5 Moments from ‘Avatar’

…That Are Suspiciously Familiar. To be fair – I really liked the movie. All the hype it has – it deserves. It is one of the better movies I’ve seen from top to bottom from storyline to special effect and yes – I am always suspicious that anything in 3D will be a gimmick. It was done well I am still wearing the glasses. Warning be damned. Bottom line – go see the movie.

That being said I spent the ride home from the movie discussing the finer points of “plagiarism” in the film.  After posting my initial thoughts on Facebook our DC correspondent posted the link to this video.  In a word – this is pretty much what I was thinking post seeing the movie with a few things I hadn’t thought of yet.  Good job Hate by Numbers.

What would I change? Surprisingly not much. I would have used the exact line from William Wallace in Braveheart (“they may take our lives, but they’ll never take… OUR FREEDOM!”).  It would have been a really cool shout out to the geeks watching in a non-Star Wars/Trek way.  I would have cut the references to modern day technology for example when they explain the bomb is like a “daisy cutter” (a Vietnam era bomb that has recently been used in Iraq and Afghanistan).  If your society has mastered interstellar travel and hover planes you might have forgotten about a weapon from that long ago. And I would have had someone else ride the big colorful dragon thing besides the main character.  When main characters do too much it becomes a little “Forrest Gump-y” – really that one guy did all of that?  But some of that is just being picky.  And now your feature presentation…