In a recent interview with James Cameron, he spoke about how it is that a good filmmaker will honor the original when making a sequel and he certainly did this with Aliens. (I would imagine that since he holds sequel-makers in such high esteem that he probably isn’t so happy about what has happened with the Terminator movies [T5 is in the making by Cameron by-the-by].) As a sequel, this is lovingly made from the original.

In the original Alien, the sole-survivor of the Nostromo, Warrant Office Ripley is found after floating in space for 57 years, two years after her daughter has died. Upon returning to Earth, she has constant nightmares of the alien that had slaughtered her fellow crew-members and is suspended from work for Weyland-Yutani because company representatives don’t believe her story. They say that aliens haven’t been found on LV-426 where the original alien attacked a Nostromo crew member as a parasite; there have been families living there for years.

Originally, the crew of the Nostromo were diverted to LV-426 to investigate a distress call which turned out to be a warning beacon setup by a derelict ship of unknown origin. Not long after Ripley is relieved of duty, contact is lost with the colonists on LV-426 and Ripley is given an offer to go in with Colonial Marines to find out why; Ripley’s role is that of military advisor having first-hand and up-close dealings with what may be the reason for the lost contact. What ensues is nothing more than a scary roller-coaster ride of suspense, combat and rescue operations.

Sigourney Weaver received her first Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Ripley. Without her emotional display of waking from her nightmares it would not have been believable that she would want to face the monsters that dominate her sleep in real life again. In addition, she knew she was betrayed by Weyland-Yutani as a crew member of the Nostromo and that she would have to trust them again that she would not be expendable. After seeing this movie so many times, I got this deep sense that many of the Marines sent in to rescue the colonists were absolutely expendable and I often wonder if they didn’t mean for Ripley to die as well.

REALISM GRADE > MARINES: B

The lieutenant who was in charge of the platoon of Colonial Marines was prone to freezing and really wasn’t so believable as a graduate of the Naval Academy. But, this fits my theory that many of the Marines sent in were expendable.

While I could give the portrayal of Marines here to be accurate in the sense that the Marine characters like Gorman, Hudson and Apone were either incompetent or too salty for their own good. And, yes, while I am saying that Gorman was incompetent and that Hudson was too salty, I am saying that Apone was too salty as well. For a fairly motivated sergeant, my only explanation as to why he would clearly be wearing an Army Sergeant First Class insignia is that he’s a salty old f***. His demeanor is professional and his talk is tough, but I’m betting that he’s not really with the program. Either way, there is no real explanation for why a Marine is wearing an army rank insignia and so I give this a B for realism.

REALISM GRADE > MONSTERS: A

Cameron really one-upped the original Alien by introducing a new alien into the current lifecycle of egg/facehugger/chestburster/adult alien by creating a queen alien. The queen is the one who lays all the eggs. The queen was alluded to midway through the movie and then appears in the climax of the film in a surprising twist. The alien is 14-feet tall with a very long whip-like tail with sword-like tip. Very nasty. Very remarkable.

REALISM GRADE > ANDROIDS: A

We are introduced to Bishop who prefers the term artificial person to android. We see him again in the Alien universe in the remaining parts of the quadrilogy. He’s top-notch. A very fun part of the movie is when Private Hudson calls out Bishop to “do the thing with the knife” where he takes his K-Bar and puts his hand on the table and stabs the table between the thumb and forefinger, stabs near the pinkie, back to the first position and then back and forth to cover all the places between fingers; because he is an android, he does this remarkably fast. Other Marines had grabbed Hudson’s hand and put Bishop’s hand over it while he did “the thing with the knife” and it was pretty funny watching Hudson yelling while his eyes lit up freaking out. However, Bishop missed slightly; he cut his finger and was bleeding that white gunk that we saw in the first Alien movie when Ash was bashed open. Cameron wrote the script and he is just so smart; he wanted Ripley to discover that there was an android on this mission and so as Bishop sits down with Ripley offering cornbread, he notices the cut and she flips out when she sees what he is bleeding.

