Call me crazy, but I often just see a movie and try and enjoy it.
* dweez shrugs
QFT!
wow
and i just went to this movie for the enjoyment of the film.
I fully understand what you're saying - I deliberately avoided looking at anything for
Avatar before seeing the film so nothing could influence my opinion or ruin the movie before I could see it and just let it happen. My first viewing was pure enjoyment.
But even after that, I couldn't help but notice that there are ideas and viewpoints in the movie that were going to push some sociopolitical buttons.
However, I had no idea how much conservative pundits would lose their minds over the thing.
Another angle they don't like is when the audience cheers the NA'vi killing humans. They find profound disgust with what they feel is Cameron's blatant disrespect to US soldiers.
But the military in
Avatar are actually private contractors (i.e., mercenaries) and not the US military, and the RDA is a corporation, not the US government. So that makes them the equivalent of Blackwater running security for Halliburton.
So, of course, it never seems to dawn on these pundits that the RDA is just flat-out wrong to try and take Pandoran resources by force. They have no right to be there, they have no right to the stupidly-named unobtanium, and they certainly don't have the right to kill anyone in an attempt to take what isn't theirs.
The audience sees it very plainly, but conservative pundits are on their guard because they've been apologising for similar, real-life behavior in Iraq and Afghanistan (which are only the most recent examples of American 'colonialism', but that's a whole other issue) for nearly 10 years now.
So conservatives can't 'just enjoy the movie' - they have to resist everything its telling them.