Delgo Vs. Avatar — The Battle Begins!

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And this battle will end about five minutes after representatives from Delgo — a.k.a. “the floppiest flop ever to saunter floppily into flopsville and become Dean Of Failure At Flopsville State University” (sorry; every time I mention Delgo I have to link to that review) — haul in the expensive, Armani-suited, cloven-hooved lawyers from Fox to try and explain to a judge that James Cameron’s Avatar is in any way ripping off their beloved Delgo.

I love the Delgo-Avatar comparisons (my favorite is over at Movieline) and I think there’s a ton of similarity there, mostly in the horrible, not-quite-human faces of the main characters which are unpleasant to look at and utterly distracting, just as it was in The Dark Crystal 20-some years ago. There’s also plenty of similarity in their fantasy worlds of big jungles and scary monsters. What the Delgo people don’t seem to realize is that Cameron isn’t ripping off Delgo, he’s ripping off every Fantasy Writing 101 story for the past two decades… just like Delgo did. They’re both copying the same shapeless, formless source of generic fantasy, except that Cameron also seems to be copying generic sci-fi as well.

Even if Cameron has seen the Delgo website somewhere in its tortured, six-year labor, the idea that anyone could take on James Cameron and 20th Century Fox in court to prove copyright infringement is hilarious and tragic. C’mon, Delgo people. You’ve suffered enough. Don’t go hunting for more failure, okay?