Avatar Lawsuit Rejected And How Creativity Works

I don't like James Cameron's Avatar. I recognize it is a technical achievement; but the story was hackneyed, the characters cliches, some plot points were offensive and...you know, maybe I'll just write an Avatar review.

I was happy to hear that an Avatar related lawsuit against Cameron was tossed out yesterday. Here are some details from Deadline:

A New York judge today [17Sep14] threw out a copyright-infringement suit by artist Roger Dean — who has created album covers for the likes of Yes, Asia and Uriah Heep — that claimed his fantasy artwork inspired Avatar. “The similarities of each such work are substantial, continuing, and direct so as to rule out any accidental copying or similarity in scenes common to the genre,” the $50 million suit alleged. Judge Jesse Furman of the Southern District of New York disagreed and dismissed the suit, which named Cameron, 20th Century Fox and Lightstorm Entertainment as defendants. Dean claimed the look of the 2009 film was derived from his images of floating mountains and the like, but the court found no substantial similarity.

Here's a comparison of one of the images claimed to have been ripped off along with a still from the film;

While some of Dean's work does look reminiscent of the aesthetic in Avatar the same can be said of many artist and writers. Let's stick with the idea of floating mountains.

While you could look at that and say "ah ha!" the image/concept of floating landmasses is not unique to either Avatar or Dean's work. For example, the anime series Cowboy Bebop featured a terraformed Venus with inhabited islands floating in the sky (image at right). Both Star Trek and Stargate SG-1 had episodes with cities in the sky (The Cloud Minders and The Nox, respectively). And the 1960 Bullwinkle cartoon featured a series of stories around Mount Flatten, which floats due to it containing Upsidaisium. Hey wait, mountains that float because of a mineral with a silly name (Unobtanium)...that sounds more like Avatar than the Dean image. Maybe James Cameron liked Bullwinkle a lot.

Bullwinkle J Moose, savior of Pandora.

I like Dean's art, but the idea of a mountain in the sky is so obvious - haven't you ever looked at a cloud and thought "man, that looks like a hovering snow covered mountain" - that there probably is no single source of the idea. It is certainly possible that Dean's work was one of many things bouncing around in the head of Cameron when he wrote Avatar; after all the artist's work is well-known from rock albums. But to say that significant parts of the visual language of Avatar were copied from this one man's work ignores the fact that many elements of the images and design aesthetic for Avatar can be found in other works of art, film, and literature.

This is an important case for artists, because there is a constant tension between trying to create something original, while realizing that all of our ideas come from a cultural stew. This stew is derived from the stories we read, the music we listen to, the films and TV we watch, all the things we are exposed to that tickle our brain or fire our imagination. Protecting intellectual property is important; but we also have to realize that no creative person is an island. Taking someone else work and directly and knowingly copying it is a problem. If I took one of Dean's painting, removed his name and put mine on it, that would be a crime. But taking images - whether a floating landmass, a dragon in flight or a man in powered armor - that are widespread in art, film, and literature and using them is not a threat to any artist. It is just the way creativity works; a huge feedback loop that builds on the artistry of the past, while offering new sights, sounds, and ideas for the future to mine.