Splash is just the Little Mermaid in Disguise
James Cameron’s Avatar is a big deal, technologically speaking. Without the bells and whistles, it is still a decent story. It should be because it worked extraordinarily well for Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves. But hey, Kevin wasn’t the first one to tell that particular tale because you can take the man with the gun falling for the native princess and aligning himself with her tribe all the way back to Pocahontas. Are you having an OMG moment? Or did you recognize that Avatar is simply a high-tech retelling of a seminal story featuring a blue Pocahontas? OMG! It’s unfortunate, but most stories in film or on television can be traced back to an earlier version. Pretty Woman is Pygmalion. Supernatural – Cain and Able [note: the writers of that show acknowledge and seem to embrace their connection to the old testament fable about good and evil]. And so on…. In literature, we refer to the phenomenon of recurrent themes as TROPES. And that’s not a dirty word. Because ...