Avatar may be the highest grossing movie of all time, and you probably have heard how the storytelling wasn’t that original, but now you can really find out how unoriginal it was. Just as Cameron’s “dream” of a Terminator rising out of the fire actually turned out to be a couple of Outer Limits episodes written by Harlan Ellison, Avatar is startlingly similar to a 1972 Ben Bova novel titled “The Winds of Altair”
The classic SciFi novel tells the story of humans trying to terraform the planet of Altair IV, where they cannot breath the air. The natives of this planet are a cat-like race (hmm, the Na’vi in Avatar look a little like cats) and Humans are able to transfer their minds into these cats in order to explore the planet safely. Throughout the course of the novel, the main character inhabits the body of one of these cats (just like in Avatar) and grows to side with the natives against the Military in the story.
Due to the success of Avatar, this science fiction classic is now back in print. You can find it at any bookstore (saw a copy at Barnes & Noble the other day), or grab it off Amazon in either print of Kindle form.
August 31, 2010
#1
I’ve also heard comparison to Pocahontas (in Space), Furngully and Nausicca (Valley of the Wind). Shakespeare once said there are only 5 (now 6, he didn’t know about technology) plot lines. That leaves a pretty short list of stories. The problem with Avatar isn’t really an originality problem (true of most stories); but the fact that he made a mess of the storyline and characters.