James Cameron’s Avatar, the most successful movie of all time, has also provoked a lot of controversy. Most successful things do. One of the biggest knocks on the movie is that it’s very derivative of other source material. By now everyone’s seen the Avatar comparison to Pocahontas, so I won’t bother to go into that. What I didn’t know is that Avatar is awfully similar to a whole lot of other science fiction and animation, as the complete list of sources ripped off by Avatar reveals.
That’s a pretty substantial list. I won’t make the argument that Avatar was or is an original idea; there is nothing new under the sun, after all. Everything is inspired by something else, which is inspired by something else, and so on down the line. You could probably draw a line connecting the oldest entry on the list, Call Me Joe, on up the line. That’s just how Hollywood works; nothing to get upset over.
Tags: Avatar, James Cameron, movies and books similar to Avatar, complete list of sources ripped off by Avatar, movies, Avatar inspirations, Hollywood