Avatar and the curse of originality

So Avatar is a re-telling of the Pocahontas-John Smith story except this time, the natives win.


Reviewers have groused that it bears a too-close resemblance to "Little Big Man" (1970) and "FernGully" (1992) "The magical inhabitants of a rain forest called FernGully fight to save their home that is threatened by logging and a polluting force of destruction..."

Just for fun, I'd like to like to add my own comparison, to "Battle of Algiers" (1966) by Gillo Pontecorvo where the lo-tech insurgents battle the intruding French occupying force. More precisely, the character of Colonel Quaritch in "Avatar" reminded me instantly of Colonel Mathieu in "Battle of Algiers." The two characters are very similar, right down to the well-fit camouflage fatigues they wear during briefings.

But movie critics need to be reminded of what all you Shakespeareans out there already know: originality takes second place to the tale-well-told. I guess we should call it the Homeric tradition of storytelling: where everyone in the audience knows the story already. They know how it's going to end and who lives and who dies, but it's the voice of the storyteller that they've come to hear. My Dad said the same thing a few weeks ago in a different way: that Giuseppe Verdi must have had a really big ego to write his opera "Macbeth" (1847). To think that he could top Shakespeare. But of course the story was just source material. The real work was making the music.


At the other end of the Great Hall of Storytelling is suspense. The "What happens next?" story; the story where "I can't stand it, the suspense is killing me." This is Alfred Hitchcock land. It's very hard to tell a suspenseful story, whether it's around a campfire or in a movie, because you've got to have your technique down just right, or you'll ruin everything.

The middle ground, just to be a little academic here, is occupied by the movie serial, where we don't know the story, but we know that the hero will not die, and we're still kept in suspense by the "cliff-hanger" elements of the story. You young guys know this as "Raiders of the Lost Ark" territory.

So where does this leave "Avatar"? Steve Martin sprayed all those little white floaty things like they were roaches at the Academy Awards last night. I think history will be as kind to "Avatar" as it is to "Titanic", whose special effects looked pretty impressive back in 1997.