criticism about Avatar

Adding to the racial dynamic is that the main Na'vi characters are played by dvd collections actors of color, led by a Dominican, Zoe Saldana, as the princess. The film also is an obvious metaphor for how European settlers in America wiped out the Indians.

Annalee Newitz, editor-in-chief of the sci-fi Web site io9.com, likened disney dvd collection "Avatar" to the recent film "District 9," in which a white man accidentally becomes an alien and then helps save them, and 1984's "Dune," in which a star trek next generation dvd white man becomes an alien Messiah(ishiner).

"Main white characters realize that they are complicit in a star trek entreprise dvd system which is destroying aliens, AKA people of color ... (then) go beyond assimilation and become leaders of the people they once oppressed," she wrote.

"When will whites stop making these movies and start thinking about race in a new way?" wrote Newitz, who is white.

Black film professor and author Donald Bogle said he can understand why people would be troubled by "Avatar," although he praised it as a "stunning" work.

"A segment of the audience is carrying in the back of its csi miami dvd head some sense of movie history," said Bogle, author of "Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies & Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films."