4.13 /// From Fern Gully to Avatar...

Ever wondered what "Avatar" and "FernGully" might chat about if they bumped into each other in the great forest of film history? Prepare to have that curiosity sated as we embark on a cinematic safari, tracking the conceptual footprints that I believe could link these two eco-conscious tales. Our journey begins by examining the shared environmental themes and transformative experiences of their protagonists, without casting aspersions of imitation. Instead, we celebrate the voice talents, like the incomparable Robin Williams and Tim Curry, who breathe life into these narratives. Our discussion isn't just confined to the silver screen; we also pay homage to Curry's remarkable legacy in light of his health challenges, acknowledging the indelible mark he's left on the hearts of film enthusiasts.

This episode isn't just a stroll down memory lane; it's an invitation to look at these films through a different lens, to see the intricate web of narratives that may connect them all. We weigh the possibility, ponder the evidence, and above all, invite you to join the conversation and share your perspectives on this tantalising theory.

We also stretch our imaginations a bit further. What if I told you that there's a theory that there's a chance all of James Cameron's films are subtly intertwined within a single, grand universe? 

As we meander through the thematic undergrowth of "Avatar," we can't help but notice the tendrils that could potentially link it to other Cameron classics like "Aliens" and "Titanic." 

Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Chapters

• 0:00 Comparing Avatar and Fern Gully
• 9:32 Comparing Fern Gully and Avatar
• 15:12 Connection Between Avatar and Fern Gully

Transcript

Stephen: 0:00

Hello and welcome to Infinite Prattle. On today's episode I'm going to be talking about something that occurred to me quite a long time ago and it's something I've been wanting to talk about for a while, and that's the similarities between the film, in my opinion, avatar, and the film Fern Gully, and whether there's some sort of connection there, gully, and whether there's some sort of connection there, like, bear with me on thiscripted, unedited everything. Welcome. Thank you very much for joining me again. Hope you're okay. If it's your first time here, welcome, welcome, welcome. And if you're a returning listener, thank you very much. Yeah, so I said in the intro, like I think I just want to legal for legality. This is my opinion and I'm not saying that james cameron or any of the scriptwriters or anything are plagiarists or anything like that. But you know, I just feel like you know there's there's a bit of a similarity in my opinion between story and kind of like. Conceptually, I suppose I could go for a lot of things in life, I suppose. Um, between fern gully and and avatar and I've literally just watched fern gully um, I'm recording this quite early because I'm trying to be organized for once. So today's date is the 29th, the 30th of March, but I think this is going to go on the 14th of April. You know, I don't know. You know, you know already, you're listening to it on the date. Well, actually, you might be listening to on the day after that. So whatever day I say this is released, you'll be able to check. Anyway, I always get hung up on that. That doesn't matter. That that doesn't matter.

Stephen: 2:03

Fern Gully Okay, so Fern Gully is like a 1991, 92, 1992 I think it was actually released animation film from Fox and I loved this film as a kid. You know it has voice talents from Samantha Mathis, robin Williams, tim Curry, christian Slater. You know lots of other people that more Americans would probably be more familiar with than me Tommy Chong, jonathan Ward, cheech Moran, so a lot of people involved in the film. Voice talent wise and spoiler alert for anyone that doesn't know hang on, spoiler alert, I never use my sound effects. So you know I'm trying to actually fundamentally use this machine I bought, but yeah, so basically the storyline of and this spoils obviously for Avatar as well, but the storyline of Fern um fern gully in a nutshell is basically um fairy folk living in a little forest, rainforest area called fern gully and there is some loggers coming towards their area and there's a backstory of.

