Let’s call it a mixed week for James Cameron.
True, Avatar swept up nine Academy Award nominations including Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Directing, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, Best Picture, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Visual Effects.
But it was also ousted from the top spot at the box office over the weekend by Nicholas Sparks’ Dear John, a schmaltzy, uninspired excuse of a rom-com starring Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried. (Who? Exactly.)
Most critics attribute this surprise takeover to Tatum’s chiseled abs. (Queue quiet snickering, finger pointing, etc.)
No, but seriously, back to the Oscar nominations thing. Along with the Academy’s totally hue-ist snubbing of so many blue-tinted virtuoso performances, there was one category that seemed conspicuously absent from the above list: Best Adapted Screenplay.
Now obviously I’m not the only one who noticed some major similarities between Avatar’s clichéd, paper-thin plot and a handful of other films/stories including (but not limited to) Fern Gully, Pocahontas, Halo, and of course Costner’s 1990 tatonka-and-loin-cloth epic, Dances With Wolves.
But now Ecorazzi is reporting:
[T]he entertainment website Heavy.com is making a case for the uncanny resemblances between James Cameron’s Avatar and a comic book series titled Firekind.
Firekind ran weekly in 2000 AD, a British science fiction comic anthology best known for its Judge Dredd stories. Created by John Smith and Paul Marshall, the comic series features a human botanist named Hendrick Larsen who travels to Gennyo-Leil, a jungle alien world with a toxic atmosphere, large dragons, blue-skinned natives, and floating rocks.
Heavy charted a table of comparison and described the plot similarities noting that, “If you were to sell Firekind or any kind of fire today, you’d be told it was a rip-off of Avatar – even though it predates the earliest 1994 ‘scriptments’ of Avatar by a year.”
Hmmmm. Fascinating.
And now poor Cameron is reported as having told Larry King that while a sequel to his mega hit was in the pipeline, he’s . . . um . . . struggling a bit with the plot.
BettyConfidential reports:
Avatar writer/director James Cameron provided fans with a midweek boost on Wednesday evening by announcing that he plans to pen a sequel to the Oscar-nominated film.
Cameron went on Larry King Live to chat about the project, and noted that although the plot is still fuzzy he and his creative team “have had some technical discussions” regarding how it would play out.
Well, quelle surprise.
So anyway, I thought that since we folks at Deceiver have given The Greatest Director In The World such a hard time lately, it seems only fair that we offer him a bit of support in his hour of need.
Come on people. We owe him one!
So . . . how ’bout it, guys? Any suggestions for new source material for Camy-Baby?
My vote? Twilight crossover.
Blue space people, fangs, broody heroes and sighing young damsels? Star Trek meets Dear John?
Cha-ching!
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There need to be more non blue dudes losing their shirts.
Avatar 2: Smurfs Stole My Clothing.
….you totally owe me for that one, Cameron. MY idea to stick more people in less clothing while they run around the rainforest. Human people though because otherwise I kind of feel like a furry, and that’s just too creepy.
‘Avatar 2: Nuke ‘em from Orbit. It’s the Only Way to Be Sure.’
Avatar 2: Electric Boogaloo. Jungle disco dance-off!
At least with a “Twilight” crossover, they’d have something in common. Stephenie Meyer has publicly admitted to being “anti-human,” and I think that James Macaroon can say the same. Ick.
The Usual Avatars.
We finally learn that Keyser Soze is really an alien.
Avatar 2: The Last Flight of the Flightless Flyers
In which we find out the reason that, while the blue guys use feathers to adorn EVERYTHING in their life, there aren’t any species with feathers on their planet. Turns out they hunted the feathered critters, similar to our dodos, to extinction.
Avatar 2, Ewoks in the Hood. Those furry scamps the Ewoks return back to the hood to reclaim their turf. The theme song will sound something like “hey were the ewoks we’re not so good, dissin those blue skin bitches gonna take back our hood”
“Avatar” meets “Ai No Corrida”. That would effectively squick out everybody in the western hemisphere, and either guarantee that any further sequels went direct-to-DVD, or that Cameron lost a couple beach houses.
‘Avatar 2: Sully Learns How Na’vi Chicks Reproduce’
How about he collaborates with Dr. Pachauri? Together they can create the softer, smuttier, bodice ripping Avatar.
not really on topic, but on a side note, Amanda Seyfried played Karen in Mean Girls (back before LiLo got all coked-out). she did a stellar job of playing a total airhead in that movie and now i can’t see her as playing anything else… kinda like Juliette Lewis in The Other Sister or Leo DiCaprio in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape
Avatar vs Alien
In Pandora, nobody cares if you scream.
All I know is, if it doesn’t play out like “Muppets take Manhattan” I don’t want to be bothered with it.
Oh, julie. You little scamp!
@LN: See my suggestion above. “Classic” Japanese pr0n, as opposed to sad modern-day Indian stuff, but still.
