Going beyond the obvious comparisons with "Ferngully" and "Dances with Wolves"
By now many of you have seen James Cameron's epic "Avatar" and marveled at its breakthrough 3D immersion technology. Visually, the movie is beyond breathtaking. Perhaps it can even be compared to the advent of widescreen in movie history.
Plot-wise, however, it is a simple, old-fashioned and perhaps overly familiar adventure, bringing to mind a range of stories from "Pocahontas" to Miyazaki's "Nausicaa" and "Princess Mononoke". Some see this as a drawback, others praise the straightforward approach to story-telling and dialogue - after all, it's one less thing to distract you from the awesome spectacle that unfolds on the screen.
"Yes, it is predictable in a way that roller coaster ride is predictable", says one reviewer. Likewise, it's even possible that the main character was intentionally made somewhat bland and toned down in personality, so that any viewer could identify with the main hero - seamlessly inhabiting his "avatar" to explore the glorious new world of Pandora.
It is not our intention to argue how and if the plot of "Avatar" could've been made better or more original. After all, it is an old-fashioned fairytale; a personal dream of maestro James Cameron many decades in the making.
Instead, we are going to list some possible influences from obscure and even forgotten classic science fiction sources that came to our mind while watching "Avatar" - there is no telling if James Cameron read any of them or was influenced by any particular tradition, but it was a good fun to find out and remember the jolly good reads that they are (see if you can remember any of the stories mentioned below, or if you can think of other ones):
1. Robert F. Young - "To Fell a Tree". First published in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July 1959, this obscure and rarely reprinted novella is perhaps the closest to the plot of "Avatar".
A giant tree sacred to humanoid natives razed to the ground by the greedy, crazed human military outfit - the parallels are too many to recount here. Robert F. Young's prose is powerful and efficient, and the ending evokes similar emotional response to that of "Avatar". It is also a criminally under-rated piece of fiction - we can only rejoice that "Avatar" brings it to life to beautifully - but it's also sad to see top-notch science fiction stories by Robert F. Young remain out of print and uncredited for so many years.
The idea of "projected consciousness" into the bodies of natives on hostile planets was also explored at length in classic science fiction. Here are a few examples:
2. Poul Anderson - "Call Me Joe" First published in Astounding Science Fiction in April, 1957. Read more detailed analysis here.
"Like Avatar, Call Me Joe centers on a paraplegic — Ed Anglesey — who telepathically connects with an artificially created life form in order to explore a harsh planet (in this case, Jupiter). Anglesey, like "Avatar"'s Jake Sully, revels in the freedom and strength of his artificially created body, battles predators on the surface of Jupiter, and gradually goes native as he spends more time connected to his artificial body."
3. Ben Bova - "The Winds of Altair" First published as a novel in 1973. Six-legged beasties, remote-control "avatars", greedy terraforming humans.
"The classic SciFi novel tells the story of humans trying to terraform the planet of Altair IV, where they cannot breath the air. The natives of this planet are a cat-like race and humans are able to transfer their minds into these cats in order to explore the planet safely. Throughout the course of the novel, the main character inhabits the body of one of these cats (just like in Avatar) and grows to side with the natives against the Military in the story." (source)
4. Clifford Simak - "Desertion" First published in November 1944 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Same idea: human research team on the surface of a hostile planet needs to inhabit "avatar" bodies more suitable to environment. One small problem - those who were sent did not come back, but "deserted" and remained behind, choosing a more liberating alien culture.
Another work very similar in plot and feel is actually an award-winning piece by a well-known writer:
5. Ursula K. Le Guin - "The Word for World is Forest" (more info). Published back in 1972, in Again, Dangerous Visions, it was even a winner of the 1973 Hugo Award for Best Novella.
Similarities? Well, how about a forested planet with the deeply "connected" natives, a human military raid on a huge tree-city and a subsequent retaliation of natives... some scenes seem incredibly familiar, even though Le Guin plot is markedly deeper and more sophisticated. We highly recommend seeking out this book if you thought the plot of "Avatar" was one-dimensional - it should fill in all the details you would ever need.
Other visual and atmospheric clues (no similarities with the plot):
6. Harry Harrison - "Deathworld" First published in Astounding Science Fiction, January-March 1960. A militaristic gung-ho colonization with disregard for complexities of native life. Top-notch depiction of tough space marines as only Harrison can do it. Extremely hostile life-forms populate that planet: Avatar's quote "everything that crawls, flies or squats out there... will want to kill you" seems right at home with "Deathworld". Highly recommended as a great adventure read.
