I would have spent the whole movie trying to think of how the laser beams, anti-grav, and force fields worked. I think it would make the movie less of a great adventure, and more of a "We can do lasers and force fields in CG too!" movie.

[ReiAyanami]

Avatars have neurochips on their brains, that's how the drivers control the Avatars.

They have, but they can't use them on Pandora due to the flux vortex.

Same as number 2.

Exactly! In the game and the wiki is explains perfectly why they use midle-end 21st century technology on Pandora. (Everything they have on the planet is actually built en citu with the available material etc)

[Shatnerpossum]

One more note on directed energy weapons.

They reveal your position much more than any gun. Thats a tactical disadvantage. There's also serious question over their plausibility, while we know that bullets work. So in 100 years they might laugh at our ideas of laser beams like we laugh at the hovercars in "The Jetsons."

[Gunny]

I agree with everything people have said, to me it helped you connect more with the movie by keeping it more real.

Also remember that there is a organization that restricts what the RDA is able to bring with them so im sure that also played a role in why certain things were brought instead of others.

[TheANIMAL]

60 years ago people said that by the year 2000 people would all have flying cars, we would only have to eat a pills thus solving world hunger, we would be living on the moon and there would be robots to do everything for us (depending on your defenition of "robot" i guess that has come true).

Its amazing how alot of our technology looks and works quite similarly to technology of the last centuary.

The AK47 anyone? It's still a good gun, even by today's standards.

The 60w lightbulb? There might be alternatives, but its still used and it's been around for a while.

The automobile? They might have got more sophisticated but they still have wheels, steering wheels and combustion engines (the vast majority).

The radio? Yeah that crazy old technology is still pretty popular.

My point is: you'll be amazed how mush of today's technology will still exist in a centuary.

[Gargantou]

Directed energy weapons are never as efficient.

Sci Fi generally sets up impossibly huge technical advances, and Avatar doesn't. Its real.

No because being able to travel to a starsystem in a period of just a few years certainly isn't an (almost) impossibly huge technical advance.

As far as current scientific knowledge go, it's impossible to travel faster than the speed of light, and most likely impossible to travel anywhere near the speed of light.

And seeing as afaik the closest starsystem to Sol is 4+ light years away, that means 4 years travelling at the speed of light.

I'd call that an "impossibly huge technical advance" to be able to travel at the speeds implied in Avatar.

But to each wo/man h*r/s own.

[Shatnerpossum]

No because being able to travel to a starsystem in a period of just a few years certainly isn't an (almost) impossibly huge technical advance.

As far as current scientific knowledge go, it's impossible to travel faster than the speed of light, and most likely impossible to travel anywhere near the speed of light.

And seeing as afaik the closest starsystem to Sol is 4+ light years away, that means 4 years travelling at the speed of light.

I'd call that an "impossibly huge technical advance" to be able to travel at the speeds implied in Avatar.

But to each wo/man h*r/s own.

Faster than light travel has a sound theoretical basis. There are several good ways that may eventually work. My old physics teacher was always fond of pointing out that all it would take is a unification of theories (or a complete understanding of string theory) to make it work.

Ignoring your tone (which came across either intentionally or unintentionally as condescending and rude) you even contradicted your assertion. The film states six years of travel time, and Alpha Centauri is 4.4 light years away. So there was no faster than light travel anyway. It was all fast sublight travel.

[sullyjake1]

impossible to travel faster than the speed of light.

nothing is impossible, perhaps there are ways of travel that bend our current way of thinking. if someone from 200 years ago was alive today our tec would seem like magic to them. my point being that just because we can think of how it is done or how to do it, does not mean it can not be.

[Gargantou]

impossible to travel faster than the speed of light.

nothing is impossible, perhaps there are ways of travel that bend our current way of thinking. if someone from 200 years ago was alive today our tec would seem like magic to them. my point being that just because we can think of how it is done or how to do it, does not mean it can not be.

I was simply replying to the guy who said Avatar does not feature 'impossibly huge technological advances', but if you're correct and nothing is impossible, then there can't exist 'impossible huge technological advances', so then I guess I wasted my time by replying to him.

But at least now I know not to waste any more, so thanks!

[the colonel]

i like the human techs in Avatar the way it is...the only thing i hope is their weapons are more like the weapons in JC's Aliens movie...beside i don't want to see a GUNDAM suit appears in Pandora...the Na'vi seriously **** up the

[Zen]

I really liked that all the human tech in Avatar seemed completely plausible, even the AMP suits. When you look back at the tech in Aliens, which I'm not sure how much Cameron was creatively involved with, it was also within the bounds of plausibility and still looks great two decades later.

