After our class discussion on Thursday about “What is animation” I realized it could easily be tied into the movie “Avatar” in regards to the necessity of drawing, film and story. The drawing aspect (character design, expression, etc) has obviously been painstakingly gone over. The native people, the Na’vi, are similar enough to indicate they are a species, but diverse enough to have personalities, expressions and the variations expected in a person’s face. The film was also highly technical and was hailed as great piece of CGI and motion capture. As the professor pointed out, there is an issue with a foot at some point during the movie, and while I would expect a highly anticipated and promoted film to not have such errors, one error in a technological undertaking such as “Avatar” does not mar the film as a whole.

Where “Avatar” fails is in the final necessity of animation: story. Avatar ripped its story from “FernGully” and “Pocahontas” (or, historically, the treatment of the Native Americans when Europe started settling North America). The basic plot of “FernGully” is a race of faeries who are facing difficulties with the big bad humans who want to tear down their trees. A lone man from the big bad humans is shrunk down to their size and learns of their hardships and thus changes his stance from tree removal to tree hugging.

Hrm. Doesn’t that sound familiar? Indigenous people with obvious differences from the invading humans. Check. Special trees. Check. Making an invading human live like the indigenous . Check. Invading human begins to trust the indigenous more than his own people. Check.

Onto Pocahontas/American history. The film “Pocahontas” is clearly not historically correct in regards to John Smith and Pocahontas’ relationship with him, but the idea of foreigners invading and declaring the land theirs with limited patience for the indigenous and their peculiar habits is fairly historical. This theme is also carried into “Avatar”. “Avatar” also directly rips the idea of the Grandmother Willow from “Pocahontas”–big tree with a soul, or, in “Avatar’s” case, many souls which they call the “Tree of Voices”. Perhaps James Cameron (the director, producer and writer of “Avatar”) thought pretty pictures and techniques would prevent his audience from noticing the completely unoriginal plot. Unfortunately movies necessitate a creative plot and James Cameron has distinctly forgotten to include one. As Joe Neumier of the New York Daily News succinctly states, “”Avatar” clears the hurdle in terms of being optical candy. Its story, though, is pure cheese.”

ETA: I commented on Myca Taylor’s blog and  Hayleigh Allingham’s blog. I apologize for the tardiness on the second comment, but my computer was annihilated by a worm and is in the process of being restored.

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