Although we suspect it’s mainly a ploy get a bit more publicity for their film, the makers of Delgo have sent out a press release saying they may sue the makers of Avatar for copying their movie. The press release states that, “From what we have seen, we are amazed by the visual similarities between the two films and we are reviewing what legal options may be available to us.”
It all boils down to the fact that the Na’vi in Avatar look a bit like the fantasy characters from Delgo (if you can’t tell the difference between blue and green, and then squint a bit), and when the trailer for Avatar appeared last week, a lot of place commented on the similarities – as a joke. However the makers of the flop Delgo have now decided to milk that jokes for all the publicity they can get.
We’ve seen the Avatar footage, and it’s not so much a rip-off of Delgo, as that the main characters look a tiny bit similar. Maybe the makers of Dances With Wolves and Quigley Down Under should look at their legal options because Avatar’s about someone who joins the local population and then ‘goes native’. Let’s face it, James Cameron has never been good at finding something desperately original, but that’s very different from copying someone else, and he has a good track record of making his unoriginal ideas work.