Ha! Here are a few more comparison images for you: http://img.denihilation.com/delgovatar.html

Denihilation FTW! Awesome, awesome, awesome.

The smell of turkey is just getting stronger.

It's reminding me of Thanksgiving.

You just described every RPG I have ever played.

Stu, I love your Delgo obsession. When I included it in my own Avatar list today, I wasn't sure it really fit. But you nailed it with this thing.

Actually Delgo's probably a rip-off of Avatar...James Cameron wrote the original scriptment for Avatar in 1995, and it's been circulating the internet for years. In any case, Avatar is definitely not the rip-off here.

Hey, you need to check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-hRhGxqxpQ

Proof if proof was needed.

Yea, and um, like, that guy William - he ripped off both these guys when he penned Romeo & Juliet.

Funny, you called it parallels between two movies, when in truth, you just pointed out every single required plot line for every sci-fi/fantasy story out there. Check Terry Brooks and the Shannara series, Raymond Feist's Magician series. (although his strong leading lady didn't ride a dragon, she could transport herself. The main characters childhood friend rode the dragon.) Speaking of dragons, ever read the Dragons/Dragonriders of Pern series, by Anne MacCaffrey? Piers Anthony? Please educate yourself and do more study on the genre, before you start pointing fingers accusing someone of stealing a plot line. There is no plot line to steal. It's what every story in that category has to have to be successful. Whether it passes muster on screen is another thing. You'd have to look really far back in the history of science fiction/fantasy writing, to the very first story, to find out who started it (Jules Verne probably) and everyone else stole from him.

Nice, STV, nice.

True true areaderofthegenre

Those tropes are quite common in that genre

HOWEVER,

Look at the panel by panel comparison posted aptly by denihilation

http://img.denihilation.com/delgovatar.html

Looks like a rip off to me.

Lamar Jackson,

And I have no doubt, if the author of this article, took the time, to look up other films of the genre, and noticed the films frame by frame, he would find the same angle/shot to compare panels to in "Star Wars" and "Lord of the Rings". Those are typical and more common if you looked.

Every huggy lovey scene has the two holding/looking at each other. There is, I know, the same poses, between Anakin and Padame. In the "Lord of the Rings" it's Aragorn and the elf princess, they too are in arm holds. My point is, the author of this article is trying to point similarities, in an effort to question authenticity and did someone steal someone's idea, when in truth, all his points are based on generalities, not specifics.

If the characters shared similar names, if their names started with the same letter, if they shared the same powers or vulnerabilties, I could see his point. But EVERY fantasy movie with an alien, has a frame just like the two posted, so you shouldn't compare them against one another, to say they are the same and ideas stolem. Pointy eared blue tatooed people have been sneaking through the woods trying to save the world for eons.

Creepy spider looking things a hundred times larger than life, again, look at Tolkien. Looks alot like the thing that got Frodo. I bet there's a shot matching thhose two, from the Ring movies.

The only panel I don't think looks typical for a movie is the first panel, of the dragonrider. That, indeed, actually looks like a cover of one Anne McCaffey's books.

I think the panel by panel comparison needs to be based on the twists of each story, i.e. show me each using his powers, not creeping through the woods...EVERYONE creeps through the woods, of course you have to show that, and how many angles can you really shoot/draw that to make it look different? To convince me of his point, he should focus on something other than what we have seen, in what is obviously in everyone else's body of work, not just these two.

Don't know if that makes sense. I still don't see a "rip off".

As a fan of Delgo, I must say, even IF Avatar is a total "ripoff" of Delgo, and I mean straight through to the story following almost the exact same arc ...

I don't care. I liked Delgo, I thought it really had some interesting things to offer. It wasn't stupendous and the animation was a bit lacking, but still very good.

Why don't I care though?

Because Avatar LOOKS AMAZING! If it is a "ripoff", let's just call it the worlds best REMAKE EVER!

Yeah... but... this is in 3-D!!

Wow. This thing has turned into a town hall meeting.

Ha! I guess they finally made an Elfquest movie -- twice!

avatar has been an idea of james camerons for years so it cant be a rip off. also their is another movie called battle for terra which has a very similar plot (humans attempt to take over alien world, aliens fight back). also your "eerie" comparisons could be taken from many other films, and the one about a flying machine in floating rocks is just being petty. Avatar is a very original idea and the special fx will blow your mind. go see it.

i think it is probably all genre coincidence, i certainly wouldn't say Cameron ripped off Delgo, but it's still cool and amusing to look at! thanks for the article!

It looks nothing like Delgo. Those frames are all typical of the sci fi/fantasy genre.

"Both films feature big, scary, fanged monsters of various types threatening their heroes". Like we never saw those before.