7. Some other wonderful examples from the Golden Age of Science Fiction also come to mind: "Exploration Team" by Murray Leinster; hilarious interactions between human military colonization force and natives in various stories by Eric Frank Russell ("...And Then There Were None", "Somewhere a Voice", etc.) Various jungle planet environments were nicely explored by Robert A. Heinlein in his juvenile-fiction novels, and also in Bob Shaw's "Who Goes There?".
(on the right - Magazine of F&SF with Robert F. Young's novella "To Fell a Tree")
8. Anne McCaffrey - "The Dragonriders of Pern" series. This is an obvious allusion to exhilarating sequences of taming and riding on dragons - very analogous to the thrilling winged-beast taming in "Avatar".
9. Na'vi - Dark Elves, anyone? Or if you'd like, "Elfquest" (more info). A cult comic series started in 1978. There are very broad visual similarities, but I can't stop thinking of dark elves when I look at na'vi ways and romance.
10. The interior and exterior views of the spaceship which brings Jake Sully to Pandora reminds me of Alastair Reynolds "Revelation Space" light-hugger ships (significantly scaled down, of course). The opening sequence can easily serve as an opening for hypothetical "Chasm City" movie, for example. The flying mountains and islands are also a feature of Alastair Reynolds great story "Minla's Flowers".
So here is a brief list of possible influences on visual creation of "Avatar" and examples of classic science fiction that elaborate on the (very basic) "Avatar" plot. Let us know of other similarities you've noticed - after all, just like the case with "Star Wars" we are witnessing the birth of yet another mythology, and it is only proper that we should honor the original sources of this particular science fiction tradition.
For more details on Pandora's gorgeous world visit Pandorapedia site.
BONUS: do you remember the wonderful tiny helicopter-like creature that lit up the night on Pandora? It turns out to be the design of Leonardo da Vinci, no less:
Piers Anthony's "Viscous Circle" (1982) features our hero transplanting his mind into a native's body, with the plan being to help despoil their planet, but eventually he goes native and helps them resist the humans.
I went and saw Avatar last night: a gorgeous visual feast and I was impressed by how seamlessly the 3D elements cohered into the narrative: technology that instantly becomes intuitive is usually technology that will augment one's experience immeasurably (think of how intuitive the internet is, and how quickly we've come to assimilate it into our daily experience!).
I think a polarised film over a television screen will be the next step - we'll lose the hokey glasses because the screen 'wears' it forus.
As a writer, Cameron is an excellent director. 'Come to papa'. REALLY, James? Very chiched and banal dialogue. I nearly burst out laughing a few times. I support the simple plot as outlined in the post, but the dialogue borders on the ridiculous.
And army robots with combat knives?! Where's a corncob pipe for when the day's pillaging is done?
H. Beam Piper's "Little Fuzzy" was brought to mind. Does a native alien race have the right to control the resources of its own planet over the machinations of a greedy human corporation? ("Little Fuzzy" is available at Project Gutenberg)
Anne McCaffrey also wrote the Powers That Be series, about a damaged ex-soldier sent to a self-aware planet with an intricately inter-linked ecosystem, to get friendly with the residents as the military's woman-on-the-inside: she ends up going native, defending the planet from the industrial-military complex, and being healed.
A withdrawn forest people from whom humans want something and are prepared to take it by force, then begin transformations from humans into forest people, sacred trees, sacred shamans, exotic relationships between people and animals, clash of modern vs medieval weapons and intelligent exotic animals. Finally, a populations in tune with all nature and the trees sheltering and servicing as the source and the network of that knowledge. Andre Norton: Judgement on Janus.
The Themes and archetypes used in Avatar permeate literature and transcend culture and have been told countless times eg Eden lost through knowledge(technology), enlightenment through nature as apposed to the establishment, the clash of mans instincts with cold modern reality(disillusionment) and the story of the man how never dreams but at the same time dreams to much. anyone who sees something as being completely original has not done their research, and anyone who faults this movie for it's similarity to dances with wolves or any other of the countless stories, myths, and legends that employ the same premise or characters is short sighted. Any artist will tell you that everyone has an influence. some say it goes a little deeper then that. arising form our shared experiences(as we are all human this hardly seems surprising) we have a sort of collective unconsious ...Hm that sounds familare as well.
