Nothing tugs on the heart's strings like love, and consequently, it makes for a very effective form of rhetoric. The scene I am referring to of course is none other than when Jake's avatar link unit is breached by Colonel Quaritch and Neytiri sees his human body for the first time. She unfailingly saves him from certain death and affirms her love for him despite the biological discrepancy that belonging to differing species presents.
As Pandora's toxic atmosphere asphyxiates Jake's exposed human body, and Neytiri cradles his lifeless form, we are confronted with the likelihood of his death. We witness Neytiri's massive, sleek Na'Vi form crouched over Sully's prone, paraplegic figure, and are reminded about how different they truly are. Throughout the entire film, the characteristics and personalities of the two lovers have been constantly juxtaposed, mostly through Sully's blundering naivete and Neytiri's fluid instinct. This hearkens back again to Jack and Rose, who hail from opposing social classes and consequently lead very different lives and appear (at least initially and outwardly) to be very different people. In both the Titanic and Avatar, Cameron attempts (and succeeds) in making the profound and perverse nature of love aware to his audience. Impossible romances are his specialty; he sells the fantastic beauty of the bond between the characters he creates and somehow manages to draw us in, not only do we believe in the relationship between the Na'Vi and humans (or English aristocracy and an American street rat) but we genuinely rejoice when that fictitious love prevails (or despair when it is cut short in the freezing waters of the northern Atlantic). In both cases, we are left in a wistfully depressed state, longing for the feeling and meaning in our mundane lives akin to those on the silver screen. Congruity between films aside, the message that the scene makes is one that bears testament to the overwhelming power of good old fashioned, western-conceptualized L-O-V-E. After committing an array of heroics and sacrificing his own well being to protect his woman (or Na'Vi) and succumbing to forces outside the realm of masculine control, the male protagonist is embraced in a near death state by his significant other. She wraps him in her arms, the spitting image of support and nurturing, and washes him in a torrent of emotion and tears, despite the fact that his a a full four feet shorter, does not possess blue skin, and belongs to a different species altogether, or that he doesn't have a penny to his name, possesses absolutely no mannerisms of civilized society, and is abhorred by your family and betrothed. The cliched sentiment that love transcends all boundaries is the one that Cameron attempts to make here, and through breathtaking CGI, effective (if somewhat formulaic) storytelling, and beautiful development of fantastical characters and their relationships, he achieves that sentiment.