Some works of fiction and artwork become highly influential and inspire future works for generations to come. Oftentimes you'll see a spin off in turn influance the original when it comes to long running properties and such. IF this is true I look at both sides of this debate as being stupid because inspiration is highly incestuous and it's not surprising that two modern works of military science fantasy wound up looking a lot alike.
Generally speaking James Cameron hardly invented Military Science Fiction, however I think he took the artwork and concepts from a number of novels and used it to make his stuff in "Aliens" look fairly realistic like an extension of modern technology as opposed to something as far out as the typical blaster or phaser inspired weapon in similar works of the time period. Halo borrowed from this as well as some of the core works, as well as things like Warhammer 40k (old discussion). I think James Cameron is lying if he claims he wasn't inspired by other designs. I think Halo fanboys should feel honored if they think Halo was good enough to inspire him that directly. I also think James Cameron should be a bit flattered to have his work being compared to what is a successful franchise irregardless of what people say about it.
Honestly I've never entirely understood why people get into these giant denial-fests whenever it comes to the question of them being inspired by something else. Probably legal paranoia more than anything, but still it DOES get annoying.
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That said, I'm glad James Cameron made more money than he spent on Avatar. I personally feel it's rather mediocre. One of those movies that has been ruined by it's simple, and one sided message rather than benefitting from it. Had he found a way to do something very similar without all the preaching I think it would have been better.
I mean right now, even the "poor oppressed indiginous people" this movie is sort of a homage to have their panties in a bunch because they needed a white guy to save them (some stuff about this is coming from the local indian tribes especially strongly). On top of this you have "WTF" responses from The Catholic Church who are upset that the movie is promoting nature worship as opposed to "real religion" (that's what their saying, not me even if I'm a christian). While taking a pretty stereotypical "living planet" idea apparently James Cameron managed to convey it badly enough where a lot of people seem to see the results as more akin to god (or *A* god) than a take on say "Ego The Living Planet", "Deathworld", or the writings of James Schmidt or whatever.
The bottom line is that this movie has serious problems that are worth discussing/criticizing than whether or not some designs were inspired by Halo. Heck, personally I think his Mecha was inspired by the third "Matrix" movie more than anything (though I suppose he would talk about the WALDO fight scene at the end of Aliens).
Of course this thing was intended to be a franchise, and honestly it's already recouped it's massive budget, I suspect in the next few years it will become a liscence to print money, deserving or not. In the end I'm surprised he even really bothered to answer that criticism if he was going to answer any. I dunno, maybe because he's afraid Microsoft might actually come after him given a hand hold or something.
