Dope Island with Charles Cassady Jr. - Grand Theft Jetsons! 'Avatar' Scandal Revealed!

Listen, it's Charles. I must hurry. 20th Century Fox may use their Internet Kill Switch at any point to stop you reading this article. Cut and past it into a document you can examine and circulate as printout if the Web "mysteriously" goes offline. You may have a little bit of time, while James Cameron is distracted taking down license-plate numbers of everyone not buying tickets to SANCTUM for later harrassment by the IRS. Yes, I have information of a nature harmful to Cameron and Fox. It concerns the top-grossing movie ever made, by some estimates. A groundbreaking picture many said is a turning point in the history of popular culture and entertainment and Storytelling As We Know It, Captain. A defining epic, a masterwork, the stuff that dreams are made of, the stuff that reality will become. I mean AVATAR. The last damn movie I even paid full price to see in a theater (in 3D). I was once like you. A fan. A believer.

Until now. Let me back-peddle a bit. I used to interview a lot of Cleveland filmmakers. From time to time I would come across those who insisted that ideas were somehow being stolen right out of their hard drives and file cabinets by the evil wizards of Hollywood, by John Frankenheimer, David Mamet, etc. They'd lecture me about the legal definition of plagiarism, there have to be nth-number of corresponding plot details. They vowed they had lawyers, had agents, were going to court, show their evidence and expose Universal/Warner/Spielberg/Lucas/George Harrison whoever for the no-good bastards they were and get billions in damages and a compensatory multi-picture deal with Miramax or DreamWorks, etc. I'd nod supportively, and secretly wonder if filmmaking should be declared a mental-health menace.

Thing is, occasionally I hear similar charges brought by slightly upmarket folks. We all know that Art Buchwald sued Paramount - and won - over a claim that COMING TO AMERICA was ripped off from him. And Harlan Ellison, I believe, went through similar legal action to charge that THE TERMINATOR, by wonder-guy filmmaker James Cameron, in fact, was stolen from Ellison's Outer Limits script "Demon With a Glass Hand."

Okay, me, I never thought TERMINATOR had the patent on originality (Cameron should've been supplicant on his knees in front of Michael Crichton, since the notion of a relentless, single-minded killer robot with no off switch, getting increasingly maimed during its mission, was totally the Yul Brynner "Gunslinger" in WESTWORLD). And even AVATAR had borrowed finery - ask any Frank Herbert reader if a planet named "Pandora" sounds familiar, and the basic white-outsider-goes-native-fights-oppressors deal had been seen before in DANCES WITH WOLVES and THE LAST SAMURAI, among others.

But nothing could prepare me for what happened when I sat down to watch 1990's THE JETSONS: THE MOVIE.

Okay, here's where I lost most of you. What's a grown man with no kids doing watching a Saturday-morning cartoon polyp like THE JETSONS: THE MOVIE? What am I, a Case-Western University undergrad? No, nothing so employable. Being low income, I go to thrift stores a lot. Sometimes I get discount coupons if I donate stuff. I happened to find a DVD of JETSONS in a recycle bin, and, as behooves the Code of the Poor, I just thought I'd give it a run through the player before I donated it; some thrift stores still price DVDs a little high, and I wouldn't want one of my fellow social outcasts paying for a used disc that carried heavy scratches, skips, digital fuzz, etc.

So there I am, trying to teach myself iMovie, half-paying attention to the Hanna Barbera feature (which actually did get a theatrical release back in the day, kids, and you can see they upped the budget with some CGI backgrounds that the old, cheap prime-time Jetsons sitcom never had) and I start to notice...Hey, this seems strangely familiar. ...Smeg! Frak! Gods of All Stars!

THE JETSONS: THE MOVIE HAS THE SAME PLOT AS AVATAR! AVATAR IS PRACTICALLY A REMAKE OF THE JETSONS: THE MOVIE!

AVATAR: Revolves around a greedy, evil Earth corporation's destructive mining of "unobtainium" from the inhabited planet Pandora. 
JETSONS MOVIE: Revolves around greedy, evil Earth tycoon Mr. Spacely's destructive mining of a nameless inhabited planetoid for the ore to make his sprockets.

AVATAR: The endangered planet has intelligent, low-tech humanoid life in the form of nature-loving beings called Na'vi, who oppose and fight the mining operations.

JETSONS: The endangered asteroid has intelligent, low-tech humanoid life in the form of nature-loving Care Bear things called Grungies, who oppose and sabotage the Spacely Sprockets automated assembly line.

AVATAR: The Na'vi are considered unwanted nuisances by the wicked Earth military-industrial complex.

JETSONS: Mr. Spacely snarls that the Grungies are "useless."

AVATAR: The Sam Worthington hero, originally recruited as a soldier-spy for the corporation and promised substantial rewards for his services, rebels after living amidst the Na'vi, turning against his Earth masters.

JETSONS: George Jetson is offered a vice-presidency in Spacely Sprockets if he pushes the button that starts the automated mining machinery. George Jetson, after meeting the Grungies, rebels and refuses.

AVATAR: Hundreds of casualties in a full-on war between the Earth corporate-mercenary soldiers and the Na'vi with their human allies. Giant explosions, gunfire, death, poison arrows, AMP suits battling monsters, AT-99 Scorpion gunships vs. SA2 Samson Tiltrotor craft, knives, light and heavy machine guns.

JETSONS: George Jetson wrestles Mr. Spacely. Elroy Jetson falls down a hole with several Grungies. Musses up his hair, bruises face.

AVATAR: Na'vi are tall, blue beings.

JETSONS: Judy Jetson gets a new boyfriend who is a tall, blue being. He's even named Apollo Blue.

AVATAR: Human's interact with Na'vi in the hostile Pandoran atmosphere by becoming "avatars," putting their minds into bodies of genetically engineered Na'vi clones. The Na'vi traditionalists consider this an abomination of the natural order.

JETSONS: Teen-pop sensation Tiffany, the Leona Lewis of her era, was put into the role of Judy Jetson, elbowing out voice actress Janet Waldo, who had been doing Judy Jetson lines since the show began. Animation traditionalists consider this an abomination of the natural order.

JETSONS: Running time was 82 minutes

AVATAR: Running time felt like 182 minutes.

We all did a double-take, remember, at the 2009 Oscars, when AVATAR, greatest movie in the world, lost Best Picture to THE HURT LOCKER. At the time I thought the reason was simple; about 60 per cent of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences voting membership were bitter James Cameron ex-wives. Now I know the real reason, and so, I suspect, did the Academy. But they hushed it up. A lot of people are going down with the publication of these revelations. I don't know where the crisis may take us. It might be like Mubarak's overthrown in Egypt all over again. Cities on fire. Blood running in the streets. Good men dying like dogs. Statue of Liberty all buried in sand and me in front of it yelling "Damn you! Damn you all to hell!" And I guess my job applications to James Cameron's Lightstorm Entertainment and Fox are futile.

But the truth must be told, and I have done so here. I'd just like to thank Bob Ignizio and the Cleveland Movie Blog for having the courage to print this.

Saves me the trouble of learning Wikileaks.