When the first 'Smurfs' movie was released, James Cameron was 11 years old and, we assumed, borrowed a little from that cartoon for his rendering of the Na'vi people in 'Avatar.' But the good people over at The Fab Life unearthed a better theory: Playboy magazine. When the first 'Smurfs' movie was released, James Cameron was 11 years old and, we assumed, borrowed a little from that cartoon for his rendering of the Na'vi people in 'Avatar.' But the good people over at The Fab Life unearthed a better theory: Playboy magazine.

The site points us to this comparison of model and actress Veruschka von Lehndorff from the January 1971 issue with Zoe Saldana's Neytiri from the highest-grossing film in history:


Having been born in 1979, I can only speculate from stories and hearsay on what "the 70s" were like. But if the von Lehndorff photo is any indication, I missed a good time. I can only imagine what von Lehndorff was thinking when she first arrived on the photo shoot, only to find four quarts of blue paint and lights affixed to a giant tree limb waiting for her.

So what do you think? Cameron would have been 16 when this issue came out, a time when both science-fiction and nude, blue tree-dwelling women consume a boy's mind. Coincidence?