Yes, that last bit about Pocahontas isn’t original. Doesn’t matter, though. Apparently.

As for “How can they pass on capitalizing on that?”, I was going to suggest that CAD companies might be wary of PR fallout from associating with a plagiarist (assuming he continues to bluff it out and deny Roger his due credit). But as CAD companies were falling over each other to associate themselves with the visually impressive works of a brutal dictatorship in 2008, I guess I’m dreaming.

That being said, James Cameron has simply gone on doing what he has done before. To make sense of this you have to step out of the CAD context and look at the interactive entertainment (i.e. gaming) industry. Countless gamers have called out the obvious similarities between the human technology of Avatar and Bungie’s Halo series. Cameron’s comment on this?

“The funniest thing is when some of the so-called fanboys get up trashing Avatar for looking too much like Halo…” he laughed during a recent interview with me [Patrick Klepek] that aired on X-Play. “It’s like…pay attention. If I’m referencing anything, I’m referencing the source work for Halo, which is my own stuff. So I get to do that. Nobody else gets to do that, but I get to do that. My rule, anyway.”

Cameron was referring to inspiration Bungie derived from Cameron’s film, Aliens. Essentially he is saying that he created Aliens and so he, and only he, is allowed to co-opt it’s (somewhat common) vision and style. The problem with that argument? Well the style the permeated the Aliens franchise was derived from the work of HR Giger. Anyone who has ever seen Giger’s work (mature art to say the least) can easily see the similarity. Yet Cameron feels that it is his movie so there is no need to follow the causal trail of where his own inspiration comes from. Fast forward 30 years and now Cameron is taking credit for another artist’s work.

As CAD professionals, enthusiasts and/or observers we should be prepared to see a great deal more of Cameron. He has discovered two entirely new industries that are gaping maws dying to hear whatever he has to spout off about. The CAD world is eager to attend him because it by far the greatest implementation of advanced computer designs and graphics in the highest grossing movie to date. Cameron also plans to parlay his unsold properties as video games.

When asked if he was interested in creating original IP video games Cameron answered: “I’ve got alot of stories and I don’t have enough time to make them all as movies. That’s something I am exploring with Ubisoft to see if there’s maybe a relationship around just getting some of these story and world ideas into games. Just completely independent of movies.”

Um, ok. So looks like there is going to be a long tail on this Avatar outfall because whether he is making movies or games you can be sure Autodesk products will be involved. How can they pass on capitalizing on that?

- KFD -

Blue people/aliens are there in Roger’s artwork, too.

With the movie making so much money, I am sure lawyers are hard at work looking for ways to get the courts to force the movie studio to share some of those profits with them!

After users pestered the CAD company about the oversight, Autodesk eventually did add the credit line. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XLISP