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[Plane Sailing]

Once I realized I was watching "Ferngully PG-13"

I've seen many people complain that it was too like Ferngully, but I have to wonder whether people have actually watched ferngully, as I can't really see any points of contact at all (apart from perhaps in one film a bulldozer knocks over an evil tree and in the other film a bulldozer knocks over a good tree? And they both have a swimming scene?).

Cheers

 

[Gog]

I've seen many people complain that it was too like Ferngully, but I have to wonder whether people have actually watched ferngully, as I can't really see any points of contact at all (apart from perhaps in one film a bulldozer knocks over an evil tree and in the other film a bulldozer knocks over a good tree? And they both have a swimming scene?).

Cheers

A human, transformed into a native creature, comes along to save the noble locals from the big evil company. Although comparing the two is like comparing Doc Hollywood and Cars. Yeah they are similar but it's hardly a story unique to those two movies.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Well, Doc Hollywood == Cars, so I don't think that is a particularly good comparison.

In Ferngully the guy is shrunk by the fairies to their size (doesn't become a fairy), and he isn't there to save the noble locals from the big evil company, but from the evil supernatural spirit released from a tree by a logging company (and it isn't him that saves them either)

To my mind 'Dances with wolves'/ 'man called horse' are slightly more similar in theme. Ferngully though? Not at all!

 

[Gog]

Well, Doc Hollywood == Cars, so I don't think that is a particularly good comparison.

In Ferngully the guy is shrunk by the fairies to their size (doesn't become a fairy), and he isn't there to save the noble locals from the big evil company, but from the evil supernatural spirit released from a tree by a logging company (and it isn't him that saves them either)

To my mind 'Dances with wolves'/ 'man called horse' are slightly more similar in theme. Ferngully though? Not at all!

Well yeah I think those two are more simliar also, doesn't make Ferngully less similar though.

 

[Desdichado]

6. A very pretty movie, but it's like eating cotton candy. Nothing's really there except sugar and air.

 

[shilsen]

I'll take a brief stab....

The Na'avi were Indians in a Nathaniel Hawthorne novel, only cooler, prettier, and more awesome. They were, however, also nearly terminally dumb and hidebound. That view of them is simultaneously reverent and paternalistic. The mix doesn't sit well.

Indeed, both strong ethnocentrism and a heavy dose of Mighty Whitey. Still an amazing film, but it could have been much more.

That about summed up my response to catsclaw227's question. Ironically, Cameron's presentation of the fictional aliens (which, BTW, were alien only in the sense that elongating a supermodel and painting it blue is alien) was just as othering as the attitude of the villains in the movie.

 

[Desdichado]

Yeah, I've never seen Fern Gully, so I don't know. I did find this kinda funny, and quite accurate, though.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Yeah, I've never seen Fern Gully, so I don't know. I did find this kinda funny, and quite accurate, though.

Brilliant!

 

[Klaus]

Yeah, Pocatar == Avahontas.

 

[Desdichado]

This might not be the right venue for it either, but the Circvs Maximvs thread on Avatar has been derailed by a tongue in cheek argument about which wall to wall porn movie is the most important movie of our generation, so I'm not going to hold out much hope that any good discussion's going to happen there for a while.

The question of the white man's guilt fantasy and the "mighty whitey" cliche that so permeate Avatar and other movies of that ilk (Dances with Wolves, Last Samurai, etc.) is an interesting one. I read an online article recently where it said, rather than have a "mighty whitey" character that the audience can identify with, who after a few weeks of crash courses in native culture is suddenly a better native hero than any actual natives, plus the chieftain's daughter now has the hots for him, why not tell the same story with an actual native character?

Of course, the answer to that is: Robin Hood. Oppressed Anglo-Saxon native who rises up to halt the colonial Normans and put a stop to their exploitative ways, etc.