opening pandora's box

Avatar is absolutely gorgeous and well worth seeing with the extra dimension. I didn't object to the storyline as much as some people seem to have. Yes, the Unobtainium was a Macguffin, which really had to be destructively mined to play it's part in the movie. Yes, the aliens were pretty and cute, and they even got away by successfully explaining their Noble Savage archetype. But the story did hew quite closely to several old favourite SF stories, which I won't mention here to avoid spoilers, albiet with some not-so-subtle moralizing. [Although it did make me want to see a certain move starring the character of Jason dinAlt.] But my hallmark is that it would be very easy to create the world for an RPG campaign. Although in filling out the backstory I'd probably increase the separation between the Science Team and the Mining Company, perhaps by having the Science team existing well before the miners got there. Of course you'd have to ignore things like the magnetosphere of the gas giant Pandora is in orbit around, Roche limits, and similar stuff that gets in the way of good visuals. They even had an explanation for the dragons ikran (a combination of lower gravity and carbon fibre reinforcement of the wing structure). Although the home tree was a bit too large for visual effect (it should have been more a part of the forestscape). But apart from theses points it does begin to work. [I think a lot of the nay-sayers were, as the people with whom I saw the movie, affected by the moralizing in a good way, and trying to make up excuses as to why humans wouldn't do that sort of thing, but being unable to deny history.]