Maes
I like big butts!
Posts: 7955
Registered: 07-06 |
OK, I finally went ahead and watched it (having to book a ticket in advance for one of the city's two theaters with an IMAX-3D projector). I have to add, this is the first 3D movie I ever watched in my life.
Was it original as a concept? Definitively not. During the whole duration of the film, I couldn't stop thinking about references and elements taken from other films, books, novels etc.
Just to name a few, first the very obvious ones, in no particular order:
- Apocalypto, Tarzan, The Emerald Forest etc. for the eco themes, and not only.
- Pocahontas. The whole "Noble Savage" and clash of cultures thing.
- Conan the Barbarian, Dancing with Wolves, the last Mohegan, the Last Samurai, etc. for the "getting to know your 'enemy' so well that you switch sides" thing, more "Noble Savage" and "Warrior's Honor" concepts.
- Dinotopia, in particular that need for mutual bonding and choosing between hunter/rider and flying steed.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion and anything involving mecha: that whole "pilot sync" thing, although the tech aspects of it were not the dominant theme.
- Macross/Robotech: more mecha and...Valkyrie ;-)
- Starship Troopers, for the same reasons as mecha stuff.
- Star Wars. Yup.
- Fantasy settings like LOtR's and Never Ending Story's.
- Never Ending Story in particular got a lot of references and similar settings (the flying dragon, that luminous forest (Perelin), the pervading essence of all Existence, the story about self-discovery and seeking etc.
- Do I need to explain "War on Terror" and "Shock and Awe" ?
- References to the Vietnam war, as well as the wars against American Natives abound.
And now the not so obvious, yet significant reference:
The Blue Swan, by some Romanovsky Boris guy. It's rather improbable that you'll ever stumble over it unless you read a lot of sci-fi, including Soviet Russian sci-fi.
"The Blue Swan" was a short novel talking about a team of army scientists exploring a luscious jungle word, whose only sentient species was represented by a race of blue giant predatory birds that fed by attacking and devouring the local fauna by consuming them through their acid-secreting wings. They were however sentient, had a language, lived in caves and even lit fires and used tools.
Throughout the novel, it was frequently mentioned that Earth had become an overpopulated, polluted place, and that once their mission were complete everyone of them would have to give a hoot "cleaning up". To make better contact with the "Blue Swans", the humans used a device that allowed them to transform (rather than just remotely control) into any being, including the Blue Swans. So a few of them went to live among them.
The novel took it to the point that one of the team members totally embraced the Blue Swan's way of living that he turned on his human team mates (eventually killing and devouring one of them), and when he was captured and turned back into a human said that he didn't feel human anymore, he felt a Blue Swan and didn't give a shit about dirty old Earth anymore. After much thought, he is allowed to be changed permanently into a Blue Swan and spend the rest of his life on the planet as one.
Now how's that? ;-)
There's probably a lot more that I missed/can't think of, but the point is that the only original thing is the way Avatar brought all of these together. Which was, I must say, awesome and very well done. A must see in any case,
Last edited by Maes on 01-10-10 at 00:53
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01-07-10 01:54 
