Avatar Ascendant

Why James Cameron's megahit is rewriting the rules and the record books

It has no stars. It's not a sequel. It isn't the screen version of a best-selling novel, a comic-book franchise or the Bible. It's got a lot of battle scenes, so women certainly wouldn't want to go see it. It's also the most tree-hugging movie ever, with a defiantly leftish agenda — at the climax, we're meant to cheer when American soldiers get killed. And what does the title mean, anyway?

Avatar , in other words, has none of the selling points that are supposed to guarantee hit status for a big-budget movie. Yet James Cameron's enviro-epic, with no famous name attached...

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