But, arguably drawing the most ridicule, is good old “Unobtanium,” the ultra-valuable mineral found on Pandora. Why would the MacGuffin that drives the entire plot of this $200 million dollar movie be given a half-assed name that sounds like it took all of 4 seconds to come up with? Was “HardToGetium” never considered? What about “PainInTheButtToMineBecauseOfTheseDamnBlueAliens-ium?”
Well in a shocking twist, it turns out that we’re the jerks, because apparently unobtanium, not only wasn’t created by Cameron, it’s a real term that existed long before the days of Avatar. It was used by actual aeronautical engineers to describe a theoretical ideal material, dating back to at least the ‘50s – although to be fair, the first recorded use of the word did refer to it as “lugubriously-humorous.”
Unobtanium was even defined in 1958’s Interim Glossary of Aero Space Terms as: “A substance having the exact high test properties required for a piece of hardware or other item of use, but not obtainable either because it theoretically cannot exist or because technology is insufficiently advanced to produce it.” No mention of a giant blue cat people or a magical tree though.
There have also been later attempts to graft the name “unobtanium” onto new, groundbreaking materials; so the idea that people in Avatar’s future would casually use the term seems especially plausible. We can’t find any historical justification for that Stanford tank-top, though.
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Thumbnail: 20th Century Studios