The article titled “The Avatar That Almost Was” (which I linked in my original post) was my inspiration for this blog post. I feel like Cameron had a lot of originality and depth in the first Avatar script that got lost in the interest of making a “safer” Hollywood movie. If you want to know what stirred up a lot of my thought processes, read that article.

-An invading, technologically advanced force is engaged in a war with the natives, who embody the idea of the noble savage.
-The protagonist is one of the soldiers. He gets to know the natives, and falls in love with their culture. Also their women. (Well, usually only one woman.)
-The soldier’s commanding officer is an asshole who has no qualms about wiping out the natives.
-The natives’ fiercest warrior doesn’t trust the protagonist’s motives. He’s probably also in love with the woman.
-The protagonist learns the natives’ ways, and realizes that their culture and way of life need to be protected.
-He joins up with them, and helps them fight off the invaders.

It’s a story as old as time.)

Thats is all half true, the story is familiar, in a god way IMO but the four points you make are still too broad for me to feel guilty for loving the story as much as any other aspect of Avatar. You could take a million movies like Avatar and fight over which one is the best and most original and which one Avatar “stole” the most from but what few consider is maybe Cameron wanted to use this story. Maybe it was his choice to use a story that was immersive. I say this because The hero, Jake, is our avatar through the movie. We feel, learn, react, discover, and root for the right team whenever he does. So having him “go native” gets us steeped in the world in the way that worked the best for his movie IMO. The pocahontas riff needs to stop. The script comparison is bullshit. I re-watched pocahontas and all i can say is I still didnt give a damn about that movie and got lost in the differences, which sadly few have done >:[ That picture you have of the script shouldnt exist. Its merely a sign of how cynical, closed minded, ignorant, hypocrytical, pretentious, and self richeous kids are these days. The internet has been poison for this Incredible movie and it frustrates me beyond belief that people say they hate avatar for the story without having one intelliget reson to say why. If Star Wars was made in this decade, people would tear that movie to shreds with similar hateful complaints. I know you mean well and you have some good points, but i think all this finger pointing is crazy so im willing do defend Avatars originality.

One social criticism that I do think holds some water is that Avatar is a “White Messiah” type of movie, where the white man becomes the leader and savior of a “lesser” people. I’m not saying this means James Cameron is a racist, just that he was following a long-established formula which has tinges of racism in it.

theothergardener: You have a good point, and Avatar did put enough of a different spin on the formula that it didn’t bug me too much as I watched it. To a certain extent, all modern stories are simply putting new spins on old formulas, and finding new combinations of old ideas. But I do wish Avatar had stretched a little more, particularly with the characters, to come up with something a little less predictable.

That’s sort of what it comes down for me: if the movie is following the formula close enough that it’s predictable, then it’s following it too closely.

When I first saw the movie, I didn’t think of Pocahontus, but I did think of the settlers coming to America and pushing the Indianans off their land for gold.

I heard some interesting criticism on the new about how these people actually found the movie offensive because the movie is apparently a protest for the war and shows Americans doing what the terrorists did to the Word Trade Center.

So, THANK YOU for doing research and thinking before you spoke because people like that ruin everything. They didn’t bother to check that “Avatar” was written in 1994 and that Cameron had put it in a drawer waiting for technology to catch up.

Again, thank you for not being dumb and saying something worth saying. I too hope the next Avatar movie is more original in story line, but at the same time I am hoping to keep the same characters.