My Vanity Fair piece on Cameron’s badass heroines, from Sarah Connor to Neytiri….
This is how “meet cute” happens in James Cameron’s Avatar: At night in a jungle on the alien moon Pandora, Jake Sully, a cocky Marine played by Sam Worthington, stumbles into a pack of snapping, six-legged predators called viperwolves. This jarhead is about to become a viperpuppy chew toy when a lithe huntress named Neytiri (Star Trek’s Zoe Salanda) intervenes. Luckily for Jake, Neytiri is handy with a bow and arrow. She’s also smart, bilingual, spiritual, great with animals, and—for a 10-foot-tall cyan-colored woman with a tail—a babe.