Thank you Joseph Campbell
anyone who says it is to simple a plot needs to do more thinking and less talking.
Not only is Deathworld available in print for free since it is in the public domain, but you can get an audiobook version for free from LibriVox.org as well. It's a halfway decent reading too.
OP:
I disagree with the statement that Deathworld has only visual and atmospheric clue and no similarities with the overall plot. In the big picture(tm), it is quite compatible with the plot of Avatar. It is only the time scale of the overall history of Pyrrah that differs with the plot of the movie. The war between the planet and the humans has been going on for 300 years. In the end of Deathworld, the planet's natives do mount a renewed and cooperative full-spectrum counterattack on the human base aided by humans that have "gone native." The overall plot theme is the same in the end.
This is hardly a suprise: not that I've seen every single one of his movies, but James Cameron is not exactly known for the originality of his plots. The broad outline of Terminator is identical with that of the 1966 Doctor Who serial "The War Machines." Titanic is history with a generic tragic love story thrown in. Et cetera.
Well, since people seem to be aware of Deathworld , let me weigh in and say that to characterize the humans as "space marines" is simply wrong. In fact, the colonists have rather evolved along with the native flora and fauna, adapting to heavier gravity and so forth. They aren't and never have been "space marines."
Manta's Gift by Zahn employs the device of a handicapped man used to get inside the body of a native (stingray-like creatures in Jupiter's atmosphere.) They aren't avatars— his brain is actually grafted into an embryo, with the permission of the natives— but it's got its similarities.
carson: A being appears in the sky, a young woman with no sex life, an angry 'king' sending his soldier to kill innocents, looking for the one who will overthrow 'him', the being tries to calm the woman, telling her she will bare humanity's savior with the initials 'JC', they go on the run the good guys win.
There were several scenes in Avatar that seemed like a ripoff of Aliens with Sigourney Weaver. And then later there was some music that seemed identical to music used in Aliens.
I remember the first time I encountered the "telepresence concept", it was as a kid in the 60s with the juvenile sci fi book ROBOTS OF SATURN (great memories). The three young heroes encounter a hut on a moon of Saturn, in this hut are two guys apparently sitting unconscious with electrical contacts on their foreheads. It turns out they were remotely controlling/experiencing large and powerful robot bodies elsewhere on the small moon. Cool stuff!
Anne McCaffrey, mentioned a couple of times above, also has a section in the early novel "The Ship Who Sang."
The titular ship takes a crew of actors to a planet highly inhospitable to human life. Once there, they project into alien "envelopes" in order to perform Hamlet for the aliens.
Several of the actors become too wrapped up in the sensations provided by the envelopes and "go native."
Without naming a particular title, I thought the whole film was redolent of great sci-fi/adventure Franco-Belgian bande dessinée (comic strips) of the past 50 years. Whereas Americans were fascinated by superheroes in long underwear, Enuropeans were following tha dventures of (1) "good savages" like Timour and Rohan ans (2) space explorers like the ones depicted by Moebius (and republished in the US by "Heavy Metal"). The same inspiration informs the recent movie "10,000 BC" - a flop in the US, a great success everywhere else.
I second, or third, or whatever, the artistic links with Roger Dean's paintings & designs. (band Yes covers but also other stuff) I was surprised not to see him in the credits.
The special breathing organs on the 'dragons' immediately called to mind the 'superchargers' on the Ythrians from Poul Anderson's "Earth Book of Stormgate". I don't recall anything about it being mentioned in the dialog, but some auxiliary breathing system would be important (as Anderson made clear) for flying creatures of that size. Recent work on pterosaurs indicates that our own 'flying dragons' found a different solution to the problem.
In "The Stone God Awakens", a less known novel by Philip José Farmer, the main organism in a future Earth is a huge tree, that developed connections with all the other trees in the world, just like a mainframe computer with dumb terminals. It is a book from 1970.
I enjoyed that Cameron pulled ideas from so many sources (intentional or not) to create "Avatar". Thanks for citing so many. I haven't seen Terry Brook's "Tanequil" mentioned here for its parallel to sentient trees.
I noticed similarities between Avatar and an old HG Wells book I once read, I think it was called "A Dream of Armageddon", where a man was living two lives by being a soldier in the future while he was asleep and "dreaming" in the real world and vice versa. He eventually swapped over as the dreams got more real and exciting and real life became more vague and boring to him, and ended living in the world which was originally just his future dream "avatar". This was a great story, as is avatar. Loved the movie
The guy who mentioend Roger Dean further up is right on--those floating landmasses and arches are right off Yes album covers, and even the dragon-ish things are very similar to some of his work (I'm thinking most specifically about that bland orchestral to Pink Floyd that came out in the mid-to-late-90s).
