There's no point in arguing hypotheticals, but given the things the film shows us the Na'Vi doing, I don't think you can reasonably claim that after losing a couple big battles, they wouldn't rethink their tactics to become an absolute nightmare for the human incursion.

And yes, it is a failure—a failure whose incredible worldbuilding and visuals only serve to highlight the egregious, fractal badness of its farcical, insulting story.

You do realize what you're saying, right? They're adapted to THEIR environment, THEIR way of thought; humankind comes from outside that sphere. What Na'vi would consider blowing up the big tree? What corporate expense would mean to the enemy? Would know what points to attack on armored aircraft? Takes an outsider to think like an outsider.

I loved Avatar for its immersive experience. As far as stories go, it was okay, but comparing it to Birth of a Nation and calling it a failure is way off the mark, if you ask me. If you want failure, watch an Ewe Boll film. And if you want the thematic experience of what this film was aiming for, watch Little Big Man, which has yet to be matched in my book. Yup.

When the Pandoran wildlife, along with the rallied Na'Vi, crush the human forces in what would be under most plausible circumstances an incredibly ill-advised frontal assault, I don't need the film to tell me the Na'Vi are capable of standing up to human machinery because the film has SHOWN me exactly that. A single unplanned charge of the giant hammerhead-herbivore things takes out nearly the entire mechanized infantry.

I want to know why E'wa and the Na'Vi haven't been doing that all along. They had to wait for Sully to tell them to? Sully's single entreaty to E'wa mattered more than the lives of the natives? It just doesn't add up.

The Na'Vi could make unobtanium mining too expensive to be worth the effort, no matter how much the stuff goes for back on earth. By waging an ongoing guerilla conflict against the corporation—killing miners, destroying equipment, and generally making any movement through the Pandoran environment a serious risk to life and limb—the profit margin for unobtanium would drop below zero, and the corporation would act in its own best interest and pull out. The Na'Vi might lose a home tree or two, but there is no way, given the Pandoran environment and their connection to it, that they would lose the conflict over the long term. Even if as you say, they're quicker to hide than to fight at first, once they suffered the desecration of a holy site or two, they would soon turn aggressive.

I understand that this is not what happens in the film, but my point is that given the world depicted, the cavalry-charge style battle makes no logical sense, except to depict the tragic deaths of the noble savages.

I won't argue the point that Jake and his avatar are part of what give the film its mass appeal, but I'm far from convinced that just because a lot of people like a thing, that makes it necessarily good. I would much rather have seen an Avatar-like film engage the fascinating issues it raises, rather than carelessly ignoring them in favor of easy answers predicated on assumptions that range from the lazy to the offensive.

Still, I think you might be extrapolating far too much about just what could/should/would have happened. For argument's sake, when are we ever told that the Na'Vi are capable of standing up to the might of human machinery and weaponry? We're told they're hard to kill and all kinds of fearsome, but to me that was nothing more than Quarrich slathering on the jingoism to stir up the troops. The way I saw it, the Na'Vi aren't creatures of war and are quick to run for cover even from the very creatures that inhabit Pandora.

The Na'Vi can be badasses if they really wanted to, you say? How? They just need to “make it too expensive for the corporation to stay” means what exactly? A toll for passage? It's not enough to say that the Na'Vi are oppressed because really, that's not the case. The humans are confined to an outpost and only venture out into the Pandoran landscape during the day until it's time to break out the big iron and start tearing it all down. The Na'Vi are not oppressed; they are invaded. “Shock and awe”, remember?

Given the confines of the story and setting established by the storyteller, how can we exactly expect things to happen that we're never given any reason to believe could happen?

In that regard, does the notion that it takes a human to steer the Na'Vi into battle really seem that offensive or backwards? We see their attempts to fight back with piddly bows and arrows and what happened as a result? BIG TREE GO BOOM. Not having Jake as an avatar—as in, humans on this side and Na'Vi on the that side—wouldn't be nearly as appealing to audiences as what Avatar gives us. I'd even guess that it could backfire and have audiences cheering on the humans, as that's what I'm sure more people can easily relate to, rather than some foreign, blue hippie people that live in trees. Just as he is for Quarrich and Grace, Jake is our “in” to the Na'Vi culture and without that, I think you have a very different (and probably less bankable) movie.