NOT THAT I HAVE EVER SEEN IT. Because I haven’t.
Alien vs. Predator vs. N’avi: Who ever wins, we all win
Why base a major film on a story so derivative and overdone that it would be rejected as trite by any science fiction editor today? Any long-time science fiction reader could point to scores (if not hundreds) of excellent s.f. stories and series that are begging to be made into big-budget films, now that technology has made it possible. True, Hollywood has discovered Philip Dick and Tolkien, but there’s a lot more out there!
Papaya:
I think that’s why I rolled my eyes at Avatar. It’s hardly a groundbreaking story, and I was honestly kind of bored by it. (My buddy and I kept a count of how many minutes of that movie were spent talking about Mother Nature, and how many were spent on blue dudes fighting not blue dudes. Conclusion: the movie needed more white dudes fighting blue dudes.)
There’s way too much good sci-fi out there that hasn’t been adapted yet to keep making this kind of garbage. I mean, PK Dick has dozens of stories that didn’t get adapted into awesome movies (featuring three breasted alien hookers) yet.
I’ve always thought Brin’s Uplift novels would make some good movies.
PKD’s stories are usually butchered by Hollywood.
Don’t think so? Next with Nicolas Cage was supposedly based off “The Golden Man.”
Cue me wanting to beat Cage with my large collection of PKD stories.
Come on, we all know what the sequal should be called… Avatar 2: The Search for More Money (Sorry Mel Brooks)
Honey, most of the world wants to beat Nic Cage, just for screwing with “The Wicker Man”. Putting him in a remake of an Edward Woodward ANYTHING was like shoving a roach in an Easter basket. No-talent constipated-face bastard.
Well Beige, that pretty much sealed his fate in my eyes.
And I’ve got a massive PKD collection.
….we could torture him with a million papercuts….
I guess I should amend my statement, cause there probably are bad PK Dick adaptations; I just haven’t seen them. Of course you also have stuff like A Scanner Darkly where they essentially just filmed the book. That one was super-duper-ultra faithful, like Watchmen faithful. And I personally thought Total Recall the Arnie movie was even better than the short story (even though I’m not into three breasted alien hookers).
That said, Blade Runner and Minority Report weren’t really my cup of tea. My favorite part of the book (Androids) was Deckard’s motivation, which was mostly absent from the movie; I always explain that book to my friends as “the emotional tale of a man who really, REALLY wants a llama.” Still, the movie did contribute one thing: the ambiguity surrounding whether Deckard was actually an android. And they eliminated that really absurd ending. I love me some PK Dick, but that man has some serious trouble writing endings.
And then there’s Paycheck. I can’t really blame them for making a bad movie out of it, since it wasn’t an especially good story to begin with.
Sidenote: I just looked up his adaptations on wiki, and I’m surprised to find out they adapted Confessions of a Crap Artist already. Hm. I’m still holding out hope for a Man in the High Castle movie.
PS: love you, Pearce (in a totally hetero way). I just got The Simulcra and What if our World is Their Heaven for Christmas and I’m totally pumped. A man with lethal body odor? I’m soooo there!
To Wong Foovatar: Thanks for Nothing, Rosie O’donnell.
Three cross-dressing blue guys travel across planet in their Jetsons-like electric aircar, until it breaks down. There they meet a group of imperialistic capitalistic humans bent on total domination of their planet. Then all the wacky, zany fun begins!
In the end the evil capitalists are defeated, blue men everywhere are free to fornicate with whatever shade of alien they choose, and Rosie O’donnell makes a guest appearance, congratulating those brave souls for a job well done.
Avatar: The White Man Finally Wins
Of course, no liberal Hollywood producer would actually allow the white man/big corporation/military to get its way. Their version of White Man winning would be the white man comes to rape the planet for riches, again, but THIS time instead of succeeding where they failed previously, they win the day by learning that precious minerals aren’t what they truly need or want. They learn to love, cherish, and heal their own planet, leaving wasteful technology and machines in the past, and living off the land by using renewable, sustainable resources and limiting population growth, thus establishing and maintaining perfect harmony and balance with Mother Nature. Amen.
PUKE. But you know that’s what they WANT to do. The one and only reason they wouldn’t would be if someone realized they would make less money with that story than if they used a good one.
“Wong Foovatar”.
“Pandora, F**K YEAH!” was going through my mind earlier.
Owitzia, Simulacra RULES. And if you haven’t read it, check out Lies, Inc….and DEFINITELY Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said.
Also, for another good PKD adaptation to film, Impostor. Possibly my favorite film of all time.
I read Flow My Tears, and I was never really drawn in. From what I’ve read of Simulcra so far, I really enjoy it.
“So, I’m going to get a new patient, and I can’t turn him away…because I’m going to cure him?”
“No. Because it’s very important to the government that he remain sick.”