It appears Delgo is the only movie the author has ever seen. Of all the movies he could have drawn comparison from, he chose a film that made little money and few people cared about.

If anything, it reminds me more of Star Wars (the prequels) and Starship Troopers rather than Delgo.

This is the stupidest thing I have seen in a long time. Tell me one good movie you like and it can be picked apart like this. Completely meaningless.

That said, the trailer WAS in fact underwhelming. I am no geeked out fanboy but I was looking forward to this and was disappointed by the trailer like everyone else and their mom. But I did attend Avatar day in Oslo a few hours ago, and I must say that it looked VERY different in 3D, fortunately! It was actually kinda amazing to be honest, not just the 3D, because you completely forget that youre watching it in 3D after about 5 minutes (due to sober and controlled use of it of course). But the animations, CG etc. I think looked much better when you actually saw it in clips that lasted longer than the 2 second clips in the trailer.

Well Delgo is very much a rip off of Avatar. Cameron wrote the screenplay back in 1994 which circulated the web for a few years, and in 1996 he announced that he planned to make the film. Delgo on the other hand began production in 1999 after the script hit the web and the announcemnt of Avatar. Now looking at the two movies it appears as if the creators of Delgo read the script for Avatar and decided to change it a bit and make their own film.

This is like taking a light skinned black man and mexican and standing them side by side and saying that they are the same thing. This is an absoloutley pathetic comparison.

is it really fair to try and set similarities after seeing just the first trailer? besides as others pointed out, cameron had this film on the drawing board for years now
and with these similarities:

the picture of the them cuddling, well i cant imagine anybody having the camera be used to examine somesones hair while this is happening

the running pic, doesnt most films with action have running at some point?

the big war cry, i would imagine a race would do this to raise moral and set things for a more epic scale for the big fight ot come

an emotional scene, well this being a cameron film i expect emotion and a good portion of time to be used to help establish those emotions

a ship flying by giant rocks, ever heard of an asteroid field?

a giant monster, where would the fun be if their was a alien planet and not have giant monsters

dispite that i will not judge the film until i see the finished product on the big screen because knowing cameron the film will probably be just completed a week before release

Erm, well Delgo reminds me of Bugs Life

This IS a joke right? You seriously think Cameron, after being in preproduction for years, suddenly decided to change the entire look of the film after seeing Delgo less than nine months ago?

Umm one has Freddie Prinze Jr and one has Sam Worthington. 'Nuff said

and Cameron ripped-off the title from the Nick animated show forcing them to change their title to "The Last Airbender." Does he have an original bone in his body?

In reality, this film is more of a ripoff of Dances with Wolves.

"Our once injured American warrior goes to the Frontier (final frontier) where he meets a squaw, goes 'injun' and turns against his cavalry compadres to fight the morally superior fight."

Dances with ELVES

What this article does point out is the pool of common elements that everyone in Hollywood (and Hollywood wanna-be) draws from, when making their "original" contributions. Yes, many of these conventions are genre conventions, and will be threaded in most narratives of that genre. But in literature (as in film), you separate the "fascinating" fantasy from the "dime-a-dozen sale-bin" fantasy by looking at how the text departs from the incestuous pool of conventions and adds something unique, interesting, captivating. So far it seems like all the main things that separate Avatar from a film like Delgo revolve around effects and computing power (the fact that it's rendered better, the fact that it's 3D, the fact that it had a bigger budget). Which is kinda a disappointment for a film that was built up so much. I wanted more than just awesome effects.
We'll see once the full version comes out...

"Both films feature aircraft zooming through fields of massive floating rocks"
I don't give a crap about either film but I don't think those are floating rocks in "Avatar". Looks more like a series of land masses reflected in a body of water. There is even a waterfall on the side of the big one.

The main similarity is that they both rely on a narrative that is as ancient as they come. Neither showing any originality either in terms of depiction of an alien world.

I laughed when I read this. How much is Fathom Studios paying people to write this garbage.
You can't copyright this stuff:

"heroic male leads who sprint through woodsy shadows in foreign lands"
Are you suggesting that other films don't have heroic male leads? what about woodsy shadows? Is this the only film that has ever featured that? X Files must have had dark woods and not woodsy shadows.

"tough but emotional female leads"
Because all films have weak emotional female leads and Delgo was revolutionizing the concept.

"big, scary, fanged monsters"
They need to sue a lot of horror movies and video games for stealing this idea.

"alien warriors uncorking their fiercest battle cries"
We'll ignore that Predator did this first so they don't sue you for stealing their idea, but you go ahead and act like you came up with this story beat first.

Flying rocks?
The artwork looks just like Concept art for Guild Wars. But they didn't think of it first. Who else has used it? X-men, Beast Wars, Avatar: The Last Airbender, & pretty much anything with an Airship in it.

