I agree with your thoughts there, Frink. (Don't believe me? check the first post!) I really enjoyed the parts I enjoyed. But there were enough of those things we both mentioned that took me out of the movie that the "shroud of fantasy" sort of just evaporated and kept me from caring anymore. There are so many great movies out there, I'll just watch something else. Unless someone can produce a decent fan edit. ;)

On the surface, the Na'vi are Native Americans. I think the subtext is that they're Middle Easterns, or that as Americans we haven't changed our ways since our treatment of the N.A.'s and that our dealings in the Middle East or on Pandora might as well all be the same thing.

The conflict with the N.A.'s involved outsiders ("us" hereafter) trying to find a new land to call home and finding lots of it that the N.A.'s weren't already living on, but might have been living near. We were "civilians" and "families" just trying to make our own way too. Some N.A. tribes were more hostile towards that than others, but in the end- we expanded into their territories, or close enough to their territories that it went to war and we (apparently) won. I don't think anyone made the N.A's an enemy so that we could take their land. We were taking (arguably) their land, that made them mad, emotions escalated and then we were enemies.

In the Middle East, we have companies mining for oil. Some people think that there is a campaign to get the Western world to go to war there as an easiery way of getting to the oil than simple business negotiations. At least, that is the sentiment Jake Sully is referring to when he says, "When other people have what we want! We make them an enemy so that we can go take it! Grrrrr!"

That's why the Na'vi actually had more to do with Middle Easterners, in my humblest of opinions, despite their outside appearance.