Avatar: A minority opinion

James Cameron's Avatar is many things. Its amazing motion capture combined with its three-dimensional technology and CGI expertise is a truly unprecedented and beautiful accomplishment. While critiques warned us that the story line would not be original and the characters would be shallow they failed to warn us that the story was completely ripped off from the 20th Century Fox story in 1992 called "FernGully: The Last Rainforest."

Plot summary from Netflix: When a sprite named Crysta shrinks a human boy, Zak, down to her size, he vows to help the magical fairy folk stop a greedy logging company from destroying their home, the pristine rainforest known as FernGully. Zak and his new friends fight to defend FernGully from lumberjacks -- and the vengeful spirit they accidentally unleash after chopping down a magic tree. This fun, animated film features the vocal talents of Tim Curry and Robin Williams.

In "Avatar," the boy is enlarged to the girl's size, not shrunk. And there is a good spirit, not an evil spirit in the tree -- the invading mercenaries in "Avatar" chop down the tree regardless.

Only Avatar goes much, much further evolving the role of the "lumberjack" into a group of uniformed men and women who look incredibly similar to U.S. Marines. Despite Cameron's attempt to clarify that these are "mercenaries," the visual cues speak so loudly that they outweigh the original communication. For example: the clothes they are wearing are army fatigues. Clear. As. Day. Then they start throwing around terminology that we've been trained to identify with the U.S. military, terms such as "shock and awe," and "daisy cutters," and "fighting terror with terror."

As much as I wanted to suspend my sense of reality, because I am a big fan of sci-fi and great CGI work, the images of the two warring parties -- as fictionalized as they were -- reminded me too much of my own personal relationships. My maternal grandmother was Native American and paternal grandfather was part Native American. So in Avatar, all the images of the native Na'vi tribe were non-subtle references to people close to my heart. I also have / had some very close friends who donned those very same army fatigues when deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

I don't care what your politics are, when you have a friend who is in the marines and you're watching men and women on screen being killed, your stomach can't help but flinch. Therefore, I did not enjoy seeing the mercenaries being killed just as I did not enjoy seeing the Native Na'vi being killed -- which means I did not enjoy anything in the last half / culmination of the film -- regardless of its graphic splendor.

And if you're going to rip off someone else's story line, you can at least do them the favor of retaining the best parts. Robin Williams as the voice of the bat was hilarious and memorable....so memorable, that as I watched Avatar, I recalled that bat's lines: "I'm blind! I'm blind! ...wait. It's a miracle! I can see!"

I also recalled scenes from "The Last of the Mohicans." During the part where Jack is introduced to the leader of the Na'vi tribe is a copy of when Daniel Day-Lewis comes in and rescues the girl. They even shot it over his shoulder in the same way...next I remembered "Dances with Wolves" and finally, and most happily I remembered "FernGully."