Avatar a rip off?

If you have not watched Avatar, but want to, you should avoid reading this topic. It has spoilers.















I just finished watching the movie "Avatar" by James Cameron yesterday at 7:15 p.m, and I thought it was just a rip off of Halo. Sure, the storyline is almost completely different, but some things are just rediculous. Let's compare, shall we?

Similarities:
The RDA have very similar technology, still using bullets and rockets.
The Scorpion in the movie, which is a an advanced helicopter, looks almost exactly like the hornet in Halo.
The flying alien creature, called by the humans as "banshee", has the same name as the flying covenant vehicle in Halo.
In both series', the humans are more advanced than today.
The scorpion in Halo has it's name taken by the helicopter in Avatar.
The marines in Halo and the soldiers in Avatar use almost the same strategies as each other.

Differences:
In Avatar, the aliens are less advanced.
In Halo, the Covenant are more advanced.
The aliens in Avatar are the main sympathetic characters, as their home is being destroyed.
The humans in Halo are the ones being attacked by the aliens.
In Avatar, the storyline is like "Dances with Wolves", where a human becomes one of the aliens and fights for them.
In Halo, the humans are trying to defeat the Covenant and destroy the Halo rings.


All in all, I think James Cameron switched the roles of the aliens and the humans and made it a family-friendly film for tree-huggers. He also probably used some ideas from Halo and tried to make them his own. What do you think?

I do not think it as a rip off. But I agree, Scorpions do look like Hornets.

And when you think about it the pod they landed on the planet with looks a lot like a Holycon Cruiser.

I was thinking that too. James Cameron used a lot of ideas similar to those in Halo. I can't help but feel as though he copied some of the Halo ideas. Remember, Avatar came out around almost a decade after the Halo series first debuted.

James Cameron started making Avatar in 1998, so it´s two years befor Halo:CE.

True. My dad said he saw the first Avatar preview. The halo series is new and increasing every year.

Yeah I know that he made it before Halo started, but is it really a coincidence that Avatar and Halo both have subjects that have the same name (Scorpion and Banshee) and a remarkable similarity between the RDA and the UNSC?