“Hollywood has this idea about what’s commercial [but] they don’t really know what’s commercial. What’s commercial is what people want to see. It’s that simple, and sometimes they want to slow down and experience something. It isn’t always dack-dack-dack, boom-boom-boom rocketing along. This is what Hollywood has convinced itself that people want to see.

“There are scenes in Avatar that accelerate and intensify things in this fashion, but there are other moments that slow down and see the wonder of this world. There’s this motif in the film of seeing…perceiving through the eyes of another person. Coming in one door and coming out another door — the door of perception.

“[The film] is a political comment on all human history, and the basic pattern of people laying waste to a primitive territory to get what they need. I didn’t want to explain what unobtainium actually is or does. It’s whatever gets people out of their cities and go to other countries and take stuff that doesn’t belong to them.

“The story of the 21st Century is going to be about the depletion of resources. And the wars of the 21st Century are going to be about ‘we need your stuff, and we’re going to justify going in and getting it.’ We’ve already seen that happen over the last decade.

“Technology is a part of us, who we are…we absorb the technology that interests us. How is it primarily used today? Social networking, howya doin’?, monkey chatter. I’ve never seen technology as something outside of the human experience.

“Every film is individual and unique. I believe today that we fulfilled the goals that we set out to do [with Avatar]. Now, we’ve yet to see whether it’s something people actually want to see. I’m happy to be done. I’ll be even happier if people like the movie.”