... and perhaps, even more bluntly, it's Tarzan, it's Lawrence of Arabia, it's a very common trope indeed in heroic fantasy of anay sort. There's even a reality TV show based on the premise -- Tribe? I see the ads, anyway.

I'm more interested in the reason why people seem to have their critical faculties so much more explicitly engaged while watching Avatar than during a regular action romp. Is it because they're already firing overtime trying to make the uncanny valley puppet people real?