what iron jones said above,
No avatars=no movie
Also
No Avatars=All the Na'vi are slowly wiped out by the humans

Nah, it'd be a different movie, it'd just lack the fantasy of being one with the Na'vi. I've seen an EXCELLENT fic run through Avatar without the Avatars, it could have been done really well.


...how on Earth could the the humans wipe out the Na'vi? They are wildly, wildly outnumbered, can't call in reinforcements, and once they run out of ammo, they are scr*wed.

Well, obviously, by destroying Pandora's ecosystem.

In order for them to run out of supplies, they'd need to completely use up all the capacity of the stereolithography plant, which would be very unlikely.
Someone has probably written a fanfic about it, but it still makes it a lot less plausible even if it did work in the story.

The....what, four hundred odd humans at Hell's Gate can't destroy an entire planet/moon's eco-system. And they've only got a limited number of people, the plant itself would need supplies - granted, in the movie they've just been restocked, but if the Na'vi banded together and fought back, the humans probably wouldn't be able to hold out for that long, or else be utterly restricted to being indoors. Ammo and weaponry would rapidly start to run out, as would trained people.

Should an open battle occur, the humans would probably win one, maybe two - after that, they'd just run out of people. It'd take the Na'vi longer than in canon, and with more fatalities, but there is nothing really to stop them kicking the humans off if they really banded together and worked at it . For similar reasons that the humans can't simply reclaim Pandora, as I believe you've argued before.

If the RDA had had sufficient time to prepare (several years maybe) and were truly hell bent on committing a global scale massacre I think they could have. Any species capable of accelerating masses to 0.7c for the purposes of spaceflight could use those same masses as devastating relativistic weapons more powerful than any hydrogen bomb.

And why would they want to do that? In addition, according the extra material, the RDA are banned by the UN from using weapons of mass destruction. And given how big they are? They would have so many people and companies and countries just itching to take them down, so the political repercussions of USING weapons of mass destruction - the point of destroying the entire life on another moon/planet - would be enormous and very probably fatal for the RDA itself.

I never said that they were so inclined, merely that they had the technical capability. Of course, Selfridge was well aware that "killing the indigenous looks bad"

Well actually, the Na'vi DNA taken was combined with Human DNA, resulting in an avatar. Therefore, the avatar is a completely new body (not belonging to anyone else), and as it is part Human, no Na'vi could actually live in it.

Simply, the body is a shell for it's Human counterpart. It's built to be a shell. Therefore, it was never alive by it's own will. And so, the science of Avatars can be argued as completely ethical, at least by the standards of modern science and morals. Of course, the means of extracting that DNA, and the resources needed to create the body may be immoral.

One might say it is spiritually immoral, as in possessing a body. However, the body is Jake's technically (as it used his DNA), and never had a life on it's own to begin with.
In short, I find absolutely nothing unethical with the technology of Avatars.

Heh, I also thought that this was trolling for a second. :P

Imho, I don't see a point in this. As far as I can make out from the movie, the Na'vi don't care, Avatars aren't engineered with higher brain functions, and, as Neytiri explained: "All energy is only borrowed"; so a body is just a body to a Na'vi, and genetic material could be obtained easily from just about anything the Na'vi touch, no dead body needed. So, either way, this argument is irrelevant.

In response to you and the other posts...


The part where Josh/Jake's avatar moves on its own, noted here: [url=http://ruinofdarkness.livejournal.com/675.html[/url] , drew me to this conclusion:
Since the driver and the avatar have years to subconsciously get to know one another, they are eternally tied. Josh/Jake's avatar identifies with Josh/Jake, and it may even know what it was made for in its subconscious. Once it sees Josh/Jake, it calms down. Once Josh/Jake enters into its mind for the first time, Josh/Jake's experiences in the avatar become its experiences, its life. It wouldn't reject Josh/Jake, for since before it was 'born', and since its creation, Josh/Jake has always been a part of it. If you look at it how Mr. Cameron originally wrote it, no, the avatars are not as immoral as you think. It kind of becomes a symbiotic relationship.
The canon avatars, however, are on a different level of immorality, for they never had their own consciousness to begin with, seemingly. I can only gesture that maybe they're simply a result of something similar to the original avatars, albeit they never "awake" on their own, for their purpose keeps them sleeping. Phew...Did this make any sense?

Btw,

Where's that Jake's Avatar POV fanfic at? It sounds interesting.

You linked just to ruinofdarkness's journal, not any post, BTW.

And yeah, that does make sense. But people were still killed in order to create and develop the Avatars WITHOUT having a choice in the matter, which no one seems to be addressing. THAT I would think is inarguably immoral, no matter the debates on the Avatars themselves (although I do still think a bit sus).

And sure! It's an excellent, excellent fic. Come Into The Light, or SelfNotSelf.

Link fixed.
Yes, that is the truth, sadly. The avatars never had a say. They are still lost in the end. :'(

Thanks for the fanfiction link :D


Edit:
Thank you for posting that fanfiction link! It was wonderful...The ending was even, sort of, 'happy'. I hope that's the way it really was >.<

The avatars...and, like I said, the people killed while Dr Lovecraft was perfecting it all. I get the impression they were prisoners sentenced to be executed ("condemned criminals" being the phrase used to describe them), but instead of that he got do to Mad Science on them instead. Not very moral, really. And yet, everyone in the Avatar program has to be okay with using the fruit of said Mad and Cruel Science.

Never, EVER seen that addressed, though, anywhere.

No problem! I love it so very much, so I'm happy to share :) and, yes, I loved the ending.

Maybe they said "if you survive the experiment you get to live" and got them yo volunteer for it.
Also DNA could be retrieved with cheek swabs or blood draws so no na'vi had to be harmed to sequence their DNA, it wouldn't even hurt by then drawing blood could even be painless.
And they don't seem as judgmental and labeling as us I don't think they have concepts of "blasphemy" or "unholy" or any of our "it's evil even if no one gets hurt" stuff

Yes. Definitely right on that. Dr. Lovecraft (literary reference, much?) did some seriously questionable stuff on both worlds. The final result, the whole point really, of the experiment was the half-Na'vi hybrids though.

And yes, I may have been a little hasty and overeager there. Stupidly forgot about the fact you take a gene sample from just a few cells, no death required. Still, I think the whole Avatar making thing is an interesting hypothetical exercise in medical ethics, yes? Start thinking about these issues now before we actually can do it in real life. Since we're on our way to being the godlike aliens. ;P