Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Animorphs Forum Classic => Topic started by: Acalio-Laron-Jaham on December 18, 2009, 09:27:04 AM
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Within just the first 10mins of avatar, when they first show pandora and the navi avatar aliens, i immediately thought of/was reminded of HBC, even before i knew what the avatar movie plot/story was.
omg. when i watched it today, i couldn't believe it. its as close as anything you can get in a movie to the hork-bajir chronicles than any other movie out there possibly, unless a HBC movie itself is actually made.
once you make the connections, its so cool. firswt of all, i really loved the movie, and then loved it even more imagining it as the hork bajir chronicles.
the Navi's (the blue aliens in the movie) are tall, muscular and lean, and have hork bajir length tails. they live in the trees, and basicaly worship and take care of it, and then theres alot of scenes of jake (main male lead character when his in an avatar - a navi body, having fun running exhiliratingly across pandora's (name of the alien planet) trees, swinging wildly and stuff with neytiri (main alien female lead character). its just like the part in HBC when aldrea morphs the chadoo and goes running across the trees with dak on the HBC homeworld. jake trusts his navi body to know what to do, to use its instincts to climb and stay on the trees, just like how aldrea used her morphs intincts.
Also, jake when he went in his avatar (navi alien body) he was chosen by the planets mother nature spirit like thing to lead the navi people and help in the time of need against the human invasion, as the navi's were primitive and did not have technology and such. Just like how Dak was a Seer.
eventually, jake and neytiri falls in love and at the end jake chooses to remain as a navi permanently, just like how aldrea choose to remain hork-bajir.
this movie could have so been hork bajir chronicles. this movie alone in itself proves that with our current film-making technology, it is more than possible to make great animorphs movies that would do it justice on the special effects. the andalites, hork-bajir, spaceships and every other thing in the animorphs universe can be done now, as from what is seen in avatar. only thing stopping it i guess is budget.
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That movie looked really stupid to me, but now I will have to see it. :)
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yeah, I kind of thought Avatar was the Hork-Bajir Chronicles except the resource they were going after wasn't some vague mineral but the natives themselves.
I didn't really like it, though :/
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I looooved it. Saw a few Animorphsy connections (Jake the reluctant leader with an older brother named Tom?) Not to mention the mind-to-mind neural connections they all have when they hook up to animals and control their bodies...
It IS Dances With Wolves with aliens, but I still thought it rocked. Go see it now. In IMAX 3D. Or hell, just see it and sit in the front row. Beautiful animation and really cool animals x3
It would completely be my dream job to be a biologist on another planet.
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yeah, i agree. what stood out to me which really reminded me of HBC was the trees on pandora though, the large impressive trees which people could run along.
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I can see the connections with HBC, but for me it was more easily comprable to some of the books in the Ender's series. Especially those that focus on the Descolada and the Pequeninios. Except of course, in Avatar the aliens (*cough* Humans) wanted something (the mineral) instead of trying to destroy something (descolada.)
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Yeh in actuality, many other movies/novels/stories could find quite a bit to relate with avatar, but the reason why i pointed out HBC here is because, well, this is a animorphs forum, and it really is something that you could imagine HBC would be like if a movie of it was made - pandora and the trees (the hork-bajir planet and the trees which they live on and strip bark from), the navi (make them green, give them snake heads and a beak, add some claws and blades and voila! you've got a hork-bajir.
and i don't think theres really alot of other movies out there which comes as close to HBC as avatar, since avatar can be related to HBC both storywise and visual-wise. other movies may just be either visual-wise or story wise, not both. if you know of any, post them.
i guess from my previous posts, it seemed like i thought the story was the thing about avatar which reminded me most of HBC. true, it did, but it wasn't the most. The aspect of avatar which reminded me of HBC the most was the visuals. Within just the first 10mins of avatar, when they first show pandora and the navi avatar aliens, i immediately thought of/was reminded of HBC, even before i knew what the avatar movie plot/story was. Pandora and its large trees reminded me of the hork-bajirs tree homes, the navi's - their large, humanoid bodies with tails and blue skin color both reminded me of hork-bajirs and andalites.
