Avatar Nominated for Best Picture Oscar

I was looking for a reason to post some more stuff about the movie Avatar and the Academy Awards nominations announcement generously provided one. As the title says, Avatar has been nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture. Apparently, it's even the "expert's pick" as odds on favorite to win in that category. In all honesty, I have no problems with the movie's seven other nominations, especially for Best Visual Effects. But Best Picture? Seriously? (See my review if you want my very detailed opinion of the movie.)

Yesterday I ran across a couple of interesting additions to the Avatar phenomenon. The first is this video review of the movie. This link is to part one, which is 10 minutes long. Part two, which runs about eight minutes, can be found at the top of the Related Videos section on the same web page. There are some really funny bits in the video reviews, plus it's an accurate critique (in my opinion).

The second is for "Avatargate," in which there is serious speculation that Cameron lifted large chunks of the story in Avatar from an eight-issue British comic book series titled Firekind. The comic book series features a lush, wild planet with an atmosphere that is toxic to humans, blue-skinned aliens, flying dragons on which the aliens ride, a planet-wide psychic connection, floating rocks, humans bent on wiping out the natives to get their hands on something available only on this planet and a human who joins the blue-skinned aliens to fight against his own race. The human is even responsible for psychically summoning the planet to help defeat the humans.

While the comic series is obscure, having appeared in 1993 (one year before the first script treatments for Avatar -- hm...) and never having been reprinted, it was published in the well-known and well-respected comic anthology series 2000AD, home to Judge Dredd among many other titles. Even if you have never heard of 2000AD, you can bet the bank that James Cameron has. Further more, if the comic book series were reprinted and released today, you can be certain Amazon.com's reviews would be filled with Avatar fanboys claiming the comic was a blatant rip-off of the movie.

Will future versions of Avatar include a credit to the creators of Firekind similar to the one now found in his earlier movie Terminator? Only time will tell.