You know the story. The dialogue is clunky ( i loled in the cinema ) and yet I found this film to be almost transcendental. Don't try and think while you watch it. Put your hood up and just be inside it.
You know, it also reminds me of the movie The Mission, only in that movie, it turns our much worse for the natives. I still can't listen to Adagio for Strings without tearing up...
"The Emerald Forest", a great movie by John Boorman made in 1985. The white outsider learns the ways of the natives in the beautifully shot Amazonian forest, although this was not really a choice as he was kidnapped as a kid. He learns and become a real man during a ceremony, connected to the spirit of an animal. Then bulldozers come, wreak havoc and destroy trees (to build a dam). The native chief is killed, and the outsider will lead the fight with his tribe friends, some outside knowledge and technology (such as guns), and the help of forest animals (the frogs) and Mother Nature, to push out the white invaders. And he decides to stay in the forest at the end. And he falls in love with a native girl.
It all goes back to Campbell analysis. Like one movie with a thousand faces.
There's nothing completely original. Even the Iliad copied bits from previous stories.
Cameron got in trouble with _Terminator_ because he talked about it being inspired by two specific _Outer Limits_ (IIRC) episodes. One of the people he was talking to was a friend of Harlan Ellison, who wrote both episodes.
A few people have compared the movie to my connected stories BLUE WAR, DEADSTOCK and IN HIS SIGHTS (all published by Solaris Books). One blogger directed me to his posts, drawing comparisons:
BLUE DEJA VU, from 1/3/10 http://daedahl.blogspot.com/2010/01/blue-deja-vu.html
And BLUE WORLDS REVISTED, from 1/9/10 http://daedahl.blogspot.com/2010/01/blue-worlds-revisited.html
" *both stories were told from the point-of-view of a disabled veteran (Jake Sully is a paraplegic in Avatar; while Jeremy Stake suffers from metamorphic paralysis in In His Sights) *both protagonists travel to a jungle-like world populated by blue-skinned humanoids with almond shaped eyes (the Na'vi of Pandora; the Ha Jiin of the unnamed blue world) *the blue-skins world is invaded by humanity solely for the acquisition of a rare and exotic subterranean resource (Pandora's ridiculously named mineral: Unobtainum; the Ha Jiin's strange subterranean gasses) *on both worlds the mining of resources involves violating sites considered sacred by the blue-skins (Pandora's sacred trees containing the souls of their ancestors; the Ha Jiin's sacred burial catacombs) *both protagonists were selected because their unique genome allowed them to assume the form of a blue-skin, infiltrate and gain access to said exotic resource (Jake Sully - his genetically engineered Avatar; Jeremy Stake - a mutant human with mild metamorphic abilities) "
I'm not claiming Cameron read my stories...as you say in the article, it's all just jolly good fun. ;-)
Not classic science fiction but classic anime: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Great movie with a couple of ideas which found their way into Avatar. For example the tree of soul's shimmering tentacles or the way the navi'i ride the dragons.
Thanks for these. I just wonder how to go about getting hold of these stories. Are they at all still in print?
The similarities between all these stories are probably more than coincidental or influencial. I'm guessing there are a historical references in play as well. Maybe the colonization of America, Africa and Australia. And the Gulf war references, "The hearts and minds" tour, "Shock and Awe" campaign, were too obvious to miss.
But yes, these Science fiction sources are fantastic.
Totally riped from the animated movie "Fern Gulley"...right down to the bulldozer scene!! Can anyone verify this ??? Is there not any origionality anymore??
My first thought was 'The Dragon riders of Pern' for the bonding between the dragons and their riders BUT, How about 'The Integral Trees' by Larry Niven? FYI- Cameron said he drew from everything in his experience. Abolutely beautiful-wonderful creatures and plants, esp. 'dragons'
@xJENOVAx uep. frank Herberts the Jesus incident/lazarus effect had a planet called PANDORA which was crawling with HOSTILE WILDLIFE, and a type of sentient kelp that had a networked COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUS with the other creatures on the planet, just like in Cameron's movie. I think they referred to it as ¨avata¨ I think there was also genetically engineered CLONES that were adapted for the planet.
