Big John

15th May 2013

Avatar (2009)

Question: There is a scene where Parker is telling Grace that the piece of ore he is holding, called "unobtainium", is why they are on Pandora. This same ore was used in the 2003 movie, "The Core", to build the manned drilling machine to bore through Earth, to the core. Was the use of the same ore name in Avatar, done with permission from the earlier movie? Or was it a mistake?

Big John

Chosen answer: The Core didn't originate the name - it's been used since the 50's and even has its own Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unobtainium. There it's described as "any fictional, extremely rare, costly, or impossible material, or (less commonly) device needed to fulfill a given design for a given application."

Jon Sandys

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