#(also btw when I say “the RDA are the villains” I do NOT mean “humans/humanity are the villains”; let’s not conflate the two)

[nattikay]

after the post from yesterday, thinking more about the folks who claim that the RDA are “actually the good guys” and the more I think about it the more baffled I am that this is an actual take people have.

First, I’m not sure where people are getting the idea that the RDA in A1 is trying to “save humanity” (most of the what arguments I see are regarding A1 so Bridgehead City and Ardmore’s “new home for humanity” thing in A2 are irrelevant and a topic for another day). As I already detailed in the previous post, A1 makes it pretty dang explicitly clear that the RDA is mining unobtainium for the money and the money only. Unobtainium is a convenience for humans, it’s desirable, but it’s not a necessity. They can use it to make some dang fancy technology, but they can survive without it.

But ok, let’s play devil’s advocate for a moment. For the sake of argument, let’s pretend that the RDA’s main goal is to protect humanity and that unobtainium is crucial to humanity’s survival. Does that justify their actions? The bombing of Hometree, the bulldozing of the Tree of Voices, the assault on the Well of Souls?

Starting with Hometree, it may be true that the unobtainium deposit underneath it was the richest in the local area, but that doesn’t mean it was the only possible deposit available anywhere. They’d just have to move their operation somewhere else. “They [the Na'vi] can move!”, Selfridge shouts? You can move too, buddy. Violently forcing the Omatikaya out of their home to take the resources you need (even if you really do need them, not just want them!) is not justified when you can just get said resources somewhere else. Sure, it would be a hassle to pack up and move the operation, but violence is not a proportional response to inconvenience.

But ok, let’s add another stipulation, let’s say that the deposit under Hometree was THE only one available absolutely anywhere. Combined with the idea that humanity needs unobtainium to survive (which again is not actually true, but for the sake of the argument), this is the closest you can come to possibly justifying the attack. Even with all these stipulations, though…bombing a village and killing innocent people in the process is still…not good. You can certainly argue that it’s a necessary evil in these specific circumstances—a desperate “either they die or we die, we can’t both live, so of course we’re gonna fight for ourselves to be the survivors” kind of thing—but still an evil nonetheless.

But even if you can kinda-sorta justify Hometree IF you pretend that 1.) humanity needs unobtainium for their survival and 2.) the unobtainium deposit under Hometree is the only one available on the whole moon, what about their other attacks?

What about bulldozing the Tree of Voices? That place didn’t have a special unobtainium deposit. What could bulldozing that area possibly do to “save humanity”? What would the point of that be?

Well, they tell you in the movie. Grace comments on the situation, “they bulldozed a sacred place on purpose to trigger a response”. Jake concurs, “when people are sitting on s*** that you want, you make them your enemy, and then you’re justified in taking it.”

The RDA bulldozed the Tree of Voices specifically to anger the Na'vi, to provoke them into retaliation so that the RDA has a better excuse to attack Hometree. I’m sorry but you cannot justify that with “but they’re just trying to save humanity guys!!1!”

And the attack on the Well of Souls? Even worse. Bombing the Well of Souls was not meant to “help humanity”, it was meant explicitly to harm the Na'vi. Quaritch says during his briefing, “we will blast a crater in their racial memory so deep that they will never come within a thousand klicks of this place ever again”. I cannot fathom how anyone can hear a brief like that and not recognize it as straight-up literal terrorism.

…and then, of course, you remember that canonically the RDA is not doing any of this to “save humanity”, they’re doing it for MONEY. They’re doing it to protect their bottom line. Any shred of justification they might have been able to scrape as “defenders of humanity” evaporates there.

And that’s only the stuff they do in A1! They have a plethora of other sins under their belt, such as the massacre of the Sarentu clan in AFoP. I don’t even wanna know how the RDA defenders attempt to justify that.

so um. Yeah. Believe it or not the very clear and very obvious bad guys are in fact the bad guys. Again it absolutely baffles me that this has to be stated but apparently it does.