As a technical achievement of animation and visual storytelling, Avatar is a masterpiece. As a work of art—particularly as one that clearly understands itself as one with a progressive message—it is insultingly bad.

A lot ink has already been spilled on the film's wholehearted embrace of the noble savage myth, and Jake Sully's incredibly self-centered approach to his dealings with the Na'Vi. I don't really want to get into it, but the one thing I will say it's not only the fact of the cliche that is the problem—it's the fact that the film so eagerly embraces such a desperately problematic idea, that this one guy from the privileged, colonizing background can jump into a Na'Vi body, and that's the magic combination. A human brain in a Na'Vi body is just what the Na'Vi people need to lead them to victory, the film says.

Which is a) insulting and b) patently untrue. The Na'Vi are the perfect insurgency. They are perfectly adapted to their environment. Their effortless communication with the Pandoran ecosystem turns the entire planet into a weapon they can wield, and given the formidable creatures we see, this weapon is a potent one.

They don't need to have a white guy in blueface fall in love with the chief's daughter and then lead them on a ridiculous cavalry charge to win this war. All they need to do is make it too expensive for the corporation to stay. The corporation is on Pandora for no other reason than profit—there is not a colonization effort, nor is there warfare. It is all about money, and the Na'Vi can make profitable exploitation of Pandora's resources completely impossible. They are in a perfect position to accomplish their goals relatively quickly and easily, and without any human help, but they don't. Why? Because Cameron needs them to die nobly on screen, so that we the audience can feel bad, but then have Jake Sully's empty redemption—which comes at almost no risk to him—relieve the audience from its vicarious complicity in the oppression of the Na'Vi.

The trouble with Avatar—the thing that makes its failure so upsetting—is that while so much thought went into so many aspects of the visual storytelling and worldbuilding, so little went into the actual story and its implicit conclusions. It's not the bad dialogue or predictable plot that ultimately damns the film; it's the blithe thoughtlessness behind that plot. Jake Sully never stops to think about the consequences of his actions, because Cameron clearly didn't either.

If the story had been that of the Na'Vi fighting a bloody guerilla action against the human forces and driving them off Pandora, that would have been something approaching a progressive film. But by making Jake Sully an avatar for the audience, then allowing him to both excuse himself from any complicity in the corporation's actions and heroically lead the Na'Vi to victory, it excuses the audience from it's complicity in real-world racism and oppression, and reassures us that it knows that WE aren't the bad people that do this stuff, WE'RE all good guys like Jake Sully.

The fact that the film is doing so well both critically and financially proves that we've still got a long way to go.

This post was mentioned on Twitter by robertcortez: Now that everyone has seen Avatar, @pts, @MrHoward and I finally have our say. Come discuss! http://ow.ly/WcBz…

There was one visual moment that was “wow”-worthy — right after Jake Sully is abandoned on the planet when he sees all the bioluminescent plants in the undergrowth. To me, that was stunning. Unfortunately, none of the ensuing dogfights or tree rituals gave me the same feeling.

I realize the spectacle was the point, and at some point someone will find a way to employ it in service to a story I find compelling. This just wasn't it, and I think the idea that the new technology alone is worth Best Picture is insane.

With Avatar, I think the spectacle is pretty much the whole point, for better or worse. Granted, that's a pretty shallow point, but it is what it is. Would I sit through it again in 2D? Sure, but that's like listening to a song on AM radio when FM (or HD) is also available. Why would you?

I take it you didn't see it in 3D? At what point did you find yourself tuning out?

That said, I would challenge all three of you to go back and see this movie in 2-D and discover for yourself that a lame, clichéd story, flat characters and a heavy-handed moral message cannot be outweighed by spectacle. I was bored after about 45 minutes and the movie never recaptured my attention. This movie undercut even my lowered expectations. “Titanic” was better.