REALISM GRADE > TECH: A

Everything about this movie is so well thought out. LV-426 is being terraformed so there is a gigantic atmospheric processor; looks totally real. The combat gear that the Marines use is totally believable. This is Cameron’s first use of loaders which he uses again in Avatar extensively. Cameron got his start because he was a prop and effects guy.

REALISM GRADE > ROBOTS: A+

Even though these may not really be considered robots, there are these auto-targeting machine guns which are called sentry units which the Marines use to establish a perimeter. They were completely missing from the theatrical release by the way. Again, simply top notch. I give this an A+ because sometimes the science fiction in movies is so good that it should be adapted for real life and this is a prime example.

REALISM GRADE > OVERALL: A

This movie rocks for so many reasons. It’s got Oscar-nominated performance, it’s got Oscar-winning special effects and sound effects editing. It’s action-packed. The characters are genuinely motivated and not contrived.

The realism of the movie is just splendid. If you had to watch a science fiction movie for the sheer pleasure of really living in another world, this one can’t disappoint. You may not like the violence in the movie, but there really aren’t many science fiction movies without violence for some reason.

Aliens gets an A.

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Alien (IMDB/Amazon) was the first movie that Ridley Scott made that redefined science fiction; the other, of course, is Blade Runner.

Alien takes place off of LV-426, described as a planetoid only 1200 km wide, where the crew of the ill-fated Nostromo are wakened to respond to an repeating, unknown signal. What they find is that the signal is not a distress call for help, but instead is a warning to stay the heck away. Despite that, crew members had dispatched to the surface to discover the source of the signal, which ended up sucking itself onto the face of one of the crew in a spectacularly scary scene: The Facehugger.

Breaking quarantine, the crew come onto the ship despite objections from probably the smartest crew member in the bunch who becomes the sole survivor. The best and most clear advice came from the ship’s mechanic who said, “Why don’t you guys just freeze him?” about 30 times before we witness one of the most bizarre and classic scenes in sci-fi: The Chestburster.

After the little alien who birthed itself convincingly from the crew member’s chest ran off, it quickly grew in size to over six-feet-tall; and at times walked like a slow-moving robot and other times like a really crafty hide-and-go-seek professional.

REALISM GRADE > WORLDS: A

The world of LV-426 was extremely realistic. Nearly inhospitable, forboding and probably the kind of rock you wouldn’t want to crash on. EVAR

REALISM GRADE > TECH: A

The tech in the movie was really great, but very very old school. The monitors had really crappy old graphics and had a command line interface which was used to speak to Mother, the ship’s computer. And, hey Ridley, I happened to notice that you used some of the graphics in Blade Runner in the Spinner, but I didn’t know this until I got a DVD player.

REALISM GRADE > ANDROIDS: A

One of the most interesting things about the movie is the unsuspecting appearance of an android and he was done very well. Even after watching the movie yesterday again, I must admit that seeing the guts of that android belayed some really well-thought out construction. Unfortunately, the scene where his head was talking was spliced horribly, but an editing fault shouldn’t degrade the science part.

REALISM GRADE > ALIENS: B

This alien, seen in three different stages of a life cycle, had to be one of (if not the first) that really showed you this sort of growth. It was really, really impressive.

But I really have to knock off a point for the robot-walking alien which looked so fake and because that little clip was just so unnecessary to the film. It could have been left out completely and it would have built more suspense to see the alien later on and wouldn’t have avoided my expectation that it would start popping and locking.

REALISM GRADE > OVERALL: A

This film was just really fantastic. It is also one of most suspenseful I’ve ever seen. Watching the interaction between the space-truckers is always fun and makes them human and you feel sorry for them. But it’s hard to guess who will survive until the end and you don’t even know if anyone gets out alive. Very scary, indeed.

I give it an A.

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Regardless, my task here is to take one of my personal favorites to task. Of what science is the science fiction of this?

Let me first start by giving some credence to the author, Ursula K. LeGuin. Among science fiction authors, she is a giant. Not many of her novels have been turned into film or video, but this first effort became the most requested PBS show for re-airing. LeGuin is famous for the “Earthsea” series, “The Left Hand of Darkness” and many others including her own interpretation and telling of the “Tao Te Ching.”

