Communists Say Avatar Director 'Robbed' Soviet Science Fiction

[Thestral]

I don't get what the big deal is about Cameron's story not being "original" anyway. If it's a good story that's well-told, who the hell cares if it's "original?"

The story Avatar tells clearly resonates with a lot of people, and the film was beautifully made and well-executed. Why does it matter if large elements of plot weren't that different from other films?

Mountains of West Virginia, mountains of Tennessee, not much difference between them. Doesn't mean I'm not enraptured by them both.

 

[Kegg]

I'm truly amazed at the breadth and depth and wealth of sources Cameron is stated to have stolen from. If they were all true, he's done an unbelievable amount of homework and made an eclectic spun that's part Dances With Wolves, part Poul Anderson, a little bit of Russian, and maybe a few cues from a crappy cartoon no-one remembers while he's busy pilfering World of Warcraft and Fantastic Planet for visual references while robbing wholesale from Lord of the Rings and Dune for plot. It would truly be a monumental achievement of synthesis.

As to this specific example, well, Pandora is a really obvious name to think of for a planet, if it's intended to be trouble (as indeed the world in Avatar is). That there's a planet called Pandora and it has a species called the Nave could be a fantastical coincidence, or robbery, or unconsciously borrowing from something he'd vaguely heard of, or whatever I don't know.

That said I found this very unintentionally funny:

Living conditions on Earth are also depicted as being miserable in "Avatar," whereas in "Noon Universe" the planet prospers under communism.

I'm not sure that's a difference.

 

[Ensign_Redshirt]

Pavel Chekov: "Avatar was written by a little old lady from Leningrad."

It never ceases to amaze how jingoistic and nationalistic Russian communists really are. It's also ironic that they're "defending" the Strugatzkys who actually came up with some pretty subversive and anti-totalitarian stuff (like their novel "The Doomed City", which was written during the mid-70s, but wasn't allowed to get published until the Glasnost era of the late 80s.).

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Well, one thing's for certain: all of those folks lining up in China to see this movie do not give a fuck what Ferngully was. All of the complaints about the familiarity of the story are quite parochial when the world-wide audience is considered.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Pavel Chekov: "Avatar was written by a little old lady from Leningrad."

It never ceases to amaze how jingoistic and nationalistic Russian communists really are. It's also ironic that they're "defending" the Strugatzkys who actually came up with some pretty subversive and anti-totalitarian stuff (like their novel "The Doomed City", which was written during the mid-70s, but wasn't allowed to get published until the Glasnost era of the late 80s.).

You read my mind! I was having the voice of Chekov running through my head the entire time I was reading this thread.

I, too, am amused at the arrogance of these people. Someone should remind them that, at one time, during the fall of Berlin, Soviet soldiers thought that German toilets were nothing more than elaborate potato washers and that they also stole light bulbs from street lamps to take them home back to good ol' Mother Russia so that they could use them (nobody told them that they needed electricity to work). Accounts like this, leading all the way up to the sinking of the Kursk back in 2000 with the constant reassurance to the world that they had everything "under control" until the announcement that everyone died, just adds to the strange and blinded uber-egos the Russians possess. The only thing they ever seemed to have in excess over anyone else is territory. The culture itself is fascinating, but the arrogance is beyond measure when they have nothing to back it up other than huge sloppy inaccurate nukes.