When James Cameron’s Avatar hit theaters in December 2009, it felt—and looked—like a revelation. A bona fide American blockbuster that considered with clear eyes the settling of the continent, Avatar’s white, Western director asked his mostly white, Western audience to confront the past cost of their present comfort: Indigenous genocide and dispossession. Cameron’s thinly veiled allegory worked precisely because it was thinly veiled, a ball-peen hammer—in the form of semi-nude blue aliens—aimed squarely at imperialism and extractive capitalism. It was about as radical as a big-budget Hollywood film could afford to be. And it was absolutely stunning to boot. Advertisement...