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I mean, all stories are rehashes of other stories. There are indeed only scant few prototypes that are then embellished, if we boil a given story down to its core elements it only can be about a handful of basic themes like sacrifice, redemption, overcoming, etc. I've never heard anybody compare star wars to...kurosawa, whatever that is. But the Avatar- Pocahontas and Avatar- fern gully parallels are very apparent to a wide segment of the audience. This isnt a coincidence, the themes of these stories are much much closer.I get where you're coming from, but that's too parallel universe for me to give much imaginative energy to, besides which in that universe we almost certainly wouldn't have gotten the Fox series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which is the GOAT dramatic series behind Hannibal for me. I don't want to live in a universe without that show, so I'm fine with how his career played out
Haha, I'm not surprised to hear that. Truly great worldbuilding is commendable. I'm not as obsessed with Game of Thrones as a lot of people, but I get that fanaticism. I think Lord of the Rings and Star Wars are stupid, but I get loving those worlds, too. For my part, I love True Blood and Avatar, but I know plenty of people would/do find those stupid. Certain fictional worlds just hit you, they make you wish they were real. But beyond that sort of imaginative projection, nothing can even compete with Avatar objectively with the insane ambition, imagination, and execution of Pandora. That world is extraordinary.
These criticisms are so ubiquitous that refutations are equally ubiquitous. On the Pocahontas/FernGully complaints, nobody complains about Pocahontas stealing from FernGully, or either one stealing from Dances with Wolves, or any of those stealing from Sydney Pollack's Jeremiah Johnson or David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia or King Vidor's Bird of Paradise...and this is to say nothing of Joseph Campbell pointing out that every "hero's journey" story is one basic story, hence his term "monomyth." And how many people shit on Star Wars for ripping off Kurosawa? Since Avatar is the most financially successful film ever made, people are laser focused with their nitpicks, but it's all hypocritical double standard BS to my mind, as Avatar is more of a James Cameron film than anything else, with closer and deeper connections to his own films like Titanic, The Abyss, and Terminator 2 than anything else.
That said, it's hardly arguable that Avatar is very similar to fern gully, especially. Im not making a big deal out of this, or saying thay this really detracts from the value of the movie, im just saying that what made tbr first movie good was fhe fact that in addition to being a sort of predictable, redone pop culture Hollywood summer blockbuster, it "snuck in' some interesting and important philosophical questions and paradoxes- like how technology simultaneously brings us closer to the world while also distancing us from it. How ideology and loyalty to a cause can generate incredible results, like galactic exploration, but does so at the potential cost of an individuals "soul" (I'd say, more like an individuals philosophical freedom and ability to engage with the world, but this is so deep and important an idea that the word "soul" works, despite the unnecessary religious overtones.
Also, themes of colonialism and environmental destruction i think are well handled in avatar the first. These are strengths of the movie, and take it beyond blockbuster escapism. I've rewatched avatar a few times, and continue to enjoy it.
As for unobtanium, I'll let this guy do the work:
In Defense Of Unobtanium
Unobtanium is a stupid name that proves Avatar is a bad movie, right? Wrong.www.thegamer.com
Yeah, no, I get that. I just think it's a bit too on the nose. The fact that secret weapons engineers used this term doesn't really carry much water except for people who were themselves secret weapons engineers. Inverse of the Pocahontas-avatar similarity, if you were to poll a thousand people, I bet maybe a handful would know that "unobtanium" was a trade term. Therefore, to the viewing audience, it does not carry this connotation. To the audience it sounds like a pseudo mystical term that intends fo connote "valuable and hard to get" in an overly direct way. This is the effect. Again this isn't a huge flaw, but it does stick out to most of the viewing audience, apparently. And arguing that the term has a second life that nobody knew about does precisely nothing to change this natural audience reaction.
Please do tell me. I don't think Im wrong, I'd ve delighted to be informed though. In fact if you can help convince me to give it another shot and/or go see the third, I'd be delighted! Im open to it, in good faith.
To be clear, i said - or tried to - that the essence lacking from the 2nd Avatar was this lack of interesting philosophical themes as described above. Instead, I felt it was more of, "okay, here we have an established world and characters, let's have them go on an adventure" thing. Which was way mlre in line with a summer blockbuster kind of movie. Beyond that, the dreadlocked teenagers yelling "bro" at each other every five minutes, and the fact they just sort ofnmagically revived/cloned characters to construct the plot felt pretty weak - fhs latter being a frustrating element used in the recent starwars franchise movies where they just sort of magically reinvent the elements of previous movies rather than coming up with something new.
Thank you for the exchange, mate. I look forward to hearing your response
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