IS IT JUST ME?
Something popped in to my head a while back when I was watching Avatar. See the thing is that the Amp Suit from Avatar…
… looks just like the Power Loader from Aliens.
Then I realized that the ending of these films are EXACTLY the same. They feature a human in a human looking machine fighting an Alien. Only difference is that in Aliens, the Alien is the bad guy. In Avatar, the Alien is the good guy.
Now, Cameron has been quoted as saying he wrote Avatar before making Aliens. I wonder if he took the ending for Avatar and worked it into Aliens… and then recycled it nearly 25 years later.
Oh, and both films revolve around mining. I’m just saying… IS IT JUST ME???
THE LIST 
September 9, 2010 at 3:37 am
Makes sense. I doubt Avatar was a fully fledged story back in the 1980s though. He had only about three months to write three screenplays – Terminator, Aliens, and Rambo 2 (I think in 1983) so if he had a drafted version of Avatar I’m not surprised he borrowed from it. By the time he got to the end of writing Aliens he was probably pushed for time!
…but I like the link with Aliens and the reversed roles. Had another writer/director done it I would have been crying plagiarism!
September 9, 2010 at 3:44 am
You’re spot-on dude! I’m not sure if you were reading my space back then, but when AVATAR hit theatres I said this…
Essentially, AVATAR feels like a James Cameron Greatest Hits compilation. Take the effects of THE ABYSS, the action of ALIENS, the gunfights of T2 and the forbidden love of TITANIC. Cameron has taken his best tracks from those efforts and compiled them into one imaginative playlist…
September 9, 2010 at 8:08 am
It took this long for that Load Lifter correlation to pop into your head? 😛
Or how about the flying troop transports looking suspiciously like HKs from the Terminator series. If you want to go a bit further and more neurotic you could say he took the horse chase scene from True Lies…Good old Recycling Cameron 😉
September 11, 2010 at 1:53 pm
See below.
I noticed but never heard an uproar about it so I just asked Is it just me? That’s all. Apparently Hatter mentioned it too but I missed it.
September 9, 2010 at 10:54 am
I agree with Mad Hatter. It’s like Cameron was doing an homage to himself. The great tree falling and crushing everyone beneath it is a nearly shot for shot remake of the smoke stack on Titanic doing the same thing. There are tons of examples.
September 9, 2010 at 11:24 am
Thanks Blake!
However I think the difference between me and everybody else in this comment section is the fact that I liked AVATAR.
September 11, 2010 at 1:53 pm
I “liked” it. The story is horribly boring though. Like Citizen Kane! 😉
September 12, 2010 at 5:26 am
Nope I liked Avatar too Hatter!!
September 12, 2010 at 5:30 am
@ Kai… Really? Are we really going back to Kane again??
September 12, 2010 at 7:11 am
Twas a joke, sir. We’ll let that be!
September 12, 2010 at 12:18 pm
I started watching it today. I did not finish it.
🙂
September 9, 2010 at 4:55 am
The power loader resemblance I nudged Yayo in the theater and mentioned something. They even showed it at the beginning like they did in Aliens in a way that you kind of knew it was going to play a pivotal role by the finale. I almost wrote a post on ALL the films that followed with mech warriors that looked nearly identical to the power loader, Matrix Revolutions is one that is a damn near copy (though it still kicks ass). If you want to really even stretch the influence, why not look at the Chicken Walkers in Return Of The Jedi. These could have easily influenced a ton of that kind of dig since then. Hell, even Voltron is a glorified Mech Warrior, but I agree the context it was used in is a mirror of Aliens, and good call on the finale.
Hatter did kind of nail it though and I actually recall reading that before. It is kind of a greatest hits thing, and for that I love it. I just hope he has some new tricks up his sleeve for the sequels. After waiting ten years, I didn’t mind some of the repeat stories told in different ways, but now I want to be wowed.
September 11, 2010 at 1:55 pm
Apu Nafu’s machine from Revolutions gets a pass for being bad ass though.
September 12, 2010 at 5:27 am
Its okay to take influence from other films, even your own, as long as you put new twists on them, and it was badass.
September 9, 2010 at 5:05 am
Avatar borrows liberally from a good few things. Basically, it’s a Photoshopped version of Dances with Wolves. Now with added ending-of-Aliens! 😉
September 11, 2010 at 1:56 pm
I will watch Dances one of these days and look for the correlation. Own it but never seen it.
September 12, 2010 at 5:27 am
Good movie. LONG movie, but damn good movie Kai.
September 9, 2010 at 5:45 am
I noticed this when I first saw it. Yea, Cameron takes a lot from Aliens and makes it worse. I mean we’re rooting for the aliens? Seriously? I want the humans to win, dammit. I’m a human. Why am I rooting for the smurfs?
September 11, 2010 at 1:57 pm
hahaha… well played. These are the offspring of an Azrael raping Smurfette situation.
September 9, 2010 at 9:06 am
Duh! Obviously, there was a lot of recycled stuff in Avatar ranging from entire scenes to James Horner soundtrack. I just saw this a second time (on DVD), really not that good a movie after the ooh and aaah from the 3D.
September 11, 2010 at 1:58 pm
Agreed… the DUH! was a bit unnecessary though! 😉
September 9, 2010 at 10:29 am
Haha…good catch. Although fun and impressive to see in the theatre, this was Dances with Wolves in space. Cameron’s films are always weak script-wise…
September 9, 2010 at 12:58 pm
Really?
You’re going to compare the films and NOT mention that Paul Reiser and Giovanni Ribisi’s characters are almost exactly the same?
September 11, 2010 at 1:58 pm
Yeah… they are carbon copies. That’s a great pull.
September 9, 2010 at 1:14 pm
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Andrew Robinson, Andy Taylor. Andy Taylor said: Is it just me? http://bit.ly/csn3UT […]
September 9, 2010 at 2:20 pm
the only real difference is that Avatar bites the big one
September 9, 2010 at 3:54 pm
I wanna point you to an article I wrote a while back. It’s not about the power loader, but it’s similar…
http://dementeddoorknob.blogspot.com/2010/02/james-cameron-formula-whyd-we-expect.html
September 10, 2010 at 6:19 am
Yeah, I think you’re just late to the party on this one, Kai. Sorry, bud, it’s true.
September 10, 2010 at 11:26 am
Yeah man, I was thinking the same thing when I saw it. Almost everything in the movie can be traced back to other films/stories, and the mech is very similar to Aliens. It was one of the things I minded least about Avatar because for me in traditional sci-fi worlds, certain pre-defined things can co-exist between stories, such as mechs, pre-cogs, space travel, without being straight up plagiarism.
September 10, 2010 at 5:43 pm
Okay, I’ll respond to all these individual later (I’ve been working ALOT) but I thought this in the theater just never got around to writing it up.
September 11, 2010 at 1:33 pm
I totally thought the same thing. Self-copycat.
September 13, 2010 at 9:34 am
Noticed that immediately and I ain’t complaining. Movies generally need more power loaders.