As a follow-up to my previous review of Avatar, where I criticized the limits of 3D, provided a solution to post-Avatar depression, and praised the film as a model for successful military defense strategy in the future, there is one more item I want to address. That is, the films originality.
In winning multiple golden globes the other night, many praised the film for its daring originality, and how it reinvented what is possible in a movie-going experience. Whether the movie is great or not is one question, but on the issue of originality, more analysis is required. Let’s take a look at the film’s core premise:
A magical world populated with blue people who live in a secret, special place, is threatened by evil humans who want to do them harm for nefarious reasons.
Original? Or did I just perfectly describe the plot to the popular cartoon series, THE SMURFS? Yes, while some are suggesting Cameron lifted inspiration from some old sci-fi books, the truth is much more damaging, and obvious.
It doesn’t take much to see the blatant ways in which Cameron ripped off this classic fairy tale, making only minor cosmetic changes (the Navi are a lot bigger than the Smurfs, and Gargamel rarely flew in a missile launching, fighter jet, except, of course, for in the ill-advised final season where the producers tried to up the ante by giving Gargamel access to nuclear weapons. Incidentally, this paralleled heightened cold war tensions between the US and Soviet Union and many, to this day, read the cartoon as largely anti-Soviet propaganda, with Gargamel only a veiled caricature of former Soviet Premier Alexi Kosygin).
In the end, this is not the first time hit cartoons have been transformed into mega block-busters. In fact, Cameron’s previous mega-hit Titanic is largely understood as a re-imagination of the cartoon, The Snorks, a cartoon Cameron has called “the most important artistic achievement of the last 60 years.”
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