this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2026
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Nothing beats Unobtanium.
I swear, when I first heard that, I was out. I've despised every Avatar movie because of what is possibly the stupidest artistic choice in cinematic history.
You spend a billion dollars on a film franchise, and best you can come up with is Unobtanium? Go away.
I'm pretty sure they meant it as a meta joke. Unobtanium has been used to describe fantsy/sci-fi fictional plot relevant material for many years before either Avatar was made.
Maybe, but that would be as dumb as calling it a MacGuffin, which is basically same thing in suspense thrillers.
"Let's invade this planet and kill everybody for a MacGuffin!"
It's not like he worked that hard at the story. The plot is literally Ferngully, and the name was already in use in another animated series. He was clearly more interested in creating a vehicle for his film tech, which he obviously cared more about than that clumsy story.
I don't know, I mean, look at the naming that some tech companies use IRL. They use some pretty silly names. The idea of a company finding a metal that's sci-fi grade and calling it Unobtanium as a nod to their love of sci-fi isn't that crazy.
I was about to say, we live in a world where Big Brother is about to be fully matured and is unironically named Palantir. I really don't know what else to say, like the point should be clear.
I almost gave that exact example. Yes. Totally on the same page. Irony is dead and we've killed it.
In real life, poor imagination is acceptable. In a billion dollar movie, we expect better than real life.
It was the imagination of a character in the movie that was bad, not the makers of the movie. I'm not trying to simp for James Cameron or something lol, that statement sounds like I am.
I know you know this, but, there is no character with an imagination. Cameron made him up. He's not real. He didn't imagine anything.
That's a really weird way to think about it. Yes, obviously they're all fictional, but you can of course make a character that has a vivid imagination or one that doesn't.
No, it isn't. It's a normal way to think about it. Your way of thinking is how people fall in love with imaginary AI friends.
Lmao no, thinking about what an author/director/etc may have intended for a character's inner thoughts, motivations, and characteristics to be is not the same as AI psychosis.
This seems like the same problem that we have with shuffling music, where a truly random shuffle doesn't feel random; if you make it less random, it ends up feeling more random. Similarly, making a movie less realistic can make it feel more realistic.
Well yeah of course MacGurffin makes a terrible fake metal name. Change it to MacGufftanium and then we've got a real winner
you were watching Disney's Pocahontas in space with tall smurfs. have some whimsy.
Valid, LOL.
I thought it was how the WNBA was supplementing paychecks???
Per the internet, so grain of salt and all, unobtanium predates Avatar by some time, typically used as a brainstorming device. You know how a physics problem might say "assume a frictionless environment" or something of that nature, in order to focus on a specific point or phenomena? Unobtanium is sort of like that. Picture a bunch of aerospace engineers in the mid-50s, talking about how they're gonna put a person in space. They're throwing all their spaghetti against the wall, hoping some of it will stick. One guy stands up and says, according to his calculations, if they can get the mass of the launch vehicle down to X, he's confident they can do the thing. Unfortunately, material science being what it is at the time, there is nothing that would be light, strong, cheap, and workable enough to fashion such a vehicle, but the math all checks out. These engineers jokingly start referring to the hypothetical material that would satisfy all their needs as "unobtanium", while they search for practical solutions.
Fast forward 60 years, and Cameron is writing his Pocahontas in Space movie. He needs a name for his MacGuffin, but, being a MacGuffin, it's entirely irrelevant to the plot outside of the fact that the characters are destined to fight over it. So, he decides to call it unobtanium, since that's pre-existing shorthand for "rare material that does everything you need it to", and that's literally all this material needs to be for the plot.
It's still silly, sure, but no more or less silly than mechs fighting giant blue people that fuck via ponytail sounding.
Yeah, but it's like if a movie was trying to be taken seriously, but literally called its macguffin the MacGuffin. It would take you out of it every dramatic scene because they're just using the plot device by the word for the kind of plot device it is. Unobtanium is a real world term for something partly defined by not really existing. You can make up a stupid but plausible name and people won't mind (Marsium, Pandorium, etc) or you can go with something wildly implausible like making up an alien word for it (bonus points if you then give it phonetic decay into english) and nobody cares or even thinks it's cool. But this snapped people out of it a bit because nobody would call a material they're actively mining unobtanium, worst case they'd give it nicknames.
And it also just fell right into this spot where the setting felt carefully constructed though fantastical, but the plot felt like an afterthought, and here's a piece of the setting that clearly only exists for the plot and it's loudly announcing that fact with its really stupid name.
I listened to a steampunk opera years ago where the thing they were all fighting over was called an MCG. It took reading the writers notes afterwards for me to realise it was literally a MCGuffin, I did not feel smart that day.