She also politely acknowledges that the title was taken from a mistranslation of the philosophical Taoist texts called the “Inner Chapters” by Chuang Tse; it’s a mistranslation because there were no lathes in China at the time of the writing of “Inner Chapters.” It read, “To let understanding stop at what cannot be understood is a high attainment. Those who cannot do it will be destroyed on the lathe of heaven.”

The major char­ac­ter­is­tics and char­ac­ters of the movie worth review­ing are: REALITY, MONSTERS and ALIENS.

REALISM GRADE > REALITY: A

It’s not often that reality itself is tackled so directly in a film or story, but—just as it says in the Tao Te Ching opening stanzas—reality is created in words and words can be changed just as easily as dreams change. In this reality, reality itself changes based on the dreams of the reluctant hero of this story…long before reluctant heroes became so commonplace.

The central character just wants to stop dreaming because his dreams are pulling reality out from under himself…and he remembers the old reality as firmly as everyone lives the new reality. One night he dreamt his aunt had died and it was simply a fact to everyone after he woke up that she had been dead for some time. Well, if you woke up and killed your aunt, then you might want to stop dreaming as well!

Because he ended up taking drugs to keep from dreaming, he ended up with a dream specialist to see if that would resolve the problem. When the dream specialist witnesses this reality-changing power, he keeps it to himself and plays the main character, George Orr like a fiddle so that eventually he ends up being the head of a well-funded, state-of-the-art dream research facility.

By trying to be constructive, the dream researcher instructs George to dream away racial problems by dreaming everyone is grey-skinned. Extreme rain and extreme heat are dreamed away into pleasant weather that everyone has been experiencing for years.

But, of course, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Haber, the dream researcher, scares George away and soon George dreams of alien attacks. Haber tries to steal the power that George has away from him which “cures” him but leaves Haber in control of reality…which he is unable to control.

Looking at this premise, as impossible as it sounds, it has an appeal to it. If anyone was ever a sucker for the idea that anyone can change the world then this is their movie. If only it were as easy as getting some shut-eye. I can tell you from my own experience that there have been times that I have taken a nap and the world wasn’t the place I thought it was, but it wasn’t because I changed reality; it was because I changed my view of it.

I give this an A.

REALISM GRADE > ALIENS: B

The aliens in this movie were largely big sculptures of something akin to sea turtles that stand about six-feet-tall. They turn out to be very nice fellows who run antique shops or sell hot dogs. They are completely inoffensive or scary and happen to be very, deeply wise.

However, this movie was made on a shoestring budget for PBS in 1980 and so the aliens didn’t really have any moving parts. They get a B.

REALISM GRADE > MONSTERS: A

The only monster in this movie was the antagonist Haber. While I realize that he’s no different than the protagonist, he has become a super-threat by taking on powers that stretch beyond super-powers like flying, breathing fire or whatever. He could dream away every dragon, every fire-arm, every person if he is able to dream the right dream. His motives aren’t pure but are very human. He is a monster in the sense that he is the Frankenstein monster of his own making. He is a Godzilla of his own design that can tear down buildings in the blinking of a rapid-eye-movement. He is an unstoppable force that even reality cannot defeat because he changes reality. The only way to defeat him is to keep him awake and undreaming.

His only failing and his own demise came about because of his own humanity. We don’t know if it was guilt or insanity or his own dreams that made him bound to a wheelchair in some sort of state of dementia, but his own limits defeated himself.

REALISM GRADE > OVERALL: A

Again, though low budget (which has its own charms) with big plastic turtle-shaped aliens, this movie really rocked. There are great reasons it was the most-requested PBS movie to be re-aired.

The DVD quality isn’t so hot because the original film was either missing or was destroyed or damaged and so the DVD was made from a crappy videotaped version. But this is a gem to behold.

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If you’re interested in getting first-hand lectures on time travel as they pertain to LOST, then mozy on over to lostuniversity.org.

The logo for LOST University includes a polar bear; go figure.

If you would rather just read about it, there’s an excellent article on the LA Times site about it and other things LOST.

As a writer, I’d always been advised to do away with too much (if not all) exposition in a story, so if these “classes” are a way of providing exposition to the story’s final season, I really hope that it’s not really needed but is just icing on the cake.

