
Those familiar with Mr. Cameron's work won't be surprised to find that Avatar is set in the future. We meet our hero in a spacecraft as he wakes from hibernation having arrived (after a presumably long trip) at an alien planet known as Pandora.
Pandora is rich in "Unobtainium", an obscenely valuable mineral that is used for... something. We're never actually told. Maybe it cures cancer or maybe it induces mind blowing, full body orgasms on contact. Who knows? The important thing to know is that it costs about $20 million US per KG. A private company, RDA, has set up operations on Pandora, but alas; they cannot go merrily about the business of mining the magic orgasm rock as a large number of pesky natives are living directly on top of the primary deposit of this prized resource.