I recently watched the new version of Dune, which has all sorts of allegories about western dependence on Middle Eastern oil. I discuss the details here, if you're interested.

As for Avatar, I am not a fan. My thoughts in detail, quoted from an article I wrote entitled "Ten Bad Films by Great Directors":

"Avatar has the unfortunate distinction of being the only James Cameron film I actively dislike. Even the flawed Titanic is satisfying in a blunt instrument spectacle kind of way, despite one-dimensional characterisation. This however is The Matrix meets Dances with Wolves on another planet, with none of the excitement of the former or the emotional heft of the latter.

Yes, it all looks visually stunning, with lots of lovely “world-building”, great special effects, and otherwise top-notch efforts at a technical level. But the script is a leaden, finger-wagging, humourless bore, with all the nuance of a naïve undergraduate spouting simplistic, reductive student politic claptrap. Repeat after me: “Capitalism bad. Environmentalism good. Capitalism bad. Environmentalism good…” Not long into this tedious sermon, I developed a disturbing, irrational urge to pick up a gun, oppress some natives, and strip-mine a third-world country with exploitative imperialist glee, just to spite James Cameron. Not quite the reaction he was looking for, I suspect.

At-one-with-nature New Age twaddle can be done well when it isn’t preachy (see pretty much anything directed by Terrence Malick, or even Yoda’s monologues in The Empire Strikes Back). But Cameron seems determined to bludgeon his audience into tree-hugging submission, despite his own hugely hypocritical obsession with technology. Oh, and yes, I see what you did there with the 9/11 imagery James. Very subtle."

You can check out the full article here, if you're interested in further cynicism. :)