Avatar was the 2009 James Cameron film that became the highest-grossing film of all time at that point. Set on the moon Pandora, it follows former Marine Jake Sully as he joins the Na’vi community and becomes caught between corporate exploitation and the defense of Pandora’s environment.
Cameron conceived Avatar years before production could support its visual ambitions. The film used extensive computer-generated imagery, performance-capture technology, and stereoscopic 3D to create Pandora, its wildlife, and the blue-skinned Na’vi. Its visual effects and immersive presentation helped make 3D filmmaking a major commercial trend in the early 2010s.
Avatar surpassed Cameron’s own Titanic at the worldwide box office on January 25, 2010. It also became the first film to earn more than $2 billion worldwide. Later releases and competing films changed the record repeatedly, so the wording “at the time” matters. The Avengers and Star Wars: The Force Awakens were major later blockbusters, but neither was the film that originally claimed this record from Titanic.