[Lofwyr]

I liked it too. It has a nice reality-touch. If the humans had ultra-high-tech they wouldn't have all these problems on pandora. I also really like the mech-design. The dragon is just awesome and I loved the APC in aliens.

[TorukStorm]

Avatars have neurochips on their brains, that's how the drivers control the Avatars.

They have, but they can't use them on Pandora due to the flux vortex.

Same as number 2.

Avatars do not have neurochips in their brains, they are 100% organic.

[Grif]

You think the tech looks outdated in this movie? Look at the human tech in Halo (occurs in 2550s)

[Malu tek tek]

the movie was set up for emotional response and being to distant from current technology would have deminished the response

[ReiAyanami]

the movie was set up for emotional response and being to distant from current technology would have deminished the response

I think the tech is realistic, and not only that, but they state that it is outdated for Earth 2150 standards for reason explained both in the game and the wiki! :nwink:

[nordrassil]

I think the trend of uber-advanced sci-fi technology is gone. At first, one of the points of science fiction was to introduce cool new technology, and it was getting in front of story. In the recent works, story became more relevant. Only the technology that is necessary for the plot is used, everything else is kept as familiar as possible. If you watched, Battlestar Galactica has used the same method. They have FTL ships, since it is necessary for the plot, but almost everything else is more or less the same with today's world. I guess sci-fi works from now on will take a similar approach.

[Shilka ZSU-23-4]

i wonderd were the long range cold war era russian bombardment was. that would of been so usefull for the rda.

like one that shoots a incenerary shell possibly rocket propelled but uses no navigation device just good old math to gey through the flux. they could of seiged the navi and forced them out of the flux feild.

[lionchild]

most of that stuff would be useless in the flux field.

Dito... and in fact, perhaps the infrustructure wasnt in place for it anyways... you do realize it takes money to bring all that junk in right?

i think it would have been a distraction to just bring in more tech anyways... i want to see pandora not robots.

[ateyo 'uniltiranyu]

My first post here so far...

Have anyone noticed that, according to the film, though more than a hundred years passed since 2010, we humans still continued to rely on:
1. non-direct user interfaces for various electronics (lacking neurochips or something like that)
2. weaponry that shoots bullets (where the #@$% are laser/pulsar/tesla/whatever guns?)
3. helicopters instead of antigravitation for flight (it is theoretically possible if only the Higgs boson is discovered)
4. metal instead of forcefields for protection (btw, a special forcefield could also keep earth-like atmosphere around the bases, allowing to wear no gasmasks)
5. battle robots that need human control (just remember the good old T800)
5a. as a consequence, poor programming techniques (or am I the first one to think about infecting the Eywa with a specially-designed "trojan horse" that can potentially provide humans with ultimate control over the whole planet?)

By the way, I still can not imagine what caused the very crysis on planet Earth... When could we manage to extract all deuterium from the oceans?

Probably due to the economy. Jake does mention that is it going under. Possibly the RDA can't afford the latest tech.

[Unitiranyu Tsamsiyu]

My first post here so far...

Have anyone noticed that, according to the film, though more than a hundred years passed since 2010, we humans still continued to rely on:
1. non-direct user interfaces for various electronics (lacking neurochips or something like that)
2. weaponry that shoots bullets (where the #@$% are laser/pulsar/tesla/whatever guns?)
3. helicopters instead of antigravitation for flight (it is theoretically possible if only the Higgs boson is discovered)
4. metal instead of forcefields for protection (btw, a special forcefield could also keep earth-like atmosphere around the bases, allowing to wear no gasmasks)
5. battle robots that need human control (just remember the good old T800)
5a. as a consequence, poor programming techniques (or am I the first one to think about infecting the Eywa with a specially-designed "trojan horse" that can potentially provide humans with ultimate control over the whole planet?)

By the way, I still can not imagine what caused the very crysis on planet Earth... When could we manage to extract all deuterium from the oceans?
This is Avatar not Star Trek.
Maybe there were some kind of advance prototype weapons by that time,but restricted by the government(Government military force only,just guessing),to make those laser/pulse gun small enough to fit in a guy's palm might be "Insanely Expensive".
RDA's troops are for self-defending,not to invade a planet.

[Unitiranyu Tsamsiyu]

You think the tech looks outdated in this movie? Look at the human tech in Halo (occurs in 2550s)
At least they got Slip-Stream Space Drive,you don't have to travel years to get to another place.