Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Is Avatar an Unattributed Remake of FernGully?
The FernGully meme has been gaining momentum over the last week. In James Cameron's defence these ideas have been floating around for years; still, this YouTube makes a pretty compelling case and if I were Diana Young the Aussie writer of FernGully, I'd be on the blower with Bill Kunstler...wait he's dead? Ok Gloria Allred then.
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37 comments:
Good call there.
Me, I was thinking it was more like The Last Samurai, which was a pretty decent flick.
A lot of people are passing this around.
Hmm. I guess there really are only three or four plots in the world. But not everybody has unobtainium.
On the other big movie front, all you literate types will be pleased to know that with Sherlock Holmes playing, we can't keep Doyle's books in stock. Selling like hotcakes. Even the distributors have been sold out, so it's not just us.
John,
Thanks for the laugh.
Seana,
That is really encouraging. And seriously, how did the term "unobtainium" pass the laugh-test?
v-word: acksessy. Is an inebriated computer telling me to "act sexy?"
Brian
I liked The Last Samurai - nice NZ landscapes, but I was a bit let down by Billy Connolly's "Irish" accent and the way it was cut. There were some good fight scenes that they felt the need to chop up MTV style rather than giving us long takes a la Bruce Lee.
Also I was rooting for the peasants.
John
What I dont understand is all the four star reviews. The film gave me a headache and for the first five or six hours I was really bored.
BTW I remember showing Pocahontas to the fourth grade once and I noticed a mistake in the film. The movie is set in the early seventeenth century but the flags on the ships are Union Jacks from the eighteenth i.e. after the Act of Union with Scotland.
Seana
No there arent many plots but we really can do better than Avatar.
Its good about Sherlock Holmes. Is Caleb Carr's Holmes novel also selling? And what about the 7 Percent Solution?
Brian
Its gotta be arrogance or laziness. There are so many more interesting things to call it.
Incidentally I do wish the reviews would stop calling Pandora a planet. Its a moon. Even I got that and I was asleep or had my goggles off much of the time.
I am shocked--shocked!!--at the suggestion that a James Cameron film would have a derivative story line we've seen before.
Next you'll expect me to believe Bono writes for the New York Times.
I'm curious if the fourth grade class was treated to minilecture on the discrepancy, or if you just let it pass.
We've actually clumped a lot of Holmesiana" together on a display table, but I don't think Carr made it on. And we haven't had 7 Per Cent Solution in for some time now. I'll check tomorrow to see how available it is and get it in if I can, as yes, I remember enjoying it. I never got beyond The Alienist with Carr, though.
I haven't actually seen Avatar but is it possible that the use of Unobtainium was deliberate, now that we know from Marco that it's a standard name for such stuff?
Brian, I think it's the v word's way of saying that unobtainium, contrary to popular thought, is actually quite accessible. And, as my v word has it "legal".
Dana
I'm shocked that Bono didnt get the Pulitzer prize for editorial writing. You know he was pushing for it behind the scenes all year.
Seana
Was it a homage or just laziness? Laziness. The whole story is lazy and uninventive and dull and the visuals it turns out were knicked from Fern frickin Gully!
Brian
I rememember you asking what trailers I saw. I did see one that looked pretty good: the remake of Clash of the Titans. Dark and weird it looked.
Seana
Yes I did in fact draw the union flags from 1607, 1707 and 1801 on the white board. However I waited until the movie was over.
I forget if I posted this article about literary Darwinism here before (I like it almost as much as Robert Sawyer dissing Star Wars).
Plus there's the money aspect - no one's going to invest in a big budget movie that isn't on very familiar ground - or is based on a very familiar novel.
Complaining about Avatar is kind of like complaining about a Big Mac.
John
I'm complaining more about the critics than the film. Four Stars for this? Have you all lost your minds?
The one thing I'm going to give Avatar and Cameron credit for is having strong female leads - he's always been good for that and for that I respect him.
Well, I do like Sigourney Weaver.
Movie critics love movies. They love spectacle.
I think it's funn how the AMC channel on TV, home to Breaking Bad and Mad Men and the new Pisoner has the slogan, "Story Matters Here." Can you imagine a movie company using that slogan these days?
John
When then can offer us Avatar and it gets serious consideration for the Oscars then it shows that they no longer respect the medium.
