It was a rock basically named "this is a valuable plot device, you must have it because this is a movie".

I wanted an excuse for why the (dead) planet earth wanted it...

It floats? o3o;

they coulda stole those flaoting mountians >:|

Yes, that would be awesome. o3o

But that means they didn't need to explode the freaking tree DX
I don't give a shit about those catpeople, but Tei love Trees... and ti was hyooge, it'd been growing forever ;3;

I like trees too. D:

The rock is the MacGuffin of the story. It's the reason why they are in the planet in the first place, and nobody in the audience cares about it. Thanks to it, the plot can follow.

but I wanna know! Why the fuck is this rock special enough to try and kill/displace thousands of people!

Why did they say Earth was barren and brown? What happened there? DX

Well, I asume we destroyed all that was left. It's the year 2145, lots of things could have happened, here go a couple of theories:

-We destroyed all the rainforests and mined every single mountain and ore settlement.
-We have to depend on some air generators that keep the atmosphere breathable.
-Those generators work with unobtanium (the mineral from the movie).
-We go to this planet to mine it, and in the process kill everything that passes by.

Moral of the story: Agent Smith in "The Matrix" was right. We are a disease, a plague, the cancer of this planet. We are the bad guys. We have always been the bad guys.

Twelve Monkeys > Terminator 1/2/3 > Megaman X > WALL-E > Terminator 4 > Matrix > Avatar. Thats the timeline flowchart. Missing something between Matrix and Avatar, though :/

Mass Effect maybe? XD!!!

I say, Terminator 4 should be right after Terminator 1,2,3. John Connor didn't live long enough to meet Wall·E.

Didnt have to meet him, ship took off, is all~ x3 Maybe wall-e and T4 should switch, dunno~

Twelve Monkeys > Terminator 1/2/3 > Megaman X > WALL-E > Terminator 4 > Matrix > Avatar > The Core

The Unobtainium is being used to line the drill tank they use to get to the center of the earth to get the core spinning again (they called it that in that movie too)

Twelve Monkeys > Terminator 1/2/3 > Megaman X > WALL-E > Terminator 4 > Matrix > Avatar. Thats the timeline flowchart. Missing something between Matrix and Avatar, though :/

I thought Wall-E took place in 28??...or are you counting from when everyone evacuated in 21??

Also yes, unobtainium, I thought, was supposed to be either a precious metal (like gold of the future, or something) or more likely, a source of energy.

Yeah, they evacuated in 21XX, shortly after/before the mavericks went nuts~!

I really wish they gave some BS on why it was needed. just a "It's a fuel for the power reactors, and if we don't get any earth will plunge into darkness" would have been nice

But you see, if it was a fuel for power reactors to keep the Earth alive somehow, then that would garner a little sympathy for the corporation and/or military. And we most certainly can't have THAT!

I haven't seen it. Not sure if want.

Also: TEI IS A HIPPIE TREE HUGER!

Fuck you, trees are awesome!

they make air!

and paper, you whore!

and fruit

It's a product of Slaanesh: by the time all the eye-meltingly fantastic colors and heart-pureeing music is done with you, you're not supposed to realize that it's a big pile of discordant nonsense. It's OH MY GOD SO PRETTY THAT I HAVE TO GET IMPLANTS THAT SEND ELECTRICAL PULSES INTO MY BRAIN TO EVER FEEL THIS HAPPY AGAIN!

.... God i wish I was exaggerating that. Humans scare me.

Its a rock.. I'm not sure if you make stuff out of it, burn it.. or shove it up their own asses, but it was worth money, and thats what the bad guys are always after.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p.....Main/MacGuffin
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p.....in/Unobtainium
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p.....iedPhlebotinum (mostly to explain the prior)

Those are the only 3 you need to bone up on. I wouldn't advise clicking elsewhere on that website, as it WILL SUCK OUT YOUR SOUL. And atleast 4 hours of your life, rather you want to or not. (even retrieving this information for YOU has doomed ME... I ended up opening 3 unrelated articles in the process and will be returning them once finished here. So be wary)

Basically put - they never explain what it is/what it does because ultimately it doesn't matter. It's just a plot device. The same with the earth. They don't really know, they don't care.

... well, I do have one more that might help you, personally, with the problem -

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p.....in/MST3KMantra

Eh. "macguffin" doesn't mean "pointless". Usually their value is obvious -- gold, uranium, priceless art, a giant freakin' diamond, etc. What makes it a macguffin is that it won't be used for anything in the context of the movie and could therefore easily swapped for anything else worth fighting over. The times the macguffin isn't revealed are usually things like mysteries and spy thrillers.

What makes it a macguffin is that it won't be used for anything in the context of the movie and could therefore easily swapped for anything else worth fighting over.

... and it doesn't fall into this context... how? It could be gold under the tree, or a captive, or a giant booger. A MacGuffin's value doesn't have to be obvious, it just isn't ever useful knowledge.

Like I said, a macguffin doesn't HAVE to be useless, and usually isn't.

Unlike Chekhovs Gun, it actually serves no further purpose

If you're trying to tell me that a diamond, or the Mona Lisa has some kind of OBVIOUS valve, even to someone who has NO IDEA what diamonds or the Mona Lisa is...

If you're reading tvtropes, you also read that lots of examples of the macguffin are just those things. If they don't use it in the movie then it's easily substitutable hence a macguffin.

Alright. I've never seen Avatar. Sue me, but what did they USE Unobtainium for?

Late response, didn't see you two talking.

In the movie, hey never use unobtanium. period. they talk about it, mention its value, how its worth it to kill few thousand catgirls, hen nothing.