The female and male lead holding each other for a kiss?
Are you serious? How stupid does that sound?

The only similarity these two have are the flying winged lizards but you don't have a copyright on that either. Besides, He-man or for those of you that remember, Blackstar, did it over thirty years ago.

Star Trek producers should sue Battlestar Galactica because they have "humans" on "spaceships."

They are both based off of Romeo and Juliette.
You can't copyright a type of shot or even shot composition.

This was surely a joke. Both movies have love as a part of the story? Man, this is something new in the industry. Warriors have battle cries? What a surprise. Heroic male lead? They have stolen from Superman and Spiderman, I guess. They have emotional women? What a similarity. They probably stole the flying beasts from the Lord of the Rings, but it's nothing serious.

Both films feature big, scary, fanged monsters. Like other 1000 movies don't...

Let me see:

Guy in wheelchair controls remote "alien lifeform" in hostile remote planet: checked (wikipedia "call me joe", 1957)

"Realistic CGI": checked (8 years old Final Fantasy)

"Realistic CGI" in stereoscopic 3D: checked (Beowulf)

"western" invasor comes to foreign land to conquer only to fall in love with native girl and fight on her side: checked (Pocahontas, dancing with wolves)

"Floating islands": checked (many, many, many, like Delgo)

"Dinasour" attacks people: checked (Jurassic Park)

"Mecha" battle suits: checked (Matrix, Mangas)

"Flying dragons horses": checked (Delgo, Dragons'n'Dungeons galore)

Tough marines+Sigourney Weaver in space+Tough female pilot+war "airplanes-spaceships": checked (Aliens)

Yeap. Definetly Avatar is absolutely, completely, unlike nothing anybody has ever seen before. At all.

Seriously? I watched both previews and saw no similarity (at least story wise) minus the screen capped comparisons above, and of course all the common Cliche's the use in every other movie. I can take most sci-fi fantasy movies and find similar positioned screens. If anybody is whining about it Star Wars did it first... I kid, I kid. Not to poo on anyone's parade but after seeing Delgo's trailer I did not want to go rushing out to see it. Loading college grade CG, and bad story telling, with tons of recognizable celebrities, to me, says STAY AWAY!

Oh man, I've never seen, aliens, a kiss scene, dinosaur riding, and running through the woods in any other movie, they must by copying.

except for the flying islands everything else sounds like a regular hollywood sci fi epic movie. don't forget battle for terra also had flying aliens and big beasts.

I don't know anything about either, but the images for Avatar look way better than the ones for Delgo.

Delgo looks like some crappy kids' made-for-TV animation.

NOTE TO ALL.......

READ Alan Dean Foster's book Mid-World & THEN tell me about rip-offs!!!

Thanks Michael S., I'm glad someone else saw the similarities to Mid-World (came out in 1975 and still one of the best books I've ever read).

I love how folks are getting pissed over the film being called Avatar thinking he stole it from that crappy nick animation. Get over yourselves. There are movies and games and television shows that predate that bloody cartoon and all of them carry the same name or similar ones. Like that cartoon somehow owns the rights to a word. And secondly, you cannot even compare Delgo to Avatar, it's night and day.

Anyone with a brain can see they are in no means the same movie, nor is one a rip off of the other.

Granted I have not read the tons of comments, but just the article itself.

However, I was incredibly amazed at what generalized comparisons this article offered.

So they are the same movie because....both movies feature a love subplot? a strong female lead? a heroic male lead?

Well duh, isn't that the case for about 75% of all movies?

I mean, honestly, you could LITERALLY compare Delgo to Star Wars using the EXACT SAME points used in the article above, and it would fit just as well as Avatar...in fact, it would fit just as well with Lord of the Rings and almost any other fantasy movie out there.

This article is a travesty and a poor excuse for good journalism. We are all dumber for reading this article. At no point in the rambling words did we even come close to a coherent point. May god have mercy on the writer's soul.

Ok, a little melodramatic mixed in with some Billy Madison, but you get my point.

All this is another attempt to water down very BASIC aspects of Avatar's story, while ignoring the incredibly original ideas and content within the story.

a love story, floating rocks, shouting monsters, a crying girl, someone flying a dragon... has been there millions of times before, noone can copyright faiytale's content. ;)

delgo is cheap, unoriginal and not known, avatar in the other hand its all of the oposite
end of discution

Hey, we're not done yet, there's more parallels and they're even eerier!

Both films feature humans.

Both films feature walking.

Both films feature fighting.

Both films feature monsters (oh, sorry, you mentioned this already).

Both films have special effects.

Both films take place on an alien planet.

Jesus Christ you can make up another million of those! I'm not saying I'm a big fan of Avatar - it kind of sucked, actually, but this is just pathetic. Don't you have anything better to do?