Avatar: The Way of Water | 16 DEC 2022 | Don't worry guys, critics like it

[LouisianaArkansasGeorgia]

What the heck is "hard sci fi" and would that be as opposed to "soft sci fi"? 

[Deep Wang]

7 minutes ago, LouisianaArkansasGeorgia said:

What the heck is "hard sci fi" and would that be as opposed to "soft sci fi"? 

Hard sci-fi means "better than your sci-fi" to certain people as a means of putting themselves and their taste above other fans and what they like.

[Dementeleus]

14 minutes ago, LouisianaArkansasGeorgia said:

What the heck is "hard sci fi" and would that be as opposed to "soft sci fi"? 

 

Broadly speaking, hard sci-fi tries to focus on actual science/physics (extrapolated, of course, if it's in the future), and frequently those stories focus on the technology or science as a primary part of the story. Soft sci-fi isn't as concerned with the plausibility or accuracy of its science and the focus tends to be more on either the social sciences aspect or the human story in question.

 

Like, uh... 2001 is hard sci-fi, BILL & TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE is soft.  

[DMan7]

Just try explaining it to him as harcore porn vs softcore porn. 

[MrGlass2]

Tele sums it up well. One problem is that this distinction doesn't mean much.

13 minutes ago, Telemachos said:

Like, uh... 2001 is hard sci-fi

Clarke of course said: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Edited January 9, 2019 by MrGlass2

[Lothar]

Come on guys. Even 4th grade kid knows that SW science is bullshit. I love science trust me the world JC built you can't deny it. 

Edited January 9, 2019 by Lothar

[Dementeleus]

3 minutes ago, Lothar said:

Come on guys. Even 4th grade kid knows that SW science is bullshit. I love science trust me the world JC built you can't deny it. 

 

But who cares? SW never claimed to be realistic when it comes to science. One type of storytelling isn't automatically superior to the other.

[Deep Wang]

12 minutes ago, Lothar said:

Come on guys. Even 4th grade kid knows that SW science is bullshit. I love science trust me the world JC built you can't deny it. 

I would be willing to bet that there isn't a single sci-fi movie that is 100% realistic in terms of it's depiction of the science therein.  I know some have gotten really close, but movies are movies for a reason and some creative license has to be taken.

[Stewart]

3 minutes ago, Deep Wang said:

I would be willing to bet that there isn't a single sci-fi movie that is 100% realistic in terms of it's depiction of the science therein.  I know some have gotten really close, but movies are movies for a reason and some creative license has to be taken.

i believe what you're looking for are called documentaries

Edited January 9, 2019 by feasby007

[Deep Wang]

1 minute ago, feasby007 said:

i believe what you're looking for are called documentaries

Exactly!  
 

I loved the world that Cameron created and think it's superb and everything look and fits together very nicely in a realistic and believable way.  

[Lothar]

7 minutes ago, Deep Wang said:

I would be willing to bet that there isn't a single sci-fi movie that is 100% realistic in terms of it's depiction of the science therein.  I know some have gotten really close, but movies are movies for a reason and some creative license has to be taken.

tell me what's not realistic in Avatar ? in term of Physics, Chemistry and Bio. 

It's not that I'm doing it on hating or something. But I want to learn more and more.

[Lothar]

23 minutes ago, Telemachos said:

 

But who cares? SW never claimed to be realistic when it comes to science. One type of storytelling isn't automatically superior to the other.

Tele I'm not going to argue with you. Looking at your age I respect you. 

 

[Dementeleus]

14 minutes ago, Lothar said:

tell me what's not realistic in Avatar ? in term of Physics, Chemistry and Bio. 

It's not that I'm doing it on hating or something. But I want to learn more and more.

 

There's no such thing as unobtanium (at least yet discovered). Furthermore, the floating mountains are stretching plausibility even if they were 100% unobtanium (which they aren't)... even Cameron happily owns up to this. He made 'em that way cuz he thinks they're cool (and they are). We don't (as of yet) have any way to cryo-sleep for long-duration space voyages. The concept of Ewya-as-Gaia is neat (and makes sense in the framework of the story) but there's no scientific explanation or indication of a planetary ecosystem that would be that interconnected (the concept is extrapolated from much, much smaller examples here on earth). etc etc

 

Cameron put way more effort into the world-building and plausibility and yes, hard sci-fi aspects of AVATAR than almost any other director or filmmaker, and that's a huge reason why I love it, but so much of even these "realistic" stories come down to scientific handwaving.

