James Cameron's New Movie "Avatar" to Use "Motorcycle Riding Badass" Template?

James Cameron, the genius behind such movies as Aliens, Terminator 1 and 2, True Lies, and The Abyss, has a new movie coming out this fall.

“Avatar”, a sci-fi action movie, stars Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Giovanni Ribisi, Stephen Lang and Michelle Rodriguez, all of whom can be seen in the new pictures released yesterday by the studio.

In one of the images we see Sam Worthington wearing a Harley-Davidson shirt and sitting in a bar. Is this the story of an average tough guy who rides motorcycles and plays pool in bars, turned action hero who saves mankind? Does Sam’s character, “Jake Sully”, ever get on a motorcycle in the movie or just shows his Harley support by wearing the T-shirt?

Are motorcycles (especially Harley-Davidson motorcycles) an instant “this guy is a badass” tool/cheat used by movie directors/producers/writers to quickly paint a picture of their character as a tough guy?

Yes, and they’ve been doing this for a long time.

See the rest of the article to see a shot of the motorcycle “riding” tough guy from Avatar, and several more pictures. I’ll toss in a synopsis for you in case you have no idea what this movie is about. Stay tuned for the first trailer to come out tomorrow (I think!).

The story’s protagonist, Jake Sully, is a former Marine who was wounded and paralyzed from the waist down in combat on Earth. In order to participate in the Avatar program, which will give him a healthy body, Jake agrees to travel to Pandora, a lush rainforest environment filled with incredible life forms – some beautiful, many terrifying. Pandora is also the home to the Na’vi, a humanoid race that lives at what humans would consider to be a primitive level, but are actually much more evolutionarily advanced than humans. Ten feet tall, with tails and blue skin that sparkles, the Na’vi live harmoniously within their unspoiled world. But as humans encroach on Pandora in search of valuable minerals, the Na’vi’s very existence is threatened – and their warrior abilities unleashed.

Jake has unwittingly been recruited to become part of this encroachment. Since humans are unable to breathe the air on Pandora, they have created genetically-bred human-Na’vi hybrids known as Avatars. The Avatars are living, breathing bodies in the real world, controlled by a human driver through a technology that links the driver’s mind to the Avatar body. On Pandora, through his Avatar body, Jake can be whole once again. Moreover, he falls in love with a young Na’vi woman, Neytiri, whose beauty is matched by her ferocity in battle.

As Jake slides deeper into becoming one of her clan, he finds himself caught between the military-industrial forces of Earth, and the Na’vi – forcing him to choose sides in an epic battle that will decide the fate of an entire world.