There are pyramids where ever there were large societies. Anyone who wants to build a structure that is very tall will fail until they realize the pyramid structure. ... At least until they can make steel girders.
The pyramids are all around farms, the shape of a triangle actually funnels energy and directs it around the pyramid to help grow crops. Not much of a mystery, its just being hidden from the world.
Yeah, I heard someone mention that once; pyramids all around the world and in the United States that are "hills". So much we will sadly never know but interesting none the less. Thanks for the post!
Polar pyramids and energy funnels, all being "hidden" and/or "not revealed", eh?
...Yeah, okay. I guess it's a good thing you lot have your foil-lined hats so as to prevent this valuable knowledge from being edited out of your brains via the world shadow-government's mind-control satellites.
Sometimes you just have to look around and find something you might be familiar with, but because of the daily routine of our boring jobs, we completely dismiss. One example of such behavior can be found in the people of countries with insufficient food and health services available. There are countries even that do not provide these services but they do provide money for the war effort, completely forgetting to develop areas for people to enjoy a nice quiet life. It's a shame that these countries can not satisfy their need to rule certain aspects.
Cahokia in Illinois is one of the largest pyramids made of dirt and in the 1200's there were more people living there than in London at the same time. The site is huge with over a hundred pyramids of varrying sizes.
First off, pyramids weren't just crypts. Second, our governments aren't telling us what they really find in the pyramids. They are of alien origin. How can anyone say there's no mystery to pyramids when they're found all over the world and on Mars?
I love Stan Mott's work! It used to show up in Road & Track back in the day and I was always fascinated by the creative brilliance of his art. Thanks for posting this!
We as Iranian usually don't have any free access to the net and faced with difficut problems so when we see such fantastic images we really believe ourselve sthat we are not alone in this world, on the other hand English is a language full of joys and surperisings that makes us flabbergasted when we see so much words that every day enter into it. Also we can use the net with the mediate of English language to understand almost every live language that now speaks on the earth. although our goverment strictly restricts internet for mostly entertaining usage we are now feel free to state our words in any possible way and to show the world that we excist. Thanks for your grat Website. Good Luck Guys & More Power to You.
The Blaschka's work is truly a wonder... artistically, scientifically, and especially from a technical point of view. Contemporary glass artists are still trying to figure out how they accomplished some of the techniques they used.
Wondeful - and amazing to think it was created a hundred years ago. You mention Bach and Science and Art - he created beautiful music that was also mathematically very complicated, with all sorts of messages hidden in it. Any chance of an article on this? - it's a fascinating subject - her's a link to start with:
"Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, had a suitably grand design pasted into his book collection:
It was not he who designed and pasted that bookplate into his books, it was his son Adrian Conan Doyle in the 1950s, long after Sir Arthur's death in 1930. Adrian had notoriously exaggerated ideas of his father's and his family's greatness, paid the College of Heralds of Ireland to produce those arms, and pasted the resulting bookplate into every book of his father's that he still owned. His father would have walloped him for it.
Nice Collection. I'll add one more famous person (whose book-plate was very boring, however.)
A friend of mine had a book that belonged to Stan Laurel. His book-plate consisted of a small ink-stamp in sans-serif font that said "Property of Stan Laurel." He signed below that as I recall.
I think the bookplate bearing the name Douglas Fairbanks belongs to him and not his son. At least I cannot find a "Jr." in the signature. Great stuff, btw.
The piggybanks vs cops scene is from the Transperth campaign to promote its cashless ticketing system Smartrider. There's a series of ads but that is the best. Probably because the piggy seems to be telling the dog 'You can kiss my porcine porcelain rear end!'
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58 Comments:
Piers Anthony's "Viscous Circle" (1982) features our hero transplanting his mind into a native's body, with the plan being to help despoil their planet, but eventually he goes native and helps them resist the humans.
Is this a movie that an adult would want to go see?
Midworld by Alan Dean Foster
"Hunter, Come Home" by Richard McKenna. Giant alien trees connected by a network.
Though I agree with Sleestak that Midworld's home trees are a very close match.
Deathworld is available as a free e-book from:
http://manybooks.net
Apparently the copyright was not renewed.
I went and saw Avatar last night: a gorgeous visual feast and I was
impressed by how seamlessly the 3D elements cohered into the
narrative: technology that instantly becomes intuitive is usually technology that will augment one's experience immeasurably (think of
how intuitive the internet is, and how quickly we've come to
assimilate it into our daily experience!).