Stephen: 3:26

Hexus is an evil entity who feeds off slime and pollution and basically wants to destroy all living things, I suppose, and he's voiced by Tim Curry. And what happens is Krista is like the lead fairy, she has a curiosity with humans and this is actually kind of where it parallels the Little Mermaid a little bit, to be honest with you. So she wants to go above the canopy and look and she wants to meet a human and she's fascinated with them, similar to the Little Mermaid. You all know I love that film. More on that in another podcast and basically what happens is she ventures out into the forest she's seen some smoke and, against the advice of the elder fairy, who's very, very wise and can do really good magic and grow seeds to scratch into plants and trees and stuff called Magi Loon grow seeds from scratching to plants and trees and stuff called Magi Loon. But yes, she ventures out and sees where this is coming from. It's this big machine and she stumbles across this guy who's you can find. He sees her basically in this bush glowing and he tries to chase her and catch her and he's fascinated with her as he catches her, and then one of the trees falls and the fairy has to make him small to avoid being crushed by the tree. Um, so then he enters their world.

Stephen: 4:51

So, like you might be thinking, where the hell does this come into avatar? But in my brain when I was watching avatar, it was in 2000. Was avatar 2009? Let's quickly google. Um, I'm pretty sure it was 2009, like, I must admit, like, listen, I really like, I really like avatar. It's a brilliant film. That's 2009. Well done, steven. I'm quite impressed. I remember that, um and I love avatar. It's a great film. But I couldn't help when I was watching it and when I came out of the cinema having watched avatar avatar I don't know how to say it, I say it differently every time um, the, in my brain there was a lot of similarities between them. Like there was very much like um a person entering the the other world and becoming friends with them and kind of almost going against what they were doing, what they were up against. I don't know, there's some nuances and in avatar that, you know, don't really follow that, in my brain at least. Anyway, I was thinking was this like a soft live-action reboot, where with Fox at some point, because I believe nothing is Fox own own avatar. Again, I'll do a quick Google. I would think it would be, because I think James Cameron works a lot with Fox.

Stephen: 6:06

I presume it is a Fox release. Just typed in Fox Avatar and it's just come up with loads of random AI generated Fox images, which is really funny. So, did Fox release Avatar? Um, did they? Did Fox produce Avatar? It was produced by 27th Century Fox yes, I thought it was which is now Walt Disney Company, as we all know. Yeah, so I was right.

Stephen: 6:48

So they're both Fox products, like Fern Gully. I believe Fern Gully was actually taken originally from a book and that's where they originally come from. That's where they're inspired from. I can't remember the name of the author, diane someone he'll come back to me Diane Young. So yeah, basically, diane, diane Young. So yeah, basically, basically, fox own both, both, both the rights to both, both the rights to both. That's not even a sentence really. You know what I'm getting at. So my, in my view, was Fox can't copyright themselves.

Stephen: 7:36

So if they were ever thinking about doing like a follow-up to Fern Gully there is a second one, which I've never seen, actually, because I feel like it would, um, you know, kind of paint the the first one, because the second ones are always like worse, I feel, and um, yeah, I don't know, I don't know anyway, um, but in know Anyway, but in my view, maybe they were thinking about doing like a live-action version of Fern Gully, because there's a lot of things being rebooted and such like that. And in my brain when I watched Avatar was is this like a more well-thought-out, more developed, more of the modern age Fern Gully? And that's probably what I'm going for, like, it's kind of like a mixture of a reboot, kind of rewritten tale in my brain. And yeah, because if you look at this again, if you look at the similarities, though, we've got someone entering another world befriending the main female character, who's almost like page, you know, like, um, I don't know, like I was gonna say patriarch, but you know kind of the. I think she's the daughter of, like the, the village leader, and I think that's what it is in in avatar as well. She's, isn't she like like almost like the princess or something? Or very high up in the tribe, um, and then she kind of maybe even kind of semi, falls in love with the main character. Obviously, in avatar they do kind of fall in love and have weird tail sex, but in in in um fern gully they don't do that they. They just they kind of have like a kiss, but nothing really ever happens from that. Because technically Krista's got a boyfriend, pip, voiced by Christian Slater, which he seems okay with all the betrayal I don't know, never really mentioned that at all.

Stephen: 9:32

I suppose it is a kids film. And then you've got the impending doom of, you know, the humans drawing closer, um, you know, destroying the forest, mining for resources, which obviously in avatar was unobtainium, which is a ridiculous name for a. It's kind of almost ridiculous and genius at the same time, which is kind of james cameron's thing. I feel, um, but yeah, I just feel, and I'm not saying like, I'm not saying like avatar is worse for it and I'm not saying like that it's not a good idea. Because I think, I think that if they remade fern gully as a live action film having just watched it, you know it's not as good as I remember when I was a kid.

