If there's one thing Cameron did resolve, it's this.
Avatar is a technical masterpiece with a story the charitable will call "allegorical" and the rest will call "shallow." As allegory it rides a line where it's hard to tell whether Cameron is shining a light on the egotistical superiority of white, western civilization or simply participating in it.
The Na'vi reek of Noble Savage. The moon Pandora is contrived in such a way that all the sorts of things new age hippies say about indigenous cultures and Mother Nature are literally true. Even their religion has a rational basis. It is an interesting but overplayed device. As one of my philosophy professors used to say, the easiest way to lose an argument is to overstate it.
On the other hand, the way people patly conclude that Avatar is a metaphor for Iraq, or Afghanistan, or African colonialism, or the quest for oil, or the military-industrial complex, or any of a number of liberal bogeymen, points to an interesting success, because Avatar speaks of all of those things. It is a movie about a certain ugliness of humanity that transcends particular political trends of any given moment in history. Cameron has captured what we humans are like on our worst days, and what we try not to be on our best.
I think Sully was intended to be the man who walks the middle ground between the terrifying amorality of naked economic interest commanding military power and the detached scientists whose respect is distant, qualified and condescending. Sully instead sees the Na'vi as genuine people. I don't think the movie quite succeeds at this, but it was a noble attempt.
In the end, I both enjoyed Avatar and respect it for doing the one thing good science fiction always does, which is to enable us to see ourselves from the perspective of an outsider. It has strengths and weaknesses, and left me with the odd feeling I was watching the parsimonious screenplay version of a much better science fiction novel I also know doesn't exist. But I sort of wish it did.
