I don’t get to movie theaters much. But as part of the new family plan to enjoy ourselves on Christmas, I went to see Avatar in 3D with a bunch of relatives. I went in intending to dislike it, and came out having thoroughly enjoyed myself. So much for my hipsterish snobbery.
What’s interesting to me is how the movie is simultaneously so fresh and so derivative. Avatar’s freshness is in its breathtaking visuals, all the technogeekery of its making. It’s derivative in its plot, setting, characters, and all other non-technical content. It’s practically a mashup in movie form. In the spirit of my blog post parsing out all the sources of Halo, I figured I’d do the same for this movie. Here are some of the most obvious sources, similarities and resonances (There are some spoilers within, but the plot of this movie is totally predictable and the least interesting thing about it, so feel free to read if you’re planning to go see it.)
The plots are extremely similar. Both are racially problematic, as thoughtfully outlined by io9.
Pocahantas
Not the historical Pocahantas, the Disney version. From Ponyponyshow’s Tumblr, click for full-sized.
Both Dances With Wolves and Avatar descend from the Pocahantas myth. I haven’t seen the Disney version, but Terrence Malick did a lovely job of it in The New World. That movie, Dances With Wolves and Avatar all share a cast member, Wes Studi.
Like the album covers he did for Yes.
Avatar is especially influenced by Roger Dean’s thing for floating islands.
The ever-helpful io9 has many more examples.
The whole virtual body thing naturally didn’t start with the Matrix, but that’s what I kept thinking of. The “avatar” disambiguation page on wikipedia lists a zillion things with that name, the two most culturally significant being the original word from Hinduism and the ubiquitous computing concept. Unlike in the Matrix, in Avatar, the virtual bodies are real. Except that they really aren’t, they only exist as ones and zeros. Layers within layers! Who says Hollywood action movies are dumb?
James Cameron has a fetishistic thing with asphyxiation, relating to his love of near-death diving experiences – see the New Yorker profile for some gruesome details.
Sigourney Weaver! Robotic exoskeletons!
Sexy blue women
See this article on io9 about the phenomenon.
Praise be to wikipedia. How else would I know that “unobtainium” is a fifty-year-old word?
Every Vietnam movie
All that helicopter-based combat in a jungle setting. A rich high-tech civilization being defeated by a less rich, lower-tech one with home field advantage.
Entire planet as organism
Pandora’s planetwide nervous system descends from the Gaia hypothesis. There’s an Asimov novel called Nemesis where a planet’s bacterial life all turn out to be a single networked superorganism that communicates telepathically with human visitors. The best “planet as organism” is the South Park episode “Lice Capades” where the sentient world is Clyde’s scalp.
Outing myself as a real dork here, but so Anne McCaffrey wrote a whole series of books about riding giant flying reptiles. As I recall, the riders communicated telepathically with them.
Haven’t seen it myself, but one of my Twitter buddies pointed it out. Tone Loc is in it!
My point here is not that James Cameron is a bad artist for being so derivative. His work has its problems, what with the racial stereotyping and clunky dialog and broadness of stroke. But he’s still a good artist. His referencing, borrowing and outright quotation makes his work stronger. Any quotes or sources I missed? As usual, kindly hit the comments.