I think a polarised film over a television screen will be the next
step - we'll lose the hokey glasses because the screen 'wears' it forus.
As a writer, Cameron is an excellent director. 'Come to papa'. REALLY, James? Very chiched and banal dialogue. I nearly burst out laughing a few times. I support the simple plot as outlined in the post, but the dialogue borders on the ridiculous.
And army robots with combat knives?! Where's a corncob pipe for when the day's pillaging is done?
Just my 2c.
Anyhoo, cheery Christmas!
H. Beam Piper's "Little Fuzzy" was brought to mind. Does a native alien race have the right to control the resources of its own planet over the machinations of a greedy human corporation? ("Little Fuzzy" is available at Project Gutenberg)
Visually, one can see similarities between fauna, flora and terra (Pandorae?)in Yes album covers, specifically those by Roger Dean.
You've got something here! Well searched huh? Really love to read your thoughts.
Thanks for this wonderful insights.
Anne McCaffrey also wrote the Powers That Be series, about a damaged ex-soldier sent to a self-aware planet with an intricately inter-linked ecosystem, to get friendly with the residents as the military's woman-on-the-inside: she ends up going native, defending the planet from the industrial-military complex, and being healed.
A withdrawn forest people from whom humans want something and are prepared to take it by force, then begin transformations from humans into forest people, sacred trees, sacred shamans, exotic relationships between people and animals, clash of modern vs medieval weapons and intelligent exotic animals. Finally, a populations in tune with all nature and the trees sheltering and servicing as the source and the network of that knowledge. Andre Norton: Judgement on Janus.
The Themes and archetypes used in Avatar permeate literature and transcend culture and have been told countless times eg Eden lost through knowledge(technology), enlightenment through nature as apposed to the establishment, the clash of mans instincts with cold modern reality(disillusionment) and the story of the man how never dreams but at the same time dreams to much. anyone who sees something as being completely original has not done their research, and anyone who faults this movie for it's similarity to dances with wolves or any other of the countless stories, myths, and legends that employ the same premise or characters is short sighted. Any artist will tell you that everyone has an influence. some say it goes a little deeper then that. arising form our shared experiences(as we are all human this hardly seems surprising) we have a sort of collective unconsious ...Hm that sounds familare as well.
Thank you Joseph Campbell
anyone who says it is to simple a plot needs to do more thinking and less talking.
Formerlawyer:
Not only is Deathworld available in print for free since it is in the public domain, but you can get an audiobook version for free from LibriVox.org as well. It's a halfway decent reading too.
OP:
I disagree with the statement that Deathworld has only visual and atmospheric clue and no similarities with the overall plot. In the big picture(tm), it is quite compatible with the plot of Avatar. It is only the time scale of the overall history of Pyrrah that differs with the plot of the movie. The war between the planet and the humans has been going on for 300 years. In the end of Deathworld, the planet's natives do mount a renewed and cooperative full-spectrum counterattack on the human base aided by humans that have "gone native." The overall plot theme is the same in the end.
You also forgot Amy Thomson's Color of Distance about researchers going native.
It's not Alan dean Foster's "Midworld". The people are blue in the movie and not green!
Various works by Andre Norton spring immediately to mind.
This is hardly a suprise: not that I've seen every single one of his movies, but James Cameron is not exactly known for the originality of his plots. The broad outline of Terminator is identical with that of the 1966 Doctor Who serial "The War Machines." Titanic is history with a generic tragic love story thrown in. Et cetera.
Well, since people seem to be aware of Deathworld , let me weigh in and say that to characterize the humans as "space marines" is simply wrong. In fact, the colonists have rather evolved along with the native flora and fauna, adapting to heavier gravity and so forth. They aren't and never have been "space marines."
Manta's Gift by Zahn employs the device of a handicapped man used to get inside the body of a native (stingray-like creatures in Jupiter's atmosphere.) They aren't avatars— his brain is actually grafted into an embryo, with the permission of the natives— but it's got its similarities.
No one mentioned the second and third book of the "Ender's" series? I'm shocked.
Just goes to show how hard it is to come up with a new plotline. They have already be done.
carson:
A being appears in the sky,
a young woman with no sex life,
an angry 'king' sending his soldier to kill innocents, looking for the one who will overthrow 'him',
the being tries to calm the woman, telling her she will bare humanity's savior with the initials 'JC', they go on the run
the good guys win.