Stephen: 10:12

It's. It's still a good film. There's some brilliant parts in it, but it's not. It's it's I. It's not as good as I remember when I was a kid. It's still a good film. There's some brilliant parts in it but it's not. I feel it's not a Disney film. I think Disney films are a bit more polished.

Stephen: 10:24

The animation's not great. In places it was used a bit of CGI, a bit of anime style. In places the villain dies off far too easily. I think the villain's not well used. The part of the villain is off far too easily. I think the villain's not well used. The part of the villain is in Tim Curry voices character. Amazingly, he's got such an evil laugh. Tim Curry can do such a brilliant evil laugh. Yeah, I've been loving Tim Curry recently because I mentioned him in the Muppet episode and yeah, he's just brilliant. Isn't he, tim Curry? Terrible situation he's in currently, isn't he? Because I think he's had some strokes or something and left him a bit immobile and such things. But you know what a guy Like, what a career he's had.

Stephen: 11:14

Anyway, comparison between two films, that's all I was going to say when I came out of Avatar. I was just making them comparisons of saying you know, there's a male lead, female lead. The male lead falls in with the female lead, kind of almost becomes part of them and then helps fight against the humans, which is exactly what happens in Fern Gully, and Avatar just takes it like one step further. It takes it to the point of you know, it's like that parallel where the humans are almost trying to get in with the tribe to kind of make it okay for them to invade their area, because that's fundamentally what the avatars are for. They're like kind of go in, say hello, we're on your planet. And obviously it was a separate planet, although they don't actually say where they are. They say they say the humans in Fern Gully, but they don't say they're technically on earth. I don't think it's just presumed. Oh, he's from New York, so I suppose it is. They do say he's from New York, so it is set on earth.

Stephen: 12:13

But I just think that Ava's Hour is like a more developed adult modern day live action, fern Gully. And I still can't get my head around that. Having watched Fern Gully again, I can see where that development came on. I mean, I just said to Sarah we were watching it together, she'd never seen it before, and when I said that she was like oh, do you think that I was like yeah, I said well, you know, know, look, you know the two, two main leads. You know, people are suspicious of the human, which is the same in avatar. There's even a home tree kind of kind of thing going on.

Stephen: 12:46

Uh, when, when the machines are going to chop all the trees down in fern gully, they go into this tree and it steals itself in and um, the character of of magi, she dies, uh, spoiler and um, she turns into like dust, like fairy dust, and each one of the fairies are flying around the inside of this tree. It's like. It's like it's like multiple trees, they like twist together basically, and um, yeah, she, she kind of like turns the dust and kind of handles the hands on to Krista to become the new person. Um, and the dust falls on every single fairy that's in the tree, including Zack, and Zack kind of glows the same as the fairies do. So it's for me that's like emulating that, the part in Avatar where he becomes kind of accepted and is fighting with them and and, yeah, well, he almost believes he's part of that and has that like psychological change.

Stephen: 13:42

Maybe I'm reading into it too deeply, but that's what I feel, that's what I feel and, um, he even starts to feel trees, the tree's pain. He has the connection with krista and he even starts to. You know, he touches a tree after he has the kiss with her and he's they're flying basically because they've kissed. They're in this water and maybe the obsession where wet hair comes from is is this film and the little mermaid. I love like wet hair on a woman really bizarre thing to say, but I do. Um, it's like, yeah, they have this kiss and then they're floating above the pond, basically, and then she flies off and he's not been able to feel the tree's pain because they're all connected with. You know, mother nature and the trees are all connected and all the nature's connected and they can help things grow in the forest and they're all connected. He touches the tree and he realizes the tree's in pain because oil from the humans has got into the water system and, uh, he's obviously concerned and he's like I'm really concerned, but he's been lying to christa because he's been telling me he's not connected with humans. Um, and again, I suppose that's kind of like like avatar and the fact that they don't really believe his viewpoint and his standpoint and uh, don't really want to accept him because of that. But yeah, I just, I really like fern gull and I really like avatar and although they are completely separate films, avatar did come second, avatar did come second.

