Please! No remakes!

i was 15 when the Matrix came out, it became my favorite Sci-Fi, because it was dark and had a deeper meaning to it than most other Hollywood movies.
Too bad it became such a hype and didn't improve as the Trilogy progressed.
I wouldn't really have called it a rip-off either because it felt original at the time.
Now when i look back on it, it is still a good movie with a cool concept, it is no longer my favorite but its still in my Sci-Fi top 10 probably.

Initially i compared a lot of the Matrix to Ghost in the Shell, but the similarities in some of the Matrix points you made are spot on as to how i felt as well, i only saw Nausicaä for the first time in November last year, which made me wish i had seen Miyazaki movies when i was a kid.
But the first thing that opened my eyes were the Ohm which made me think of the Sentinels (squidbots) in Matrix, then i noticed Yupa searching for "the One" like Morpheus did, the Valley acting like Zion etc.

Personally i thought the Forest was more like Machine City, but yeah you can take apart any movie this way, to be honest, the storytelling in Nausicaä is not totally original itself either, i'm sure that it is based on older traditional stories or books.
But there is no doubt that Miyazaki's way of putting it to the screen was a great building block and inspiration for future movies, like you said Cameron himself even says that he loves Miyazaki's work.

I still haven't seen Dances with Wolves, but Avatar did feel like Nausicaä, Mononoke, Pocahontas and a bit of Fantastic Planet, also the Tree of Souls really made me think of Castle in the Sky. It is also hard to make an animation movie into a live action one, because animation movies tend to be more fairytale-like, which could make some people think that they're watching a kids movie instead.

Nitpicking:
• Avatar did the colorful world really well like Nausicaä and Laputa, but the story wasn't good enough.
• Matrix did dark themes and story well, eerie surrealism like the God Warrior in Nausicaä, but focused too much on action.
• Alice and Oz had nice effects, but by being fairytales, tended to be too sweet, maybe they're more close to Totoro.
• Neverending Story was "grim and gritty" like Mononoke or Nausicaä but eventually without guts.
• Lord of the Rings was big and pretty, but too much traditional Fantasy, missing the Alien-like insect influences.
• Hellboy II had good Steampunk and Alien-like character designs, but it lacked depth.

Obviously not every Miyazaki movie is equal to the other, personally, as you could probably already notice, Nausicaä is my favorite with Castle in the Sky as a close second, i wish there would be a couple of movies coming up who use these themes gracefully, maybe Avatar 2, 3 & 4 might surprise us after all.
I wonder if Avatar will take a more grittier approach, the Hollywood gloss makes it harder to accept deeper messages, like most people now just complain about Avatars' environmentalist undertone of it. Nausicaä made me care about the Ohm, while Avatar didn't have me rooting for the Na'vi's as much, i was mostly rooting for the Tree (Pun-intended).

I think im kinda losing my train of thought here :) i just love these movies and i wish to see a lot more of them in my lifetime, they are just these kind of movies that you connect with and stay with you

Cheers :)