I'm not so sure he was ripping off dr who.
i cant believe not a single person mentioned the masterful Dune by Frank Herbert.
There were several scenes in Avatar that seemed like a ripoff of Aliens with Sigourney Weaver. And then later there was some music that seemed identical to music used in Aliens.
I remember the first time I encountered the "telepresence concept", it was as a kid in the 60s with the juvenile sci fi book ROBOTS OF SATURN (great memories). The three young heroes encounter a hut on a moon of Saturn, in this hut are two guys apparently sitting unconscious with electrical contacts on their foreheads. It turns out they were remotely controlling/experiencing large and powerful robot bodies elsewhere on the small moon. Cool stuff!
"La Planete Sauvage" Anyone.....?
Anne McCaffrey, mentioned a couple of times above, also has a section in the early novel "The Ship Who Sang."
The titular ship takes a crew of actors to a planet highly inhospitable to human life. Once there, they project into alien "envelopes" in order to perform Hamlet for the aliens.
Several of the actors become too wrapped up in the sensations provided by the envelopes and "go native."
Dune....it's much closer than the dragon riders of pern
Manta's Gift? the list goes on..
Without naming a particular title, I thought the whole film was redolent of great sci-fi/adventure Franco-Belgian bande dessinée (comic strips) of the past 50 years. Whereas Americans were fascinated by superheroes in long underwear, Enuropeans were following tha dventures of (1) "good savages" like Timour and Rohan ans (2) space explorers like the ones depicted by Moebius (and republished in the US by "Heavy Metal"). The same inspiration informs the recent movie "10,000 BC" - a flop in the US, a great success everywhere else.
Benoit Racine
Toronto
I second, or third, or whatever, the artistic links with Roger Dean's paintings & designs. (band Yes covers but also other stuff) I was surprised not to see him in the credits.
The special breathing organs on the 'dragons' immediately called to mind the 'superchargers' on the Ythrians from Poul Anderson's "Earth Book of Stormgate". I don't recall anything about it being mentioned in the dialog, but some auxiliary breathing system would be important (as Anderson made clear) for flying creatures of that size. Recent work on pterosaurs indicates that our own 'flying dragons' found a different solution to the problem.
http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2009/02/pterosaur_breathing_air_sacs.php
I found it absolutely awesome. Simple enough. I saw many similarities to many books I have read in the past, but it was its own story.
Bravo, James Cameron.
I think Blish's A Case of Conscience might be another one - though I haven't yet seen the film I must confess!
Don't forget Roger Dean artwork on "Yes" album covers for floating rock formations
Nice research article. Still doesn't excuse IP infringement. Wouldn't it be nice if 20th Century Fox posted some allowed fandom guidelines?
In "The Stone God Awakens", a less known novel by Philip José Farmer, the main organism in a future Earth is a huge tree, that developed connections with all the other trees in the world, just like a mainframe computer with dumb terminals. It is a book from 1970.
I enjoyed that Cameron pulled ideas from so many sources (intentional or not) to create "Avatar". Thanks for citing so many. I haven't seen Terry Brook's "Tanequil" mentioned here for its parallel to sentient trees.
I noticed similarities between Avatar and an old HG Wells book I once read, I think it was called "A Dream of Armageddon", where a man was living two lives by being a soldier in the future while he was asleep and "dreaming" in the real world and vice versa. He eventually swapped over as the dreams got more real and exciting and real life became more vague and boring to him, and ended living in the world which was originally just his future dream "avatar". This was a great story, as is avatar. Loved the movie
The guy who mentioend Roger Dean further up is right on--those floating landmasses and arches are right off Yes album covers, and even the dragon-ish things are very similar to some of his work (I'm thinking most specifically about that bland orchestral to Pink Floyd that came out in the mid-to-late-90s).
What is this, TEN different sources? It's the Disney movie Pocahontas with aliens. That's it.
Thanks so much for this brain-jolt. I've been trying to think of "Winds of Altair" since Avatar was first mentioned!
You know the story. The dialogue is clunky ( i loled in the cinema ) and yet I found this film to be almost transcendental. Don't try and think while you watch it. Put your hood up and just be inside it.
You know, it also reminds me of the movie The Mission, only in that movie, it turns our much worse for the natives. I still can't listen to Adagio for Strings without tearing up...
Smurfs too! lol
But seriously it was a fun movie to watch.
