Avatar vs Star Wars

Avatar versus Star Wars

After thinking about Avatar, it strikes me that there are many parallels with the original Star Wars movie, A New Hope. Both movies had phenomenal success and caught the imagination of many movie fans.
James Cameron's Avatar has definitely broken new ground and has moved 3D pictures ahead. Avatar is a brilliant visual delight and wonderful eye candy and with action to keep you engaged throughout the film.

However, Avatar cannot match the complexity of Star Wars. Star Wars kept you guessing and wondering what was going happen next. Also Star Wars changed the way we viewed movies and the use of special effects. People would return again and again to try to see what they missed and to recapture the excitement.
With Avatar, however, different techniques are needed to present the most mindbending visuals possible. Cameron is known to take very simplistic plots and draw them out over two hours to intensify the emotions and character interactions which often include fear, trust, love, and anger. The amount of time used for the film, brings the audience closer to the characters.
The problem with simple plots is that they are great for emotional drama and excitement but run short on intrigue. If you watch the movie again, you are most likely watching to catch the emotion of the movie, and not so much the intrigue and thrill of it. Star Wars does not run in to this problem because of the complexity of characters which form the clear and overriding theme.

Elements of the stories

Good vs evil
Both films have clearly identifiable “good” and “evil” factions, the Na’vi/Rebel Alliance and the RDA/Empire respectfully.

In SW, our faith in the good side is more abstract. It is just inferred that the Rebel Alliance is good, although we don’t truly know who they are or what they stand for, except that they are against tyranny.
In Avatar the good side is better defined than in SW. We get a glimpse of what the world of the “good” side is...