There are only a few stories in the movie business and most of those have already been told.
The Internet Public Library has a great list of some of the basic plots in literature, but it’s up to you and the zeitgeist to come up with something original, relevant and interesting – and yet not predictive.
Many screenplay puritans (and perhaps, more recently, The Academy itself) have spurned the film Avatar as being derivative. It borrows too much from the storylines of both Pocahontas and The Emerald Forest. Do you think it’s a bad thing that James Cameron borrowed a tired old storyline for his movie, Avatar OR are we at the point where it’s all been done before, so it’s time to do it again – only this time, with computers?
