Unpopular take: I think Avatar ripped off Fern Gully way more than people admit

I saw Fern Gully again last weekend at a friend's house and it hit me how similar the plot beats are to Avatar. Both have a forest spirit, a corporate bad guy, and a protagonist who switches sides after falling for a native. I brought this up at a movie night and got laughed at, but I swear the structure is nearly identical. Has anyone actually sat through both back to back and compared scene for scene?

3 comments

3 Comments

charles_young9225d ago

You really sat through both back to back? I don't think it's that cut and dry. Fern Gully is about a fairy and a logger in Australia, Avatar is a sci-fi soldier on another planet. The forest spirit in Fern Gully is a tiny magical creature, the Tree of Souls in Avatar is a giant glowing network. The love story in Fern Gully is more like a weird crush, while Jake and Neytiri have a full romance arc. They share a general "save the forest" theme but the details are way different. I think people just latch onto the broad strokes and miss how much else is going on.

phoenix_bailey25d ago

Read somewhere Cameron actually cited Fern Gully as an influence, @charles_young92.

the_terry25d ago

Charles says "people just latch onto the broad strokes" and that's the whole point though. The broad strokes are exactly what James Cameron does best - he takes familiar stories and rebuilds them with better visuals and bigger stakes. Fern Gully had to work with a 2D budget and a weird side plot about a chainsaw, so of course the details would be clunkier.

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