So, I finally watched the extended cut of Avatar. It's....okay. Still flawed, but okay. On the plus side, it takes the black and white morality of the theatrical cut and makes it more gray and gray, with both the RDA and the Na'vi being at fault.
As I understand it, the relations went like this:
1. Humans come to Pandora.
2. For some reason, Na'Vi are unwilling to talk to non-Na'vi.
3. Earth won't let RDA exterminate the Na'Vi, as genocide is evil.(Duh)
4. Humans invent Avatars.
5. Humans start mining unobtainium, which is stated to be worth a lot, but all we really know about it is that it floats in pure form.(Sully is not a scientist)
6. Humans open up a school.
7. Neytiri's sister sets several bulldozers on fire for knocking down trees. It is unknown whether the vehicles were manned, had people escorting them, or were entirely drone operated. It is also unknown if the Na'Vi even know if the RDA wants the magic rocks, just that we are knocking down trees.
8. Sister runs to school, thinking mercenaries won't follow her there. This could mean that she thought Grace would protect her, it could also mean she thought the children and Grace would be great 'human shields'.
9. Mercenaries followed her to the school, and killed her for her actions.
10. School closes, as Na'Vi don't wish to talk to humans anymore. They now shoot humans on sight.
11.Sully comes to Pandora, gets lost, and is spared by magic dandelion.
12. Sully is not allowed to talk to tribe until he's actually a member of tribe, and is only allowed to live because they want to see how human warriors fight. I wonder how tribes talk to each other unless all ambassadors must take months being initiated into tribe.
13. Sully at no point informs everyone what the RDA is after, meaning that the Na'Vi have no way of knowing that the Sky People want the shiny rocks below their trees, not the trees itself.
14. Sully becomes member of tribe, and bones daughter instead of relaying important information that bulldozers are coming.
15. Bulldozers come, and Sully tells Na'vi that Sky People are evil and are coming to destroy their home. (In addition to not being a scientist, Sully is also not a great diplomat).
16. Na'Vi burn down bulldozers, and kill all humans guarding them. No mercy.(This was left out of the theatrical cut, as it would make the humans sympathetic)
17. Humans are aghast at the slaughter, and are unsure what to do. Quarritch pushes for burning down the tree on the condition that they tear gas the place, calling it 'humane'.
18. Home tree is destroyed, and several Na'vi are killed.
19. Sully and friends unite the tribes, and fight a war to defend the spirit tree against the RDA.
So, it's not a case of black and white, as presented in the theatrical cut, but gray on gray, with Quarritch the one who pushed the humans towards fighting the Na'vi, and Sully framing the RDA in as evil a light as possible. Selfridge and Quarritch are still rather villainous, with Selfridge's greed and Quarritch's bloodlust, but Sully's diplomacy is awful and the Na'vi have a rather xenophobic attitude, not helped by their unwillingness to ever talk to non-Avatar humans.
This is, by the by, ignoring the Pandorapedia, that says that humans need unobtainium in order to survive as a species(something to do with it helping in starship construction), something also not said in the movie due to how sympathetic it would make the human side. Without that, humans could just be using unobtainium to make floating dinner plates at expensive restaurants for all we know.
Some miscellaneous:
Sully doesn't need a breather while on Earth, yet mostly everyone else does while outside.
Tsu'tey insists that Sully kill him to become their new leader, claiming it is their way. So either the Na'vi kill those of their tribe who cannot fight, move, work or are a burden on the tribe, or there is a cultural tradition of the new war leader killing the old one when they can no longer do the job.
Earth, as a dying world with 'no green on it', has jungle warfare in Venezuela.
Earth is reintroducing extinct species back to the planet through cloning, such as the Bengal tiger, meaning that dying world is coming back slowly.
RDA cares about the bottom line as its highest priority, but does worry about bad PR. Not the killing of innocents, bad PR.
Crematoriums are warehouse sized, for maximum efficiency. We must either prefer increasing the carbon footprint via burning dead people to using dead bodies as compost for the growing of plants, even while the planet's atmosphere is so bad that people need masks to breathe outside.
![Rolling Eyes :roll:](./images/smilies/icon_rolleyes.gif)
Paper and cardboard are common enough for paperback books and coffins, meaning that there have to be some sort of paper industry on Earth.