Okay,
Warped9, I'll rehash much of what I've said elsewhere.
Not all white men are bad and not all aboriginals are innocents. But that is essentially how they're painted in this movie. But you not supposed to think too much about that because you're supposed to be dazzled by the awesome eye candy in 3D.
Not all white men in this movie were bad. There is Jake, several other scientists, Sigourney Weaver's character, Michelle Rodriguez's character. As a matter of fact, if you count the number of main characters in the film, the majority of them were "white people," and they were good and the heroes of the film. And not all "aboriginals" portrayed in the movie were good. There was shown to be a lot of closed mindedness and jealousy. They could have gone further portraying some negatives to the "natives" perhaps, but there was some there. There were grey areas as well, such as with Giovanni Ribisi's character, not only a corporate douche bag, but also someone who helped out Jake et al with another chance to warn the Na'vi, and his obvious shock and sadness at the destruction of Hometree.
It is anti-capitalist in the sense that this is a capitalism without laws, morals, ethics or restraint.
No restraint? Giovanni Ribisi's character showed plenty of restraint. The fact that the scientist's were said to be doing what they were doing and being funded to do it all this time as a means to a diplomatic solution shows restraint. His character may have been a corporate dick, but he rebuffed Quaritch's demands several times, as well as allowing the science team some time, an additional hour, to try and save the Na'vi before the Hometree attack, done behind Quaritch's back. The entire point of the Avatar program shows that the company wasn't some two dimensional evil conglomerate bent on the annihilation of the Na'vi, but detractors of the film say they are. The company reached the end of its rope and it's patience and greed took over in their final siege, but there was plenty of restraint presented in the film. Why do you think they were funding the Avatar program in the first place? What did that have to do with their greed as far as the ore deposits were concerned?
It is anti-military in the sense that the military here is depicted as one dimensional thugs who are eager to kill and have zero interest in reaching a peaceful solution.
Personally, I think this argument is killed with the fact that
they weren't military! They were a private mercenary security force. Case closed.
An element of the film that underlines this is the human reluctance to look elsewhere for their precious mineral. Hello! you fly fucking light years to another planet but you can't shift your operations a few hundred kilometers?
You didn't get the part about how the purest and best deposits of the ore were at Hometree? They
had been mining elsewhere. But now they wanted what was there. And you don't think this is a realistic portrayal of what would happen? Look at what happened with the displacement of low income housing and the resultant homelessness due to the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. They couldn't just shift where they wanted their stadiums and villages a couple of kilometers? Avatar is a very timely depiction of social causes that are happening this very day...something the best of science fiction does.
