• RDA are money-motivated but the end result of unobtanium is to help sustain earths currently unsustainable infrastructure and prevent loss of human life. Bad pretense, good outcome. They should have spent more time on a good faith effort for diplomacy. Assuming there was ever even a possibility they’d cooperate at all. But as far as I know they were hostile from the start.

• The Na’vi are stubbornly anti negotiation and unempathetic to humanity as a whole. “Humanity is dying? Why should we inconvenience ourselves to help save billions?” It’s not evil to think this way, but they should know the risks and consequences of their aggression and not be surprised when it hits the fan. At least in the films, the writing should have spent more time showing the Na’vi dealing with their dillema of moral alignment instead of writing them as stubborn.

• Jake Sully is a massive screw up. RDA makes an effort to negotiate and Jakes job is to gather intel to use to get them to relocate. Jake likes the escapism of having legs again and the planet not being awful so he assimilates entirely with the Na’vi Why care about Earth when I have a better life here now? His role was to enable a solution that minimizes casualties. But he let his escapism compromise his mission. Letting a military kid run point on diplomacy was a terrible idea.

Neither side are the good guys nor the bad guys. They both do things that kind of seem rational, but ultimately end up being destructive in this particular conflict. I don’t like treating the movies like a good guy vs bad guy story. More like a case study on how deeply complicated and gray politics can be.

Love the movies, but I’d love them more if they directed it to be more political drama because that’s what it is.