[Movie] Avatar (2009) - BZ wants your nub

Originally Posted by sprouticus

Unobtainium is actually a term that's used jokingly in engineering to describe materials that are either rare and impossible to find, or flat-out non-existant. Cameron's cheeky use of it is pretty clever but it comes across poorly in the film. It's like they KNOW it's a ridiculous name so they play it off that way.

I only just read the thread and was going to post this if nobody else had. It's used jokingly in all sorts of contexts to describe that kind of material, often with the properties required for an exotic invention which don't exist in any genuine material.

TV Tropes uses it along with the terms "Phlebotinum" and "Narrativium" to characterise the phoney science often used in film and television scripts. It's the fake science version of "A Wizard Did It"

Unobtainium - Television Tropes & Idioms

So I don't know what to make of the use of it in Avatar, since usually a scriptwriter is expected to come up with his own term for unobtanium (see: Naquadah, Dilithium...) rather than just use the generic name.

Jam it back in, in the dark.