AlthoughThe Coreis largely forgotten now, this 2003 Aaron Eckhart vehicle beat James Cameron’s iconic 2009 blockbusterAvatarto one major sci-fi staple by six years. A lot of earlier movies inspired elements oftheAvatarmovies.South Parkfamously mocked the franchise as little more than a mashup ofDances With WolvesandThe Smurfs, but everything fromThe Last of the MohicanstoJurassic ParktoStar Warshad a role to play in constructing director James Cameron’s immersive fictional world.Avatar: The Way of Water’s endingeven borrows from Cameron’s own hitTitanic.
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One movie that is rarely cited as an inspiration forAvataris 2003’sThe Core. A disaster movie that sits at only 39% onRotten Tomatoes,The Coreisn’t as bad as its ignominious critical reputation implies. Starring Hilary Swank and Aaron Eckhart,The Corefollows a group of scientists who must race against time to set the Earth’s core spinning again before the world’s electromagnetic field falls apart. With a supporting cast including Stanley Tuck, Bruce Greenwood, and DJ Qualls,The Coreis a cheesy but undeniably fun movie with an original premise that beatAvatarto one reference.
The Core Used “Unobtanium” To Describe A Metal Six Years Before Avatar
The Core and Avatar Shared A Scientific Euphemism
Early on inThe Core, the characters mention a substance known as “Unobtanium.”The Core’s Unobtanium is a joke name for a substance that is almost impossible to obtain, and one character sardonically notes that “Its real name has 37 syllables.”Avatarinfamously features the same substance, as noted by theSmithsonian Magazine’s article on the topic. WhileAvatar 3’s plotmight bring back the all-important mineral, Unobtanium took a backseat to Tulkum hunting inAvatar: The Way of Wateras the primary resource extraction that led humans to colonize Pandora. However, it is central toAvatar’s story.
InAvatar, Unobtanium is a superconductor that makes space travel cheaper, thus justifying the wholesale destruction of Pandora and displacement of its people according to the villainous RDA. Meanwhile, in the world ofThe Core, Unobtanium can turn both heat and pressure into usable electrical energy. Both substances are of great value to the main characters, but they serve very different purposes in-universe. In reality, the term “Unobtanium” is often used by real-life scientists to jokingly refer to highly sought-after, but largely unavailable materials. Originally,Avatar’s script noted that “Unobtanium” was used in this colloquial sense, but the clarification was cut.
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The Avatar Franchise Never Explains The Real Name Of “Unobtanium”
Many parodies of theAvatarmovies, such asMad Magazine’s spoof of the series, point to the name “Unobtanium” as one of its silliest elements. However,Avatar’s script did specify that the term wasn’t the real name of the in-universe mineral and was instead merely used as a stand-in.AlthoughAvatar 3’s storycould bring up this clarification, the damage may already be done to the series.Avatarshould ideally have clarified that “Unobtanium” was just a joke name, asThe Coredid years earlier, but the series instead left itself vulnerable to parody by cutting this important explanation.