Edited January 9, 2019 by Telemachos

[LouisianaArkansasGeorgia]

17 minutes ago, feasby007 said:

i believe what you're looking for are called documentaries

And even documentaries are edited to be shaped into a fully coherent narrative. A truly "realistic" film would probably be raw footage of events as they happen without voiceovers, dramatic music, storybeat cues, or any other form of narrative signposts. 

[IronJimbo]

It's not really a question of what's better science based Sci-fi or fantasy based Sci-fi, that's just a matter of preference.

The actual problem is that two films are the same genre but are vastly different.

 

I think we need better terms to distinguish between an Avatar and a Star Wars.

An argument for science based sci-fi is that the audience intuitively understands that it could be real and helps with immsersion.

[Deep Wang]

4 minutes ago, Lothar said:

tell me what's not realistic in Avatar ? in term of Physics, Chemistry and Bio. 

It's not that I'm doing it on hating or something. But I want to learn more and more.

One google search and guess what I found, an Avatar forum where people were discussing the good/bad science of Avatar!

 

https://forum.learnnavi.org/general-avatar-discussion/bad-and-good-science-in-avatar!/msg472046/?PHPSESSID=836k58n5s2m3p3s4n5mcsu0vc4#msg472046

 

Looks like the actual planet of Pandora is likely impossible.

 

Let's first start off with Pandora. As everybody knows, Pandora orbits Polyphemus, which orbits Alpha Centauri A. Polyphemus is HUGE, HUGE as Jupiter. Pandora is also not small. To have appreciable gravity (read "mass") about 0.8 that of Earth and have a reasonable density, such as that of the Earth, Pandora has to have a big radius (barring the remote possibility that except for a small layer of dust on the top Pandora is made of pure lead).

Large radius and nearby HUGE Polyphemus translates to, you guessed it, enormous tidal forces. Tidal forces come from the difference in gravitational pull on Pandora's near side to Polyphemus and its far side. To clear things up, think about this. Since Pandora's far side is quite a bit farther than the near side to Polyphemus, it will feel a smaller gravitational pull towards Polyphemus. In the frame of reference of Pandora, this creates a constant tidal force acting on the moon.

Which means what? First of all, assuming Pandora has a tectonic plate structure - which is reasonable considering that it has quite Earth-like mountains - huge tidal forces will create constant earthquakes and violent volcano eruptions. Hometree would fall quite soon without the RDA's help. Why would this happen? Well, the tidal force makes Pandora oval-shaped, with the long end pointed towards Polyphemus. However, Pandora seems to rotate quite normally, so this has to mean that its crust deforms constantly, which of course results in earthquakes.

Enormous ocean tides would also be a problem. I guess that the Ikran People of the Eastern Sea would need to use their ikrans to escape flooded territory and fly back when it dries up...though this seems a far more skxawng-ish solution than simply moving inland.
 

There's some back and forth on this subject, but most people seem to agree that it's location, size, gravity et all, would not be conductive to sustaining life because of lots of earthquakes and other bad stuff.

 

 

"The floating mountains of Pandora float apparently because of the strong magnetic field levitating them. A magnetic field strong enough to levitate mountain-sized superconductors (assuming they are pure unobtanium) should be strong enough to suck all of the RDA machinery to the Tree of Souls. The enormous magnetic flux that would be generated by moving would mess up with people's brains and nervous systems, making them a hallucinating skxawng at least and a corpse arcing on itself with 100-amp electric currents at most."

 

Now Cameron knew this specific thing was not very realistic, but guess what, he kept it anyway because it looks cool!

 

These are just two examples I found in 5-10 minutes.

[Deep Wang]

Goddamit @Telemachos

[JB33]

40 minutes ago, Telemachos said:

 

But who cares? SW never claimed to be realistic when it comes to science. One type of storytelling isn't automatically superior to the other.

Exactly! I would go to both Stars and Avatar to watch movies, not to connect said movies as closely to the real world I live in as possible.

 

So Avatar is more scientifically accurate, or plausible. Ok, I don't care. The story in the Star Wars saga is worth 10 times as much as that to me because that's what it is: a STORY!!

[Lothar]

See this is the reason I don't want to argue with anyone. 

You think JC didn't know about the planetary science ?

[IronJimbo]

12 minutes ago, JB33 said:

Exactly! I would go to both Stars and Avatar to watch movies, not to connect said movies as closely to the real world I live in as possible.

 

So Avatar is more scientifically accurate, or plausible. Ok, I don't care. The story in the Star Wars saga is worth 10 times as much as that to me because that's what it is: a STORY!!

First setence is correct, the level of sci-fi you prefer is indeed a preference (obiviously).

 

Weird thing is how we call both Avatar and Star Wars science-fiction, when one is fiction-fiction.