I agree with you in all of the particulars of your argument, but am ultimately unphased by the use of the term. Cameron stopped one step short of calling it MacGuffinite, and I can understand why that would annoy some people. However, within the context of Avatar, it just doesn't bother me.
If I wanted to conjure an in-universe reason for it, I can do so without straining my credulity too much. Aerospace engineers in the 50s develop a term for a hypothetical wonder material that they can't get their hands on: unobtanium. Fast forward hundreds of years, and a material is discovered on Pandora which possesses qualities which were previously only thought of as theoretically possible. Perhaps jokingly, perhaps sincerely, the new wonder material is called unobtanium, referencing the fact it is no longer hypothetical, but it's still damn hard to get a hold of.
Now, I recognize that 1) none of that is explained in the movie, so it's just head canon, and 2) as you say, calling a material you are actively mining 'unobtanium' is stupid. However, I don't think it's any more or less stupid than your suggested alternative courses of action given the context of the plot.
If unobtanium had ANY relevance to the story beyond "this is the source of conflict", I'd wish for more juice there. But Cameron is nothing if not a functional screenwriter. No matter how much lipstick you put on the pig, the sole purpose of the scene is to telegraph the third act conflict (and allegorize the Iraq War, to some extent, but he does more with that elsewhere). The screenplay spends only bare minimum amount of time covering that detail before speeding along to more relevant thematic matters.
So, I agree that it's a dumb contrivance that is clunky. However, it's just so irrelevant that I don't care. Call it whatever you want to, the name, like the material itself, is completely inconsequential. Frankly, I'm actually warming to the idea of calling it MacGuffinite. Put a line in that it was named after the first marine to die on Pandora or some such bs. Have your cake and eat it too, a plausible in-universe name, and a tell to not think about it so much.
I get that writers use placeholder names for all sorts of things, but as you said yourself, it's meant to be replaced later. That giant budget, and nobody could think of a better name than Unobtanium?
It was either a terrible oversight, or it was chosen purposefully. Either one indicates an objectively poor artistic choice.
Well, I'll start by disagreeing with the premise that an "objectively poor" artistic choice exists, at least in this context. There are choices that work for you and choices that don't, but neither are objective. The name unobtanium was chosen because it represents a hypothetical substance that is everything that Cameron needed it to be to tell his story in a single word. He's practically telling the audience, "look, guys, don't think about it that hard, I'm speeding through the set-up because I know everyone is here to look at pretty shit in 3d".
In another story, one where the specific properties of unobtanium were in any way relevant (beyond being valuable), that sort of handwavey shorthand might perturb me. However, as it stands within the context of the film, it's fine. It's functional screenwriting, and that, to me, is a hallmark of Cameron's style.
Also, I'm not suggesting unobtanium was a placeholder for Cameron. I'm saying that it doesn't necessarily strain my credulity to believe that, if scientists are pre-conditioned to refer to a hypothetical wonder material as unobtanium, and then they actually discover a wonder material, they might continue referring to it as such. Or, if not scientists, at least corporate ghouls like Ribisi who probably can't pronounce the "official" name, if one exists.
Using shorthand because you're bored with your own exposition dump, and want to speed it along, seems like a strong sign of a poor screenplay.
EVERYBODY knows it was a terrible name, even those offering weak-ass rationalizations. NONE of you sound like you've even convinced yourselves.
I'm not saying it's a brilliant name. Im arguing it is an inconsequential detail that does not matter in the context of the story, and it should be treated as such. You called it "possibly the stupidest artistic choice in cinematic history". I guess I just find that to be at least as ridiculous as "unobtanium", if not moreso.
Surprisingly, it's the most realistic part of the movie. If you know scientists, if they have a concept for a perfect thing that can't be found, and then they find it for real, they're calling it unobtanium for sure.
Even in its supposed actual use (and I'm not convinced), it's a TEMPORARY Placeholder Name, meant to be replaced by a real word. Keeping it in the final draft, and trying to wave it away with a terrible excuse, is poor writing, poor directing, poor production.
It is truly a dumb decision because it's got absolutely nothing to do with the film. It's just lazy justification for being there, they could have chosen anything.
I think it's a room temperature superconductor which, ok I can see why that's useful, but if you're in a future where you have interstellar starships flying on a semi regular basis to another star system I think you've probably already invented room temperature superconductors. In fact they must have room temperature superconductors because their starships are powered by fusion drive which needs electromagnetic confinement in order to work. So at least the first ship would have to already have that tech just to get out there in the first place.
Wow, we agree 100%, but we got there from completely different directions.
If they have any imagination at all they should call it Wompom, because it's so useful you can do whatever you like with it.