Stephen: 15:12

Is it really annoying you that I keep saying that differently? It's annoying me. I can't get away from the fact that I think there's a connection there, rightly or wrong. Maybe I'm connecting two things that I really like because I want there to be a connection. And there's no doubt that A-O-Tar is embedded in the James Cameron world.

Stephen: 15:37

And there's a big thing this is a completely separate thing. This is a big theory that all James Cameron's films in some way are in the same universe, just on different timelines or points in time. Should I say way? Are in the same universe, just on different timelines or in different or different type or points in time. Should I say um? So even titanic is technically in canon, um, and if you look at the technology in avatar, it very much mimics a lot of stuff that's in aliens. So if you look at like the way the consoles are, some of the chairs and uniforms and the way they're like the laboratories and stuff is set out, they're like the laboratories and stuff is set out. They're very, very much like aliens. So james common does very much like to have his own kind of styled things.

Stephen: 16:16

Um, and again, I'm not saying that he's ripped off the story, because obviously it is a is a, it is a different story, but I think there's too many similarities to for it to be a coincidence. Or is it just a coincidence because it's just about nature and not killing trees and it's just an environmental thing? I'm and I'm reading far too much into it. What do you think? Am I mental? Possibly, I don't know. Um, anyway, if you've not seen either of their films I highly recommend even I'll just kind of spoil them for you. I recommend, uh, avatar and, uh, fern Gully. Um, fern Gully is just, um, just a fun film.

Stephen: 16:53

It's very short, um and um, it's Robin Williams first voice acting role in an animation film. Um, and he just like, like Robin Williams does, from what I've read on the internet, he just improvised hours and hours of parts like lines for the film which they just animated around, basically. So, yeah, it's, it's pretty cool, which I think he pretty much did for Aladdin as well. They kind of had a script and he just kind of worked around it and just did his thing really, which is what Robin Williams did, wasn't it? Yeah, so I've talked about Tim Curry like brilliant as the villain in the film.

Stephen: 17:49

I didn't realise he played Krista and I actually know her as the villain in the film. And, um, I didn't realize he played krista and I actually know her. If you google her, um, you'll recognize her. She's. She's been, uh, samantha mathis. She's been in in quite a lot of things, like, uh, she was in super mario brothers in 1993. Um, she was in broken arrow. She was in, uh, punisher, the original 2004 well, say, the original one, the 2004 one, which is the one that john travolta was in, is the is the villain.

Stephen: 18:16

Um, yeah, I just think, uh, the voice talent in that film was really good. The songs are really good. Um, ellen john does a song for it at the end is the end titles and, um, yeah, it it's worth a watch. And if you do watch it and you have seen Avatar, let me know if you think what. I think that potentially there's a link in the story, or maybe it's just pure coincidence.

Stephen: 18:45

Maybe James Cameron has never seen Fern Gully. He was probably busy making Terminator 2 at the time, so I don't even know if it. I don't even know who wrote Avatar, to be honest. Was it him? I know he's making the films, but you know, I feel like if he wrote it, it probably debunks it all. But yeah, um, yeah, anyway, I think I'm going to leave it there because I don't think there's anything else to say.

Stephen: 19:17

I think that Avatar took some inspiration or is very similar please don't sue me anyone to Fern Gully the last. Did I give it its full title Fern gully the last rainforest? Um, yeah, let me know what you think down below, uh, in the comments on anything you're watching this on on youtube or or on any of the streaming services, or just send me a message or comment on social media. Uh, and let me know what you think. Do you think fern gully is similar or maybe has inspirational content for avatar, or am I mad? Uh, and which has been said before. So, yes, thank you for listening. That was my take on that. Um, please join me next time. Um, on infinite prattle uh, please like, share, subscribe, comment, all them good things. But mainly, thank you very much for listening and I'll speak to you soon. Thanks for listening to Infinite Prattle With your host, stephen. Follow me on social networks at Infinite Prattle and don't forget to subscribe. Thanks very much.