Avatar plagiarizes Delgo?

[Anwar]

Famous dictator? Well, I know that he's not the nicest guy but even I think that's a bit far...

 

[wew]

I'd hardly rank him up there with Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler, and Idi Amin. As well as many others that I don't have time to list.

 

[Starbreaker]

Of course, as Harlan Elison knows, James Cameron has plagerized before. That's why his name had to be added to the credits of Terminator after he sued.

Harlan sues everybody.

 

[ManOnTheWave]

Avatar plagiarizes Delgo?

And both of them look like a mish mash of Moebius stories and imagery, among others.

 

[TK421]

Avatar plagiarizes Delgo?

And both of them look like a mish mash of Moebius stories and imagery, among others.

Moebius stories? I'm drawing a blank. Wha...?

 

[Anwar]

The French artist, did "Heavy Metal" magazines.

 

[broberfett]

Famous dictator? Well, I know that he's not the nicest guy but even I think that's a bit far...

I don't usually care about typos too much, but that one was very funny.

 

[P0sitr0nic]

Of course, as Harlan Elison knows, James Cameron has plagerized before. That's why his name had to be added to the credits of Terminator after he sued.

Harlan sues everybody.

Harlan sues when the movie characters breathe AIR, because he wrote that once...

 

[SinglePurpose]

I would like to point out that Harlan Ellison actually won when he sued James Cameron so at least in that case there is some merit.

 

[Klaus]

...shouldn't Poul Anderson's estate bring suit that he plagiarized "Call Me Joe"?

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

James Cameron sucks.

Yay, now I'm hip and trendy and with it and one of the cool kids.

 

[jefferiestubes8]

another script copyright lawsuit for Cameron

We've heard about how Avatar = Pocahontas

I thought it was the sci-fi version of “Dances With Wolves” (or maybe “FernGully: The Last Rainforest”) but Matt Bateman makes a pretty good argument for James Cameron’s “Avatar” actually being the same film as Disney’s “Pocahontas.”

and of course the mashup videos made:
http://vimeo.com/9389738

FernGully: The Last Rainforest is an Australian animated feature produced by Kroyer Films, presented by FAI Films and released by 20th Century Fox on 10 April 1992. It was adapted from a book of the same name by Diana Young. [(first published 1991)]

per Wiki


Well now

author Kelly Van ... claims that James Cameron stole ideas from her unpublished sci-fi romance novel, Sheila the Warrior: the Damned. She’s filed a copyright lawsuit against the filmmaker, stating that the characters, setting, plot, sound, visual effects, and total concept of “Avatar” are similar to her book which is about people from Earth who travel to another planet

James Cameron Sued By Unpublished Sci-Fi Romance Author

Van’s “Sheila” novel details two women who travel to another “breathtakingly beautiful” planet, full of peace and a nice ecosystem, fall in love with the locals and deal with “bloodsuckers” intent on destroying the planet if they can’t get control of valuable minerals.

“This suit is absolutely baseless,” a studio spokesperson for Fox tells the Hollywood Reporter. “Jim Cameron’s treatment for ‘Avatar’ was written before Ms. Van alleges she even started to write her book.”

http://www.sliceofscifi.com/2010/05/20/cameron-sued-over-avatar/

A source at the studio says that Cameron submitted a completed scriptment in 1998 - a claim that Van's attorney, Kevin Mirch, disputes.

"We did a lot of research, and the copyright says 'Avatar' was copyrighted on April 1 of 2007. The date of [Van's] creation was in 2000, and it was published on the Internet in 2003."

'Avatar' suit a jolt from the blue to James Cameron

No one tell Kelly Van about Pocahontas!

the full lawsuit papers at this link
May 19

 

[Mr Light]

I love Avatar and all but it was an extremely generic story, if anything ripping off far older material. This is a pretty hilarious lawsuit.

 

[miraclefan]

I love Avatar and all but it was an extremely generic story, if anything ripping off far older material. This is a pretty hilarious lawsuit.

Agreed!

 

[Aragorn]

This reminds me of something I saw on the TV when I was a kid about some guy who was suing with the claim that Power Rangers was his idea. He had photos of children in Power Ranger-esque costumes. But he had no idea it wasn't originally made in the United States.

There's always someone trying to sue this way.

 

[Kelso]

I don't blame them. Avatar made a lot of money. I'd like some of it, too.

 

[SeerSGB]

I love Avatar and all but it was an extremely generic story, if anything ripping off far older material. This is a pretty hilarious lawsuit.

Agreed. Pretty to look at, entertaining enough, but the story is just a generic "hero goes native" story.

 

[Checkmate]

You mean the wholly unoriginal, uninspired, 3D advertisement movie really was unoriginal, uninspired, and nothing more than an advertisement of 3D technology?

Get the fuck out of town.

 

[FordSVT]

All these lawsuits just go to show how derivative Avatar (and the rest of this stuff) is. Very little is truly original, it's not as much about what you're doing as it is how you go about doing it. Most of the themes and plot lines and imagery have been seen before in dozens of different works over decades and centuries. People have wrote about mystical islands and cities in the sky and people flying on great birds and dragons for centuries or more. People have wrote about outsiders joining with strangers to help defend against their own kind before, and people have wrote about Space Marines in power armour before.

 

[Talosian]

It's hilarious how all the fanboys who fall over themselves over concept art and casting rumors for First Avenger: Captain America, Thor, and Wolverine II, or who delegate years of their lives to debating minutia concerning the imaginary physics and anthropology of a campy space cowboy show, have the chutzpah to ridicule Avatar as unoriginal and uninspired.

Avatar wasn't a great movie. Neither are most of the crappy comic book movies I see 20 page threads devoted to before their trailer even appears. But the notion that a film, or any work of art, can be condemned merely on account of lifting source material from other works is ludicrous. Virtually the entire Western canon would have to be wiped clean by this standard. "Sorry Shakespeare, you didn't come up with that King Lear story, you're a cheap hack."