Avatar and the Broken Main Character - Story Analysis -- StoryFanatic

Jake Sully is no Luke Skywalker:

When any film begins, an audience implicitly places their trust in the authors to deliver something of substance. When certain potentials are set up, as in the case of Jake’s dilemma regarding his legs, the audience expects a certain outcome to be played out. They may not know how he’ll answer that question or what the outcome will be, but they do expect it to come. Unfortunately, Jake never grew to a point where he could trust in something else; he never had an opportunity to turn off his own targeting computer. Instead, that need to trust fell into Neytiri’s throughline, needlessly breaking the structure of the story and destroying any trust the audience had that the film would deliver a concrete and meaningful story.