The rea; Avatar lawsuit shold be based on Cameron lifting the entire plot of the Disney version of Pocahontas.
The rea; Avatar lawsuit shold be based on Cameron lifting the entire plot of the Disney version of Pocahontas.
Sleeping at home is killing the hotel business!
A "copy"right only prohibits copying. It does not prohibit "being influenced by." Dean had no legal case, but Cameron owes him an intellectual debt at least.
Shakespeare stole "Romeo and Juliet" and "Hamlet", but no one whines about how big a thief he was.
"Good artists copy. Great artists steal." - Pablo Picasso
Last edited by rcarlberg; 09-20-2015 at 10:54 AM.
The point is that all artists find inspiration somewhere. A great artist takes that inspiration and puts his own stamp on it, makes it his own, makes it such that, in the future, when somebody thinks of that image or that sound or that move, they think of the great artist's version, not the originator. That's stealing.
And yes, I think "Avatar" will stand the test of time.
"Unobtanium." Perhaps Avatar 2: The Legend of Curly's Gold will see them looking for "hardtofindium."
Sleeping at home is killing the hotel business!
Really? It only happens to be the highest grossing movie of all time (followed by "Titanic") with three sequels being produced. After adjusting for inflation, it drops to second behind "Gone With the Wind". (Now, these numbers are for theatrical sales and don't include DVD/Blu-Ray sales and rentals.)
OTOH, "Star Wars" was a really sucky movie that made a lot of money and spawned an empire. And, that movie was ripped-off from a bunch of sources: samurai movies, WW II fighter plane movies, dungeons and dragons, and "Silent Running", for example.
its obvious he has a hard on for James Cameron
Avatar is the perfect summation of source-binging and the inevitable diarrhea. What Cameron did was the equivalent of that one "artist" who gives himself paint enemas and stands over a canvas. The final image, much like Cameron's movie, is what the public gets.
In the '80s, I read a novel by Alan Dean Foster called Midworld. I'm not sure if Cameron ever read it, but the movie reminded me of parts of that book. This book, which I've never read, has also come up in myriad "Did Avatar rip off ___?" discussions.
http://www.toplessrobot.com/2009/10/...y_probably.phpIn this story:
- The protagonist is paraplegic and gets around in a wheelchair
- Bitter at his disability, he’s only happy when he’s telepathically controlling a artificial, lab-made creature which is used to explore Jupiter (which is harsh but livable)
- This creature looks like Jupiter’s native alien lifeforms, which are blue, cat-like and and use primitive weapons to fight off the planet’s other predators
- The protagonist — in his “avatar,” if you will — meets some of the female aliens and begins to fall for aliens and their culture
So… exactly like Avatar, then. Of course, the cover of the Call Me Joe novella shows a cat-centaur type thing, and Avatar‘s cat-aliens are humanoid, so Avatar is actually less inventive than the 1959 book.
Now, is Cameron ripping off this Poul Anderson book? I say FUCK AND YES.
correct, but then there is a criteria for that. for example, you really cannot trademark a term that is popularly used and you can lose a trademark that becomes a popularly used term. it's why writing magazines have ads from companies saying things such as "roller blade is a brand name, so please refer to them as inline skates".
"Alienated-so alien I go!"
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