@ SunshineCase
The film is multi-layered. Just because it has the themes of Gaia and corporate greed, it does not mean that other themes are not equally present. Some people can see them. Others not.

Btw, I’m a bit surprised by yr use of the term “mulatto”. Are you trying to be ironic? Or are you unaware of the origins of the term? Most multi-racial people prefer to call themselves of mixed heritage or interracial. I prefer the term “mixed race” for myself.

I think you missed my article’s point. Avatar isn’t set in a historical context, which allows audiences to compare its story to both historical colonialism as well as modern examples of war, while pondering how humanity should interact with foreign people in the future (on other worlds). If all you can take away from it is a “white guilt” story, then you are missing the bigger picture.

I think you raise some valid points. Certainly the film’s plot and characters are somewhat flat, but it didn’t really take anything away from the experience for me personally. I don’t think the film was meant as an intensive character study, but I too would have liked to know more about Quaritch’s motivations. He was a great villain, and I wanted to know more about him.

When corporations behave badly, there usually isn’t much else behind it other than pure greed. There are many examples of ecological disasters and native populations being treated abhorrently by oil companies for example – and part of what makes their actions so evil is that it is fueled by simple greed, and the knowledge that their bad behavior in lands far away will likely go unpunished.

The notion that Eywa or the planet’s consciousness understood it was being threatened thanks to Jake’s appeal, and organized the fauna to cooperate in the counter attack may seem like a cop out to some people. However, I think it was one of the better uses of the deus ex machina plot device I’ve seen in the genre. It made sense within the context of the world that Cameron created.

Finally, what happens to the Na’vi now is very much unknown. While you suggest that the humans will be back and will use even more force to take what they want, it is just as easy to believe that the humans returning to Earth will be punished for their actions. We don’t know what Earth’s policies are concerning life on other planets – what the company was doing could easily be viewed as the intergalactic version of crimes against humanity. This is something that will likely be dealt with if there is a sequel, which there seems to be a lot of interest in making now that the movie is a big success. Perhaps we’ll get to see exactly how the Na’vi fight off a 2nd wave?

First, at the end of the film, how has Sully done anything other than put the Navi on a path that will eventually lead to their destruction? Custer’s last stand was not the US Cavalry’s last stand. The humans will obviously be back if the ‘unobtanium’ is really that valuable, and when they return, the Navi will be all but wiped out by orbital bombardment before the humans come and take whatever they want.

Second, this movie makes almost no effort to truly understand the motivations behind the antagonist’s actions. I don’t believe a movie needs to justify wrong-doing, but it should at least make an attempt to give an audience a greater understanding of why and how a person comes to a point in their lives when they are capable of committing such evil acts. This movie just uses cardboard cut-outs of an over-macho commando who wants to destroy everything, and a greedy corporate guy who only cares about the bottom line.

Don’t get me wrong, the movie was good, but not great. A great movie would show both what led the protagonist to choose good over evil, AND what led the antagonist to choose evil over good.

Also, some more exploration into what is really motivating the bad guys probably would have been better for the Navi than trying to fight back against overwhelming odds. Even if you swallow the completely unlikely Navi victory in the final battle, the victory will only be temporary. It seems to me that the only way the Navi ever really “win” is by convincing the bad guys to voluntarily cease their aggression. If we never really try to understand the bad guys, we can never understand how to make them stop. Sully did more harm to the Navi than good, because instead of helping the Navi to understand the Sky People, and how to convince the Sky People to stop, Sully convinces the Navi to try to match the bad guys’ violence with more violence–a game the Navi will surely lose in the end.

By thinking that the movie was just about humans vs. Na’vi or white vs. minority is missing the point. It wasn’t just Na’vi fighting oppression. It was all of Pandora fighting the destruction of the planet bringing us back to the Gaia Theory.

Of course if one has their mind set on finding racism in every aspect of media and entertainment then of course they’re going to find it. If I thought that way I’m sure I could make even Bambi seem like a racist bastard.

Cynics, not critics, deride Avatar for not having a female lead or for favoring animism or for having a white-man-savior or for showing a white man abandon his race or for having a white man as the evil-doer ad nauseum. The racist ones like Anal Nutwitz follow the same uncreative line-of-attack based on race.