As Wall-E [2008] makes a fetish of the photographic cinema that it has displaced [through its paratextual quotation of Hello, Dolly! (1969)], so Avatar presents itself a critique of the system it embodies. […] Thus, Avatar is an unusually robust, even blatant, example of Marcuse's repressive desublimation.
— J. Hoberman: Film After Film (Or, What Became of 21st Century Cinema?) (2012)
In the 22nd century, a paraplegic Marine is dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission, but becomes torn between following orders and protecting an alien civilization.