The major char­ac­ter­is­tics and char­ac­ters of the movie worth review­ing are: TIME TRAVEL, PHYSICS, MONSTERS and ALIENS.

REALISM GRADE > TIME TRAVEL: A

Well, it looks like the folks at LOST have got a bunch of scientists on their side, so it’d be tough to tear the teeth out of their telling of the time-travelling track of this thing.

However, there are some interesting aspects of time travel that deserve some scrutiny. For example, this business of having a “constant” (or familiar depending on your background) is something that just seems completely unnecessary. But I suppose it depends on what type of time travel you are doing.

In LOST, there is no traveling at the speed of light to travel time, as you would find in Star Trek where you can travel faster than the speed of light when at warp speed. There seems to be a lot of magnetism and light needed for time travel here. Well, I give up. What’s that about? If I lay on a bed of magnets in the sun, will I get younger?

I guess I’m going to have to visit Lost University to find out what their style of time travel is endorsed.

REALISM GRADE > PHYSICS: B

OK, so you’d really have to make a really big leap to believe that a plane that breaks up pretty high up in the atmosphere is going to have one survivor, but in this show, you must suspend disbelief long enough to accept that a few dozen survivors, including the pilot, survived the crash (only to be eaten by a monster, but I digress).

Other than this basic premise, everything else is pretty airtight, but this gives a B grade for sure.

REALISM GRADE > MONSTERS: A

From Day One on the island, we learn that there is a monster that shakes numerous palm trees at once (as well as shakes the ground a bit), makes a TIKKA-TIKKA-TIKKA sound, can snatch people up into the air like a long whip made of smoke and seems to live in a temple.

It also seems to be able to reprogram people’s minds.

The monsters on LOST are very, very scary and believable. What makes them so believable is that we rely on the reactions of those who are scared to dictate to us how scared we should be. We learn, as mentioned above, that we should be very scared right away.

REALISM GRADE > ALIENS: A

The thing I’m waiting for them to say on LOST is that there are either aliens or pre-history forces (Chariots of the Gods?) which have brought alien technology to this island. As a result, I feel compelled to post an entry on aliens here on this entry. There must be something to this temple and the Egyptian influence and the four-toed statue of a God or protector or something.

I can’t help but watch the monster on the island and think that he’s powered by alien technology. It’s certainly not modern technology that gives the monster the ability to reprogram minds and to function like a smoking-chain-snake.

Either way, the aliens that I believe they will introduce, are subtle and smashing. They get an A for sure.

REALISM GRADE > OVERALL: A

LOST is believable because the characters are believable. Not one of the characters knew that their ties with the island were forged long ago, but they were. They are merely returning to finish some ugly business. With this in mind, the show gets an A overall.

This is very compelling television in its telling through the use of essential flashbacks and foreflashes with these readily identifiable whooshes whisking us to the past or to the future. The title sequence has got to be the shortest, most interesting musically, and least sophisticated visually that I have ever seen; the music is totally reminiscent of “The Lost Day” ambient track by Brian Eno.

Regardless, the characters in the show are easy to cheer and they have depth and humanity. The show plots twist and turn in such ways that you forget that this is about an island that seems to travel in time and space and that these people are just temporary…like flies to be swatted or lost souls to be dispatched to Heaven or Hell.

LOST works on so many levels and is more than just a science fiction show. I recommend it to anyone who likes a nicely layered show with well-drawn characters, mysterious motivations and a very weird reality that looks like our own but is clearly different enough to be attractive.

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George made it possible for people to expect a science fiction movie to break box offices records just the same as Steven Spielberg would redefine the monster movie genre as fertile ground for blockbuster status as well. It was science fiction as entertainment that got Lucas to make Star Wars because as a kid he was glued to the television with enthusiasm to watch science fiction serials like Flash Gordon. Because Fox was making Ape movie after Ape movie, Lucas knew that they would make his movie if anyone would. (And, by the way, what guts to call your movie “Episode IV”? Can you imagine being the studio executive reading the script?)

So how does Star Wars stack up in reality?

The major characteristics and characters of the movie worth reviewing are: PARAPSYCHOLOGY (The Force), TECH, ROBOTS,  ANDROIDS and ALIENS.

