10 Reasons You're Wrong About Avatar
4. Its Inclusiveness Deserves More Praise
Avatar is a fascinating blockbuster for many reasons, but one aspect that's often lost in the shuffle is the movie's inclusive and diverse cast. Many years before representation became a major talking point in Hollywood, Cameron did it without any fuss or ceremony whatsoever.
The large ensemble cast includes Michelle Rodriguez (Latina), Dileep Rao (of Indian descent), Wes Studi (Cherokee), and of course, Zoe Saldana, CCH Pounder and Laz Alonso, who are black, alongside the usual white male contingent.
Save perhaps for the Fast and the Furious franchise, Avatar is more diverse than the overwhelming majority of the highest-grossing movies of all time. That's to say nothing of the decision to make Jake Sully a paraplegic, almost a decade before Hollywood finally gave us an amputee action hero with Dwayne Johnson's Skyscraper.
You can argue that the movie trips over this inclusion a little by having Jake spend most of the movie in an "able" body, but it's still neat to see such a wide cross-section of society depicted in the film. What's more, Cameron has promised that the sequels will be even more diverse.