"The Emerald Forest", a great movie by John Boorman made in 1985. The white outsider learns the ways of the natives in the beautifully shot Amazonian forest, although this was not really a choice as he was kidnapped as a kid. He learns and become a real man during a ceremony, connected to the spirit of an animal. Then bulldozers come, wreak havoc and destroy trees (to build a dam). The native chief is killed, and the outsider will lead the fight with his tribe friends, some outside knowledge and technology (such as guns), and the help of forest animals (the frogs) and Mother Nature, to push out the white invaders. And he decides to stay in the forest at the end. And he falls in love with a native girl.
It all goes back to Campbell analysis. Like one movie with a thousand faces.
You forgot Disney's Atlantis... Both bad guys even look the same!
There's nothing completely original. Even the Iliad copied bits from previous stories.
Cameron got in trouble with _Terminator_ because he talked about it being inspired by two specific _Outer Limits_ (IIRC) episodes. One of the people he was talking to was a friend of Harlan Ellison, who wrote both episodes.
Three more - Ray Bradbury's short stories:
- Here There Be Tygers
- And the Moon Be Still as Bright
- Dark They Were, and Golden-eyed
A few people have compared the movie to my connected stories BLUE WAR, DEADSTOCK and IN HIS SIGHTS (all published by Solaris Books). One blogger directed me to his posts, drawing comparisons:
BLUE DEJA VU, from 1/3/10 http://daedahl.blogspot.com/2010/01/blue-deja-vu.html
And BLUE WORLDS REVISTED, from 1/9/10 http://daedahl.blogspot.com/2010/01/blue-worlds-revisited.html
" *both stories were told from the point-of-view of a disabled veteran (Jake Sully is a paraplegic in Avatar; while Jeremy Stake suffers from metamorphic paralysis in In His Sights)
*both protagonists travel to a jungle-like world populated by blue-skinned humanoids with almond shaped eyes (the Na'vi of Pandora; the Ha Jiin of the unnamed blue world)
*the blue-skins world is invaded by humanity solely for the acquisition of a rare and exotic subterranean resource (Pandora's ridiculously named mineral: Unobtainum; the Ha Jiin's strange subterranean gasses)
*on both worlds the mining of resources involves violating sites considered sacred by the blue-skins (Pandora's sacred trees containing the souls of their ancestors; the Ha Jiin's sacred burial catacombs)
*both protagonists were selected because their unique genome allowed them to assume the form of a blue-skin, infiltrate and gain access to said exotic resource (Jake Sully - his genetically engineered Avatar; Jeremy Stake - a mutant human with mild metamorphic abilities) "
I'm not claiming Cameron read my stories...as you say in the article, it's all just jolly good fun. ;-)
Thank you Jeffrey, great info - and kudos to all other commenters who unearthed a whole bunch of other references. Great fun!
Not classic science fiction but classic anime: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Great movie with a couple of ideas which found their way into Avatar. For example the tree of soul's shimmering tentacles or the way the navi'i ride the dragons.
Thanks for these. I just wonder how to go about getting hold of these stories. Are they at all still in print?
The similarities between all these stories are probably more than coincidental or influencial. I'm guessing there are a historical references in play as well. Maybe the colonization of America, Africa and Australia. And the Gulf war references, "The hearts and minds" tour, "Shock and Awe" campaign, were too obvious to miss.
But yes, these Science fiction sources are fantastic.
How about "The Jesus Incident" by Frank Herbert?
And don't say you read the synopsis and it doesn't sound familiar...I read the book and saw the movie, they are definitely linked!
Avatar was one of the best movies I have ever seen. James Cameron is the man when it comes to creating amazing movies!
Totally riped from the animated movie "Fern Gulley"...right down to the bulldozer scene!! Can anyone verify this ??? Is there not any origionality anymore??
My first thought was 'The Dragon riders of Pern' for the bonding between the dragons and their riders BUT, How about 'The Integral Trees' by Larry Niven?
FYI- Cameron said he drew from everything in his experience.
Abolutely beautiful-wonderful creatures and plants, esp. 'dragons'
@xJENOVAx uep. frank Herberts the Jesus incident/lazarus effect had a planet called PANDORA which was crawling with HOSTILE WILDLIFE, and a type of sentient kelp that had a networked COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUS
with the other creatures on the planet, just like in Cameron's movie. I think they referred to it as ¨avata¨
I think there was also genetically engineered CLONES that were adapted for the planet.
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