Can you imagine a director trying to kill his male lead like this today. He'd be fired on the spot and the film reshot.
Waiting till the movie was over showed admirable restraint, Adrian, considering that it was you. I would just kind of have liked to be in one of those kid's heads-- briefly--as they wondered if this was really what the rest of school was going to be like.
That was an interesting essay on Literary Darwinism, John, although I must say I get less and less interested in theories that supposedly account for everything the older I get. It's as well I didn't end up in academia, I think. Surprised a Nabokov scholar has fallen for it, though I think he was one of the ones who was particularly interested in Vladimir's butterfly mania.
It was also a bit sad that the writer felt obliged to give the reader a brief synopsis of Pride and Prejudice before beginning.
Yes, Adrian, it would be hard to imagine a movie so "artsy" getting much repsect these days.
Maybe, though, once all this effects stuff really does get cheaper and more common there will be a demand to do more with it. When the effects become just another tool in the drawer and not the most important one.
Look at the first few years of "talkies," they'd never shut up.
Conflating two of your more recent postings:
Did you know that Bill Kunstler fought in the pacific theater, got a silver star, purple heart and attained the rank of Major?
Seana
I think they learned a lot. They could tell I was enthusiastic and quite worked up about Disney and their "research".
John
Thats an interesting point. It would be nice if they could just have the effects but choose not to use them.
Anon
I have no idea. Are you sure its the same Bill Kunstler? Actually let me check....
Yes. Major in the US Army. Thanks for that.
Adrian, I'm sure they learned a lot. We all do on your watch. It's just that as an adult, I can be both amused and edified by the scene at the same time.
It seems everyone is upset with Avatar.
Here's an article that includes:
But perhaps the strangest reaction to Avatar comes from those who say its depiction of Pandora was so compelling that they wish it was real.
On the website Avatar Forums, a topic thread entitled “Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible,” has received thousands of posts from people experiencing depression after seeing the movie.
In keeping with the tradition of people being far more connected to (and concerned about) fictional worlds than the real one.
Seana
Well I dont think they ever learned THAT much.
John
Jesus the world is full of freaks. And I wish they'd stop calling it a planet - its a moon you freaks like Endor in Return of the Jedi.
adrian -
2010 could be a great year for action movies. Clash of the Titans, The A-Team (if it's not overly cheesy), and The Expendables.
Also, I know you're not crazy about Nolan, but I think Inception looks awesome.
Adrian -
Ah, but is the moon called Endor, or is the planet called Endor?
I thought Ackbar referred to it as the "forest moon of Endor," which always confused me.
Brian
Fair point. OK technically it might The Moon of Endor but its still a moon. Pandora is supposed to be a moon too. A smallish one with not enough gravity to stop its mountains from floating but enough to hold onto an atmoshere. WTF!
Clash of the Titans looks like a total reimagining 300 style. I thought the trailer rocked.
Adrian,
I went out and got some Pliny the Elder after your beer post. That's no small feat considering I live in the middle of KS. After tasting it I can say thats some pretty hoppy stuff. Nice pick!
Dylan
You know whats the greatest food/beer combo in the world (as I discovered at the weekend)? Pliny The Elder and really good Indian food.
Definitely my death row meal now: lamb vindaloo and a six pack of pliny.
Pandora apparently is unobtainium for some. What I want to know is, is there a sense that is any connection to the mythological Pandora, who let woe out into the world? Or is it just some random cute sounding name.
Another thing I want to know is why both Dylan and Adrian have seemed to have had no trouble obtaining Pliny, while I in Northern California haven't run across it. Okay, I haven't tried that hard yet, but still.
The worst thing about Avatar -which I've never seen, of course - isn't all the tree hugging codswallop - but the fact that it looks like a Roger Dean L.P. cover come to life.
And the BOF's shall inherit the earth! Never trust a hippy!
Wasn't trying to break your balls on the Endor thing. I think the phrase "the forest moon of Endor" is ambiguous. I always took it to mean the moon was called Endor myself.
But yeah, your point about Pandora being a moon is spot-on. The critics seem to be missing that.
Brian
And why is it that all these planets only have one ecosystem: Endor forest, Tatooine desert, Yoda's planet swamp, Pandoraa rain forest?
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