REALISM GRADE > PARAPSYCHOLOGY: A

The Force, as Lucas calls it in Star Wars, is both a religion and a means to make things happen. Need to do chill out? Use the Force. Need to blow up history’s most powerful battleship with Lord Vader and company on your six as you fly down a trench to drop bombs into a two-meter exhaust port and you can’t do it the first time? Use The Fore.

It is used to float, fly, fight and crush throats without direct contact. More clinically stated, The Force is a lab full of toys to be studied in the subfields of telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis and apparitions. Why there was no Force pyrokinesis is a mystery to me; didn’t George consider this one?

As far as science goes, the field of parapsychology is the target of much scorn, so it would hardly be very scientific to say that all of this is very realistic. It should get low grades, right? Not so fast.

The purpose of this blog is not to tear to shreds a perfectly good fiction in the name of science; this blog is here to tear to shreds crappy fiction in the name of science when warranted and praise perfectly good fiction as well as praise great science used in fiction (and clarification of fact mentioned in fiction when it’s interesting).

Star Wars has to get an A. It’s really the movie that all others should be judged against. Who would read this blog if we were unwilling to grant artistic license to great science fiction films even if the science is dubious? Of course Star Wars gets an A.

So how can we look at this scientifically? The Star Wars universe is loaded with hundreds (or thousands) of races which represents hundreds if not tens of thousands of worlds. Just having thousands or tens of thousands of worlds with an average population of a  to ten or a hundred billion gives you one trillion to maybe a quadrillion beings, of which, you only need a very tiny fraction to have parapsychological abilities. In that universe, there seem to be more homo sapien-like humanoids who are strong with The Force and there are races which seem to only have one as a representation. Isn’t it just possible that, here on Earth, with only six billion people (a vast majority of which obviously don’t have parapsychological powers) that if there were one or two or three people with these powers, that it is just very unlikely that they would be well-known; perhaps they would be more well-known if we lived in a global society that was less afraid of the unexplainable?

In the Star Wars universe, those who were strong with The Force were identified by the count of midichlorians which are in all living things in that universe and then further trained to develop these super-being talents.

Is it scientifically proveable that with that many beings there aren’t any beings with these kinds of parapsychological talents? No. It’s allowed to stand as valid in that universe by virtue of our inability to prove it’s untrue.

REALISM GRADE > TECH: A–

The technology in Star Wars is pretty basic and straightforward except for one thing.

We can certainly assume that ion drives and laser blasters exist. That’s probably a hundred years from now in our own technology timeline for Earth. But the lightsabers present an interesting problem. Sure, they are like swords or flaming swords or energy swords or whatever you would like to call them. But let’s look for a second at building one.

You have to create something that has a fixed length without wires and just using pure energy. I’m sorry, but unless someone sends me some sort or fictional explanation of this that actually, makes sense, I’m tempted to just give it a B for being less than perfect because of lightsabers.

REALISM GRADE > ROBOTS and ANDROIDS: A

The robots (C-3PO is actually an android) were extremely believable by the way. Very top-notch; very good! Great diversity as well.

REALISM GRADE > WORLDS: A

Tatooine is the first major world setting in Star Wars. It is a desert world with two suns. This certainly makes sense. In addition, the hero of the story lives on a farm with his uncle on this desert world. What kind of farm you may ask? A moisture farm, of course. Well, that shows there wsa some genuine thought put into this. The inhabitants, such as the Sand People, seem very well thought out. Tatooine is coincidentally the home to Jabba the Hut, the self-exile home for Obi-Wan Kinobi and a hangout for Han Solo and Chewbacca. This planet plays a major role in the Star Wars universe as it appears prominently in Episode I which features the Boonta Eve Podrace.

Not much was mentioned about the specifics of Alderaan, the home to Princess Leia, other than the fact that we watch its destruction by the Death Star.

There seem to be no major scientific flaws to these worlds, so they get an A.

