But what's bugging me about what appears to be the plot of the movie is this: the movie seems to imply some things about disabled people and their desire to escape their bodies that strike me as somewhat uncomfortable. I'm able-bodied, and I'm fully aware that I have absolutely no idea what it's like not to have part of my body move, or not to have part of my body at all, much less what it's like to live with a disability. But I'm also aware that I have no right, and no grounds upon which, to declare that people's lives would be better if they were able-bodied. And so it seems a little odd, and unnecessary, to me to use disability as the device that prompts Sam Worthington to try to enter another world. You can want to escape your life if you're able-bodied just as much as you can if you're in a wheelchair.
Perhaps I'm being overly sensitive. But I'm hard-pressed to think of a movie in which a major character is just disabled, nothing more, nothing less, where the plot is not an inspirational story of difficulty overcome, or some sort of tragedy. It's the same thing with token black characters, or token gay characters, except movies don't even really have token disabled characters as a trope. I'm glad Glee has a character in a wheelchair whose disability doesn't appear to be a major issue, but that's one show, that's aired one episode. We'll see how it goes. When representations of disabled people are so limited, I think we have to be thoughtful about every single one of them. Avatar may make effects history. When movies start including disability as a measure of diversity, rather than as a tragic vehicle, it'll be history of a quieter, but more socially important, kind.