Hot take: sometimes white savior movies are good. Films like The Last Samurai and Dances With Wolves, both soulful epics where a once-callous white hero finds a new lease on life by embracing (or appropriating) a marginalized culture, were classics for a reason. They’re not without their cringeworthy or misguided moments, and they don’t necessarily have a place in a post-post-modern world where films like Dune and Killers of the Flower Moon are more interested in subverting the idea of white altruism. Straightforward white savior stories are guilty pleasures now, but even the most shameless of the bunch are too entertaining to dismiss outright.
James Cameron’s Avatar is one such relic of the past, or at least it could have been. The film arrived in 2009, at the tail end of a white savior wave, and it got plenty of flack for shamelessly cribbing from its predecessors. Even now, with one mega-successful sequel in the can and many more on the way, Avatar’s legacy is clouded by doubt and disbelief. How could a film with such a derivative, even regressive premise become such a certified hit?