REALISM GRADE > ALIENS: A

The aliens in Star Wars are really the result of a very fertile imagination. I can certainly see wookiees on other worlds; tall hairy bear-like guys and gals who yell almost as if howling. I can see many of the creatures that were in the “cantina” scene. These creatures were not created by Jim Henson by the way. They were very impressive. Unlike anyone had ever scene. This was certainly the biggest movie to feature aliens who were having FUN as though no one was watching.

But with the reinsertion of Jabba the Hut into the original Star Wars (Episode IV: A New Hope), I must admit that I’m really skeptical about Jabba. This giant maggot with eyes is someone to be feared? Really? Why? OK, so he has some muscle around him and maybe he has a lot money, but this giant maggot can hardly move; he can’t play cards or use a computer or fly a ship or really do anything that somone who has a lot of power can do. Oh, yeah, sure we could imagine that he has people doing these things for him, but how advanced could his race be? How would little baby Jabba ever grow up to leave his world and be the kingpin of a black market in a dangerous corner of the Star Wars galaxy? He’s got no fingers!

Well, I’m really reviewing the original Star Wars which I saw in the theater a long, long time ago in a state far, far away. The aliens get an A.

REALISM GRADE > OVERALL: A

Sure there was lots of derring-do, swash-buckling (What does that mean anyway?), enormous ships (remember the opening?), unforgettable things like “Death Star,” exotic but real-sounding names of planets and peoples and robots, psychic choke-holds and a projected 3D hologram that looks like a floating TV screen more than anything, but the movie was incredible and spectacular in so many ways. Again, Star Wars is the movie by which all others on this blog are to be judged.

The technology wasn’t perfect, but the aliens were great, The Force is indelibly ingrained into the psyche of science fiction fans, the adventure was told in a way that only a true believer could tell it. Star Wars gets an A.

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The great thing about James Cameron is that if he writes a script that he is going to direct, he makes sure that it is just as bulletproof as possible.

I’ve absolutely loved his treatments of Terminator, T2: Judgment Day, Aliens (adapted from Ridley Scott’s Alien), Titanic and now Avatar.

The fact that I’ve been kicking around this idea of making a blog for this very purpose shows you how inspired I was by this movie.

So let’s get to the analysis. There were several elements of this movie worth covering in terms of how real they are. Marines and aliens are the two main character groups. So here’s the factuality…

The major characteristics and characters of the movie worth reviewing are: MARINES, TECH and ALIENS.

REALISM GRADE > MARINES: A

First, as a Marine veteran, it’s always a real kick to see Marines portrayed accurately in movies. As far as accuracy goes for Marine veterans and other combat veterans of-who-knows-where hired out as mercenaries on a foreign world, JC gets an A.

As far as the main character Jake Sully (portrayed by Sam Worthington) goes, his role as a paraplegic combat Marine veteran turned Marine killer and nemesis, it may seem unlikely, but Cameron puts the joy of living back into the character of Jake by giving him his legs back, an opportunity to be a hero for an exotic beauty (played by Zoe Saldana who also played Uhura on this year’s Star Trek) and an opportunity to save lives from a menace (even if he belonged to the menace itself). It’s quite a character evolution, but it’s believable.

REALISM GRADE > TECH: A

Probably the most important tech in this movie is that of actually having these things called avatars which are these remotely controlled bio-engineered beings. They have a blend of human DNA and the DNA of a person from Navi (which is a very tall cat-like person). This technology is pretty darn unbelievable but this film makes it very convincing in the way it is introduced which is almost immediately and through a very voyeuristic perspective of the main character who is paralyzed and can walk again with the use of the avatar. You can’t help but feel moved by the main character’s experience of walking again rather than being distracted by the unbelievability of the avatar technology. Regardless, it’s completely fantastic…as in fantasy-like tech; really damn amazing. I can’t imagine being someone who is paralyzed and watching this movie.

The equipment that they use is certainly not too futuristic for a film set in 2254 (not 2154 as I had copied from another source). But, it’s probably a realistic fact that when the cost of a bullet or a flying contraption’s motor is limited by budgetary concerns, they may be a bit more high-tech, but certainly not more expensive and thus not state-of-the-art or something you would see in a James Bond film. What else do you expect for grunts at the end of the universe to be packing? And besides, in the Marines we often joke about how our equipment was always the worst quality and since these guys are mercenaries, I can’t imagine that the Corporation spends that much money on their gear and ammo.