Avatar shows that its not impossible to make a animorphs movie that would do the aliens such as andalites and hork-bajirs justice. from what is seen of the special effects in avatar, its obviously now very possible. if only someone had the commitment, will and budget.
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I'm just glad someone made a really good CG good movie about a whole planet full of aliens and alien ecology, for once :D
*cough George Lucas is now a madman cough*
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I loooooooooved Avatar. And seriously, after watching it, all I can think about is how awesome it'd be if an Animorphs movie got made. Cause obviously the technology already allows it now.. It's kinda frustrating because it made me really really want to see an Animorphs movie now.. >.< Imagine how fantastic our Andalites would look..
Anyone on RAF wanna work on a screenplay? LOL ;D
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I also thought of Animorphs and HBC when I saw it, last Saturday.
I didn't see that Jake's twin's name was Tom! But "Jake", a fight between people who live in trees and people who think they're smarter, the fact that a person from the invader race become like the "primitive" race... + the name Tom... Are we sure James Cameron never heard of Animorphs? ^^'
PS: Another thing who made me thing about Animorphs, but it was kind of stupid lol: when the spaceships shoot on the frying animals... I thought of the female hawk that Tobias liked... ^^' I said it was stupid lol
And I loved this movie ^^
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The visuals... oh, God, that was a pretty movie. Nice parallels to HBC as well.
If an Animorphs movie is made, I want them to get the morphing right visually. It should be creepy and disgusting. I don't think I've ever seen anything in Hollywood that could equate to the way KAA describes morphing. Man... somebody go kick Hollywood until they make an Animorphs movie.
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I had already read some of this message board when I saw the movie so I was expecting to see HBC, but I mostly just saw Disney's Pocahontas. I mean seriously
Sacred tree
Deeply spiritual people with a connection to nature
Fiancee who doesn't like new comers and knows that john smith/jake is a threat to his girl.
Chiefs daughter who won't inherit (in real life Pocahontas wasn't going to inherit her fathers position as succession went through her fathers sisters)
New Age Spirituality
Of course the ending is happy in Avatar
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I had already read some of this message board when I saw the movie so I was expecting to see HBC, but I mostly just saw Disney's Pocahontas. I mean seriously
Sacred tree
Deeply spiritual people with a connection to nature
Fiancee who doesn't like new comers and knows that john smith/jake is a threat to his girl.
Chiefs daughter who won't inherit (in real life Pocahontas wasn't going to inherit her fathers position as succession went through her fathers sisters)
New Age Spirituality
Of course the ending is happy in Avatar
Hm, it's true that many things looks like Pocahontas... So Avatar is a mix of HBC and Pocahontas O_o? lol
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true, it may be similar to pocohontas, but Avatar is similar to many things anyway. And off all the other things its similar too, none of it are similar to HBC.
Pocohontas is similar to avatar, but somehow is not as similar too HBC.
I guess its the larger tree dwelling aliens and how they are primitive and there are large trees is why it was significant for me to point out its similar to HBC.
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Large tree dwelling aliens who are primitive=HBC
everything else=Disney's Pocahontas and Dances with Wolves.
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I saw it last night and it did remind me of HBC in parts.
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I loved avatar i think it was a great movie!! ;D
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hahaha you know what, I have a really huge crush on neytiri atm......
does anyone else? she's so hot and beautiful.....even though she is a CGI alien...lol xD
Something about her personality coupled with that hot, fit, tight and slender and graceful body, those long slender but fit legs, the little clothes she has on, those gorgeous eyes, and to top it all off, her animalistic characteristics when threatened - the hissing she does its so freaken hot.
So yeah. ;D
I'm not a weirdo. don't judge me.
.....
waheva.
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Very noble savage/orientalism:P
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Acalio, if you're weirdo, so do I!
...
Wait... but I AM a weirdo ;)
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I have seen the movie twice, and having read this thread, I certainly do see many paralells to HBC, although it did not occur to me when I saw it, I plan to see it a third in Imax so I can see them clearly for myself. Its got to be one of the crown gems of science fiction of the decade, and I insist every Animorphs fan check this movie out. When I read the Animorphs books, I perceive what I read in the same grand vision as I saw in Avatar, stunning and beautiful. I thought that many of the creatures seen in the movie could be interesting morphs! Even the Na'vi. I also agree their quite attractive, looking somewhat like a cross between runway models and panthers.
