Neytiri (Zoë Saldana, right) teaches Jake (Sam Worthington) the skills he'll need to survive on Pandora. (Photo credit: Weta)

People have been buzzing about James Cameron’s “Avatar” for so long that it’s almost impossible to get away from the questions, even now, a day before it opens in the U.S. Critics seem to be settling mostly on “no” to the all-important query, “Will this be a giant train wreck?” But the jury’s still out on whether the Na’vi look real or cartoony and whether the story is unique or basically an interstellar “Dances with Wolves.”

And then there are the questions about social issues, from racism to disability rights — and, of course, whether “Avatar” is sexist. On one side of that issue are articles in The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. Both play up Cameron’s past female protagonists, particularly Sarah Connor of “The Terminator” and Ellen Ripley of “Aliens,” although, to be fair, Ripley was around and awesome before Cameron got to her. Vanity Fair even calls Cameron a closet feminist. The women in “Avatar,” writes Rebecca Keegan, are film’s richest characters and the ones who have all the power:

Neytiri’s mom, Mo’at, played by CCH Pounder of The Shield, is the shaman of her clan. And to whom does Mo’at pray? On Pandora, even God is a she, and her name is Eywa.

The New Yorker also plays up the women-are-awesome angle, too, including a quote from Cameron that winds up sounding a little dismissive:

Of course, the whole movie ends up being about women, how guys relate to their lovers, mothers — there’s a large female presence. I try to do my testosterone movie and it’s a chick flick. That’s how it is for me.

But then, on the absolute other side of the coin is Playboy’s interview with Cameron, which delves into the hotness of the movie’s female stars. And breasts. When asked whether he designed Neytiri specifically to appeal to guys, Cameron replies, “And they won’t be able to control themselves.” (I guess that means yes.) A lot of that appeal, according to Cameron, started with the decision to give the character breasts — even though the Na’vi aren’t mammals.

It’s a tiny passage in a very long interview, but it struck me, I’m sure in part because I’ve read “The Cancer Journals” by American poet Audre Lorde. In it, Lorde writes about undergoing a modified radical mastectomy and how doctors, therapists and random people changed their attitudes toward her when she refused to undergo reconstructive surgery or wear a prosthesis. Cameron’s decision to put breasts on non-mammals makes me wonder — in modern film, does a character have to have breasts to be a woman? Does a woman have to have breasts to be beautiful?

And, unrelated to breasts — is it just my imagination, or is Giovanni Ribisi looking more and more like Alan Tudyk?