2. Third time I'm saying this. THE RDA IS NOT EVIL. They don't want to kill the Na Vi, never wanted too. That's why they used the gas grenades, and allowed the Na'vi to be warned. Besides, the tree was sitting on an unobtanium deposit (which is why they wanted to destroy it in the first place) and unobtanium is some sort of very complicated compound. A significant mass drop could have destroyed the deposit.
Who said anything about evil? S'got nothing to do with morality, has to do with apparently forgetting vast swaths of our history. Poorly done everything, apparently throwing out centuries of highly efficient methods of extorting materials from native populations, and when they actually
do decide to go to violence, they do it in a way approaching the least effective method possible. S'vaguely infuriating, y'know?
I mean, hell m'fellow. We can make
clones of them. Wide area gas based (probably contact) tranquilizer, send in drones to collect the bodies and airlift them to other side of the continent. Done and done (and probably ridiculously more cost effective than those silly avatar things, or even the incendiaries they tried to resort to.). They get pissed and march back across and try and stop you,
you just do it again. That's just one of at least a dozen ways that would have been more effective than trying to drop incendiaries from within range of retaliation. This isn't highly advanced military strategy! I've watched preteens come up with equivalent strategy without prompting!
I just... when a movie seems to be trying to take itself seriously and a dozen little things is demonstrating that the antagonist (or protagonist, really.) is just massively incompetent... I'unno. Maybe it's not so much nitpick as just a crappy writer or something?
I think you all keep assuming that Pandora Mining Group, was a military first operation and not a military protected operation. With the overly dangerous flora and fauna the operation needed a fair amount of protect. They weren't armed for a war in the jungle.
Mostly my problem is that it shouldn't have
been a war in the jungle. The tech disparity, just with the crap they showed, never mind anything hidden aware,
should have made the conflict utterly trivial if the human side wasn't being massively brain dead about it.
And why does everyone assume the spaceship that brought them there is also military and loaded with guns? And even if it was, why would it be loaded with nukes? I think these suppose plot holes, are just inventing plot holes.
Who said anything about nukes? Drop a small rock on them. If they've got interstellar space travel, they've got the tech and the knowhow to dig up a rock of sufficient size and pinpoint drop it on points of resistance (we're bloody close to having it
now). Air superiority is near absolute superiority, and orbital superiority is a notch above that. You just use a small enough rock it won't damage the ore deposits. Hell, you don't even have to drop from orbit! Just go higher than the oversized flying lizards can and dump an ore load's worth of rock on them or something. Problem solved!