Before 2009 was officially over, the much publicized movie Avatar was finally released – a movie that marked the return of James Cameron as a director. It set the record of being the most expensive movie made ever. Thankfully enough, it also broke the record of gaining the highest weekend opening gross for an original movie. Like Cameron’s last box office hit, Titanic, Avatar is also expected to horde trophies in the next Academy Awards.

With the movie’s success, questions arose if the director was sending some message to moviegoers. One of these messages could be “go green”. This could be true as Cameron is a self-proclaimed environmentalist. In the movie, the topic could be mainly seen on the reason why humans were leaving earth and searching for other resources in other inhabited planetary bodies such as the moon Pandora. Cameron also admitted that the movie has an anti-war context to describe the atrocities brought by America to small countries.

However, the most controversial message being raised up is racism. The Na’vi beings, the extraterrestrial people of Pandora, seem to have a stunning resemblance to Africans and American Indians. The idea that these beings were saved by a white man who underwent an experiment to become an Avatar (half human, half Na’vi) was called “patronizing” by one critic.

Hidden messages or not, Avatar is a great movie. It has been in the making for more than a decade so movie quality is very well represented.