Cameron really has an affection for the exoskeletal warrior extensions in the film. I don’t know what got Cameron so interested in turning these hydraulic possibilities into such every-day offerings, but we see the same thing in Aliens and they are simply adapted further in Avatar.

Cameron doesn’t seem too fond of robots or androids as they are largely absent here and in most of his other movies except for the Terminator series. Cameron does have a major android character “Bishop” in Aliens but he is purely borrowed from Alien. These seem to the only real autonomous machines in Cameron’s toolbox other than SkyNet. Is Cameron trying to avoid the clutter of robots and androids found in Star Wars?

UPDATE: On another blog, someone pointed out that if electro-magnetic communication doesn’t work well in a particular location on Pandora that the main character/avatar can’t work either since they work by remote control. That’s an absolutely valid scientific fact.

SECOND UPDATE: Cameron is noted for having made an interesting comment about how it is that Sigourney Weaver’s character treats her human body badly and that she must care more for her avatar’s body than her own.

REALISM GRADE > WORLD: B

The world of Avatar takes place on Pandora, a moon of Polyphemus around the very real star Alpha Centauri. Polyphemus and Pandora are not real bodies. I didn’t know this, but the real Alpha Centauri is a binary star that is part of a triple-star group. There are no confirmed planets around it, but there is a suspicion that there are and that there could be life-bearing planets. Unfortunately, according to Wikipedia, the likelihood of a gas giant (depicted as Polyphemus) is not likely.

While it’s easy to say that Pandora is NOT a world that can be believed with floating mountains and a bioluminescent access to ancestors at the heart of the plot, the floating mountains are really not explained (though they probably will be in the director’s cut as is often the case with many interesting references made in the theatrical release for Cameron’s movies; I think we will find in the director’s cut that the “unobtainium” is an anti-gravity material which is why it is so expensive and hard to find–and it explains floating mountains and electromagnetic disruptions) while the “bioluminescent access” element is explained to a point. The explanation of the “bioluminescent access” alone is certainly novel and is a more clinical explanation for how native people’s here have figuratively and somewhat literally related to Nature; so, that’s interesting enough. Scientific? Metaphysical? Holistic? Truthful? Well, why not? There have been plenty of these kinds of arenas in science fiction where the metaphysical have become scientific fact inside a fictional telling, so since there isn’t enough proof AGAINST it, it’s allowed.

But the floating mountains without a more solid explanation bring the grade to a B.

UPDATE: Also, an explanation by Cameron himself of the floating mountains can be found at Studio 360. He does explain that just like the small sample of “unobtainium” floating on a dish that these mountains also float for the same reason.Also here:

REALISM GRADE > ALIENS: A

While we must accept in science fiction the presence of aliens as a distinct scientific possibility, the question is to how believable they are. These aliens in their world are certainly worthy of praise: they are a great template for anyone looking at how to fictionally design and illustrate an alien world. The ecosystem they live in, the diversity of species and the flora and fauna are just amazing.

Cameron is exemplary at this. He always has been. If you look at how he took the alien from the movie Alien and then adapted it into a more and more advanced alien hive with a queen, you know what I am talking about.

REALISM GRADE > OVERALL: A

Overall, the movie is exemplary in many fashions. It should be acknowledged that Cameron has more personal and first-hand experience with exotic life forms than most non-scientists with his documentary/opinion piece Aliens of the Deep. If you’ve seen it, you know what I mean. I’m sure that his portrayal of Pandora was deeply influenced by his own encounters with Earth’s extremophile aliens.

This movie will be hailed for years as on-par with Star Wars as one of the best science fiction movies ever.

UPDATE: First, this movie has passed the $1 billion mark in terms of box office and this is only a couple weeks into its release. It is not expected to bypass Cameron’s other movie which is the biggest box office winner in history. It’s interesting to note that Cameron has replaced George Lucas and Steven Spielberg as box office moguls. Looking down the road, the only other filmmaker who seems poised to do this is JJ Abrams. Will there ever be anyone who can make a movie bigger than Titanic?

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