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.

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.

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.

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.

You guys are lugging around some hefty coins. Granted, I don’t think there’s any sort of back of napkins maths that can be done to make the DnD economy make sense, but it’s a fun exercise anyhow.

Showing my work here, because I’m bad at math so someone should check me.

• 1lb = 453.59 grams

• 1 oz = 28.35 grams

• 1 troy oz = 31.1 grams

• 1 coin ≈ 9.26 grams (per the 2014 PHB: “A standard coin weighs about 1/3 of an ounce, so 50 coins weighs a pound.” Those figures return a coin weight between 9.45 and 9.07 grams, which I averaged out to 9.26 grams)

• Cost of pure gold per troy ounce IN JUNE 2014 (roughly corresponding to when 5e was released) ≈$1300. Therefore cost of pure gold per gram ≈ $41.80.

• One pure gold coin then ≈ $387.07.

• Of course, assuming coins in circulation are gold bullion is a big stretch. As part of The Great Debasement (which sounds like a helluva a party until you learn it’s about monetary policy), King Henry VIII reduced the standard fineness of English currency from 23 karat (95.83% pure) to 22 karat (91.667% pure). This standard was further reduced when the United States Mint struck their gold dollar coin in 1849, when they dropped the fineness to 21.6 karat (90% pure).

• Tangent regarding the size of gold coins mostly unrelated to DnD economics, but maybe interesting if you’ve already read this much. The Type 1 American Gold Dollar was only 12.7 mm in diameter, or half an inch. That’s TINY, and one of the chief reasons people opposed the striking of a gold dollar at the time. For folks familiar with American currency, the dime is 17.91 mm in diameter, so you’d be hunting for a coin 2/3 the size of what is already an inconveniently small coin (imo). I didn’t find a direct causal link cited between these points, but I assume part of the reason for lowering the fineness from 22 karat was to eke out a slightly bigger coin for the same monetary value. Here is a visual aid showing how tiny the Gold Dollar was in comparison:

• Which brings us, finally, to DnD coinage. Let’s assume 90% purity, with the remainder having a negligible monetary value. Decimating the value of my hypothetical pure gold coin, we arrive at a value of 1 GP ≈ $348.36.

• Given one gold coin is what a skilled (but not exceptional) craftsman could expect to earn from a day’s work, that seems relatively in line with expectations.

This took forever to write on my phone, so someone may have already hit these points, but it kept me amused during a slow day at work. Edit quickly to add that inflation from 2014 -> 2026 increases all values by roughly 1/3. In today’s dollars then, 1 GP is about $463. Ish.

I get it, context and all, but it’s very funny to me that you say you got bummed out by couple seconds of advertising for a cancer drug or treatment interrupting your video of bumbling hack frauds shouting about AIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDS. Hell, Mike literally can’t help but laugh at geriatric women describing their health problems.

Are you really so arrogant as to believe that perception of socio-economic class is exclusively an American consideration when it comes to dating?

For what it is worth, I found it thrilling as a snot nosed teen who watched it in class for some reason or another. It suffers a little from its reputation as “the greatest film ever made”, but, it remains a very good character drama. Interest in the history of film and filmmaking will also go a long way towards making the movie compelling.

too unsophisticated to understand The Jesus & Mary Chain like me

Fair point! To be honest, I had a lot of internal conflict about saying anything at all, what with this being a “I don’t care about Star Wars” thread and all. I’ve never let reading the room stop me in the past though lol

Far be it from me to defend most of the goofiness in Star Wars, including its politics, but I don’t think there’s any contradiction in those particular facets of Leia’s character. Being a princess doesn’t exclude her from supporting rebels, nor does it mean she can’t have prejudices. The history of most aristocracies is a bunch of prejudiced nobles supporting various schemes against one another.

The on-set intimacy coordinator gave me the go ahead! They said, in fact, “squish that spider or so help me you’re going to NEED a paid professional to conduct intimacy in this bedroom”.

Friendly cuddles without consent? That’s assault, brother!

In the beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has widely been regarded as a bad move.

Nothing to be done for it.

While that may be true, you also put them in places that should have a comma, but you want more pause; this is why boiling it down to a single aphorism is difficult.

For example, I’ve read most of the comments in this thread, as well as the Oatmeal info-comic that someone linked, and I still don’t know with certainty the semicolon I used above is grammatically appropriate.

I’m speculating, and certainly not a business expert, so heaping handfuls of salt comes with this statement: I think part of the problem that led to this is that each game was published by a different entity. Square published 2016, then put the devs up for sale the following year, citing underperformance. IO buys itself out and becomes independent, but needs capital to get Hitman 2 across the finish line. Enter a publishing deal with Warner Bros. That game proves successful enough that Hitman 3 is able to be self-published.

Considering IO’s concept of this World of Assassination trilogy was always that it would have certain online-only or live servicey features, and I assume that publishers often provide the necessary infrastructure for these things, I wonder if the rotating chair of publishers is to blame for making this process so much more obtuse than it needs to be.

Eyyy, +1 for Pennywise. That’s a band I’ve not thought about in some time.

Do you have other recommendations from their catalog? This is the only track of there’s I think I’ve listened to.

Ah, I’m a bit younger (in fact I don’t believe there’s a song on that list that was released after I was born), but I’m a big history geek, and the evolution of genre is a particular fascination of mine, so I have intentionally sought out the music which influenced bands I liked in high school.

I’m sure I’ve missed out on some killer acts from the era, so hopefully someone who was both alive at the time AND paying attention to the scene will appear and give us both an education.

A tangentially related suggestion for you, if you share my fascination with the context around the art we make (though you are probably well aware if you’re an old-head haha), there’s an EXCELLENT documentary about the LA hc punk scene that was released during its zenith (arguably) in 1981. Several of the bands I mention in that list appear. It is called The Decline of Western Civilization, and the most convincing argument I can make to get people to watch it is that the LAPD chief wrote an op-ed demanding theaters not screen it.