Dileep Rao shows up briefly in this clip from Avatar, James Cameron’s high-tech yet Luddite tale of a soldier going native. The story evokes some obvious parallels like the European colonization of the New World. Cameron reportedly paid close attention to fashioning a bow-and-arrow culture which rides steeds bareback going up against white men with ships and guns.

The Na’vi are purely fictional, the tale a Star Wars-like saga with visuals Cameron self-deprecatingly revers to as ‘fantasy van art.’ But the story of a white guy ‘going native,’ becoming the tribe’s leader and doing battle with the West sounds a whole lot like The Last Samurai, in which Tom Cruise taught the emperor of Japan how to be a proper Japanese. Next they’ll do a yoga movie with Shia LaBeouf as Paramahansa Yogananda’s guru.

It’s a neat trick, this betrayal trope. You can have your cake and eat it too. You can show off the toys of a technically advanced culture while telling yourself the hero is a good guy in the end. Historically the turncoats would have been invaluable sources of enemy intelligence, not the new politicians in town. But in the movies, it’s never played that way. East of the date line, the white guy leads the nation, gets the girl and teaches Eskimos about snow. West of it, all white characters are villains or buffoons and Jackie Shroff just happens to be police chief, even in Korea.

If Avatar does well, maybe a blue-skinned Krishna epic will get funded here. I hear Carlos Mencía is available.