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I'm with you in the crush on Neytiri... :-]
And yeah, I can see some parallels with HBC, and I most definietely noticed the whole "Jake with older brother named Tom" thing.
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Well, Horsie and I just got back from seeing this, and I totally agree on the HBC part. Horsie pointed out the Tom/Jake thing, which I totally missed. The whole time, I was thinking of Dak's line: "Be quiet, Aldrea. Tonight my people die. Be quiet, Andalite. Be quiet."
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I saw last night and it got me thinking of The Hork-Bajir Chronicles - so it was nice to see this thread already existed. Also saw the Pocahontas parallels. And the Princess Mononoke parallels - it was essentially the Western world's version of Princess Mononoke, complete with good guys vs. bad guys, ridiculously awesome technology, and a montage sequence. I liked the movie a lot, but there were rigid formulas in place. Within the first ten minutes I already knew the second and third acts. It was a really awesome execution of a familiar formula.
I wish I could see HBC on film but there's the sad reality of the entertainment industry in the way. Lots of the people making the deci$ions feel the indu$try is more important than the entertainment. HBC would be total CGI, with lots of fantasy imagery and no human characters, which makes it a huge financial investment. Huge financial investments need to have a pretty good chance of making returns... and HBC produces some problems.
How do you market a CGI movie with three main alien races and no human characters? How do you hook the audience when the first chunk of the movie features a bunch of mouthless telepathic centaur-like aliens? And the other aliens have beaks? And after taking these huge marketing risks, how can you give such a big budget movie such a downer of an ending? Test audiences would complain. Word of mouth would scare people away: it's a leap getting people to see something so alien, they won't take the risk if they know the movie's gonna be so depressing. It might be possible if the Animorphs brand is revived and finds a HUGE following, and if other risks with film versions of the franchise pay off.
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avatar had a pretty damn depressing ending too once you realize it would be trivial for the corporation to come back with a much bigger force.
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Hylian Dan alot of what you say is good about a HBC, but in regards to your points about the appeal and risk of a HBC having no human characters...well, there has been in the past quite a few theatrical films which were succesful without invivling human characters at all, for example -
a bugs life, the lion king, wall-e, the land before time, happy feet, ice age, dinosaur just to name a few. all of these movies, with the exception of the lion king and the land before time, are all CGI - which as you said, a HBC would be. And each of these movies featured no human characters at all (maybe ice-age 2 had a little baby caveman human girl or something, but thats ice age 2 i think, ice age 1 itself was successful as well).
So, all I'm saying is that its not unheard of, not impossible, for a movie to start of with non-human characters and for the rest of its duration to have no human characters at all, to be successful.
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Anthropomorphic animals have a lot of appeal, whereas it would be tougher to get audiences invested in three unfamiliar alien races - especially a tragedy about these aliens.
I'm not saying it's impossible, but there are some very big obstacles to getting the project green-lighted, and it would take someone with a lot of passion and cleverness to get past them. And even if it is on track with a good director, test audiences could complain about the ending as they did with The Golden Compass for instance. And then the studio gets cold feet and forces the director to give it a happily ever after. The entertainment industry can be a pretty cold place. It likes formulas and track records and safe bets, so HBC would be a tough sell.
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I was honestly expecting it to be a future Pocahontas... And it was...
But I think that it's a movie that was a must-see for me because of how far movie technology has come, and (while it didn't remind me particularly of HBC while I was watching it) it did make me think of all the possiblilities for an Animorphs movie... That would be so incredible! And so doable with the capabilities movie-makers have today!
For the record, I thought Avatar was one of the coolest looking movies I've seen in a long time... But I'm of the opinion that the story and plotline was old and overly cliched...
Very cool movie, indicative of much cooler things to come from CGI movies...
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Special affects were beautiful
Plot was propaganda
the theme was terribly new agey to me.
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haha I thought the same thing I when I watched it. There were many similarities between Avatar and HBC