Avatar (2009 film) the Rings" (literature). It was a tougher sell ..." The film received mostly positive reviews. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 83% based on 301 reviews, with a rating average of 7.5/10. The site's consensus reads "It might be more impressive on a technical level than as a piece of storytelling, but "Avatar" reaffirms James Cameron's singular gift for imaginative, absorbing filmmaking." On Metacritic — which assigns a weighted mean score — the film has a score of 83 out of 100 based on 35 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". CinemaScore polls conducted during the opening
Avatar (2009 film) added that "the Na'vi represent something that is our higher selves, or our aspirational selves, what we would like to think we are" and that even though there are good humans within the film, the humans "represent what we know to be the parts of ourselves that are trashing our world and maybe condemning ourselves to a grim future". Cameron acknowledges that "Avatar" implicitly criticizes the United States' role in the Iraq War and the impersonal nature of mechanized warfare in general. In reference to the use of the term "shock and awe" in the film, Cameron said, "We know