Avatar ripped off my idea

[Robert_Moriyama]

It has been widely reported that James Cameron had the outlines of "Avatar" in mind (and may have written treatments or even drafts of a script) twelve years ago, but decided not to proceed with it until the technology existed to fully realize the visual effects aspects. It was only when he saw how lifelike (if grotesque) they made Gollum in the "Lord of the Rings" films that he felt that "Avatar" could be made. Even then, a lot of pioneering work went into the effects, and there were significant advances in the "art" of making CGI creatures look like real, living things.

I saw "A Christmas Carol" only a few days before seeing "Avatar" for the second time, and while the animation in "A Christmas Carol" was deliberately stylized to some extent, I am reasonably sure that they did not set out to have the characters suffer from the "dead eyes" syndrome that also made the characters in "Polar Express" so creepy. The eyes of the Na'vi in "Avatar", by contrast, seem as expressive and "alive" as those of the non-CGI humans.

As for whether Cameron ripped off anybody in particular -- the "living planet" idea has been used many times, famously in Ursula K. Leguin's "The Word for World is Forest", but also in many other lesser works of science fiction and fantasy. I wrote a story myself many years ago (probably at least thirty years, I think) in which human colonists and soldiers overran a peaceful race, leading to the defection of one of the soldiers... And the resemblance of the Na'vi to native Americans is presumably not accidental. (One of the lead Na'vi is played by native American actor Wes Studi...) One of the early, joking descriptions for the film was "Dances With Aliens" (referring to Kevin Costner's Oscar-winning tale of a cavalry soldier who sides with his Lakota neighbors against the U.S. Army).

RM