I figured Unobtainium to be some sort of ClarkeTech-level meta-material, much like the Cavorite in A Deepness in the Sky. In that story, Cavorite was a mineral discovered by the native Spider civilization, possessing miraculous anti-gravity properties Yet it was composed of nothing more than common elements, mostly diamonoid carbon, that should have yielded an unremarkable pile of dust. In that story, it was insinuated that the material was not naturally occuring, but the legacy of some hyper-advanced intelligence or civilization.

The implication being that the Na'vi were not a primitive pre-industrial society -- but a primitive post-industrial one. The planet-wide bio-net and cooperative defense system doesn't make sense from a Darwinian evolutionary standpoint, but it might have made sense if it was designed that way. And those Unobtanium "ore" formations? Perhaps the remains of some ancient server farm or energy storage-facility... or garbage dump.

In the aftermath of Avatar's release, I found similar viewpoints all too common among my fellow nerds. It bothers me to think that we can consider genocide to be the "obvious" solution, and that not resorting to total war at the get-go as being the mark of a plot hole.

The corporate managers in Avatar weren't actually evil, but merely self-serving and cynical. They told themselves it was ok because they weren't really doing anything evil -- just moving some stubborn natives somewhere less inconvenient. I'm sure after the orders were given, they told themselves that it was the natives who forced them to act as they did, their superstitious and ignorant natures prevented the savages from listening to reason.

In any case, we often forget that the humans were employees of a corporation, not a sovereign military force. The soldiers were the equivalent of some Blackwater mercenaries. Regardless of how powerful corporations sometimes seem, it is government who still holds the leash, being jealous entities that hold the best goodies (like WMDs) for themselves.

Unobtainium: well, why not call it Carbon, formed in large quantities into some kind of useful room-temperature superconductor (or other highly valuable commodity) by processes unique to the formation of Pandora. Sure you could synthesize it, but it's cheaper to go dig it up. The miracle of Unobtainum was irrelevant to the plot beyond the fact it was valuable and they had to take down HomeTree to get it. Any time wasted explaining what Unobtainium was good for is just pandering to a very small percentage of the audience, a small percentage with relatively little influence over ticket buyers, apparently.

Yeah, and the U.S. could have nuked Afghanistan and Iraq into oblivion, as well as any upstarts like Iran or North Korea who would have chirped about it. Maybe, just maybe, there were political implications back home that prevented waging all-out war on obviously sentient beings that are absolutely no threat to us, and whose only crime is sitting on something valuable.