Actress Zoe Saldana, who brought Neytiri (above) in "Avatar" to life, did not score an Oscar nod for her performance. Director James Cameron blames a misunderstanding of the movie's technology.

The cast of "Avatar" is feeling blue.

The box-office behemoth may have gotten nine Academy Award nominations this week, but none were for its actors - and "Avatar" director James Cameron thinks the Oscar snub is totally unfair.

"People confuse what we have done with animation," Cameron told The Hollywood Reporter. "It's nothing like animation. The creator here is the actor, not the unseen hand of an animator."

"Avatar" actress Zoe Saldana arrives at the 67th annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, California January 17, 2010.[CRI]

More than 15 years in the making, "Avatar" used groundbreaking CGI technology to tell the tale of a futuristic conflict between humans and the blue-skinned Na'vi tribe of Pandora, including an innovative method of capturing the actors' facial expressions.

But Cameron's hi-tech wizardry apparently put off Oscar voters who, Cameron believes, didn't consider the film's performances to be actual "acting."

"We made a commitment to our actors that what they would see up on the screen were their performances, not somebody else's interpretation of what their performance might or might not be," said "Avatar" producer Jon Landau.

Despite the Oscar dis, one movie expert believes "Avatar" may also be breaking new ground in the way people look at acting from now on.

"This is very much the first film of the 21st century," film professor Richard Brown told The Hollywood Reporter. "What we need to do is expand our concept of what the word 'actor' means. It's unfair to take performances as good as these and not designate them as actors."