Avatar, marketed as James Cameron’s Avatar, is a 2009 American epic science fiction film directed, written, produced, and co-edited by James Cameron (ALIENS, TRUE LIES, TERMINATOR 2), and starring Sam Worthington (TERMINATOR: SALVATION), Zoe Saldana (GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY), Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez (THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS), and Sigourney Weaver (ALIEN, GHOSTBUSTERS).
The film is set in the mid-22nd century, when humans are colonizing Pandora, a lush habitable moon of a gas giant in the Alpha Centauri star system, in order to mine the mineral unobtanium, a room-temperature superconductor. The expansion of the mining colony threatens the continued existence of a local tribe of Na’vi – a humanoid species indigenous to Pandora.
The film’s title refers to a genetically engineered Na’vi body with the mind of a remotely located human that is used to interact with the natives of Pandora. Avatar is primarily an action-adventure journey of self-discovery, in the context of imperialism and deep ecology. Cameron said his inspiration was “every single science fiction book I read as a kid”, and that he was particularly striving to update the style of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s John Carter series and the deep jungles of Pandora were visualized from Disney’s 37th animated film, Tarzan. He acknowledged that Avatar shares themes with the films At Play in the Fields of the Lord, The Emerald Forest, and Princess Mononoke, which feature clashes between cultures and civilizations, and with Dances with Wolves, where a battered soldier finds himself drawn to the culture he was initially fighting against. © 20th Century Fox. This project was completed under the name of Iconisus L&Y. It is part of the Iconisus portfolio. Dreamogram is a new separate entity and not a continuation of Iconisus.