Avatar (2009)

AVATAR  (2009)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: James Cameron
    Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver,
    Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, Wes Studi
Jake Sully, a disabled Marine now confined to a wheelchair, reports to his next duty station, a moon called Pandora. Pandora's rich in a valuable mineral called unobtanium, but it's inhabited by a race of blue-skinned, humanoid giants called the Na'vi, who fight back when they sense that their way of life is about to be destroyed, which it is. Thanks to some scientific wizardry, Jake takes on the body of a Na'vi warrior and infiltrates the tribe, which allows him to go native, literally. Then he has to choose sides. I'm not sure how this body-transfer stuff works, but James Cameron apparently does, and he spent something like $230 million getting the story on film. He shot it in 3-D, too, which wasn't really necessary, but when you're throwing that kind of money around, hey, 3-D, why not? It's like an eco-sci-fi western, the cavalry against the Indians, and the cavalry in this case are not the good guys. Which makes it subversive, in a way, as much as you can be subversive with $230 million. It broke records at the box office, too. That's the kind of subversion Hollywood likes.