the avatar movies are crazy bc "what if colonizers literally inhabited and puppeteered the bodies of indigenous peoples in order to exploit their homeland" sounds like the premise of some sort of anticolonial horror film, like specifically the kind of thing that would be commenting on self-indigenization among white settlers, but because it's James Cameron his whole takeaway from that premise is "it would be preddy cool"
actually sorry. the takeaway is also "the white settler possessing an indigenous body would actually be extremely good, perhaps even The Best, at being indigenous, and he would become their Leader"
I feel like its pretty clear through watching the series of films that Jake is Not the best at being indigenous like he succeeds in controlling toruk makto because he is an american ex military and he brings that mindset with him everywhere, blue or not. His motivation to catch toruk lies in defeating the enemy, not leading the people, a post he readily abandons (as no other chief would) to save his and his family's skin. He doesnt believe in Eywa until he's shown cold hard proof, he isolates and throws himself into work when he experiences the death of a loved one instead of the indigenous mourning practices his wife does, he insists on metal weapons to fight metal enemies. He still doesn't know the full language. His wife saves him from near death that only came about because of his individualistic western thinking. He is bad at being Na'Vi. The avatars, copies of the indigenous peoples are there to beg a few questions. What does it mean that Ewya can accept people that aren't native to the land? The first movie implies that its Jake's connection to the physical body that makes him accept his newfound nature and culture and "switch sides" but in the second movie we're presented with Quaritch, who has never imagined himself as anything but a hardened military man, so the blue body suit means nothing to him. He kills countless others that share his skin with no remorse. His interactions with Spider, his estranged son who grew up on Pandora with Jake, shows that Spider is more Na'Vi than he will ever be. The fact that the bodies they're puppeteering have obvious features that divide them from the indigenous people should also not be lost on you; no matter how hard they try, how much they learn, how advanced their technology, it still cannot recreate 100% the Na'Vi body. The lesson is assimilating into indigenous culture is more than putting on the skin and the clothes and the language, there is something deeper than what we can understand and explain. The story of the movies as much as it has been about Jake, has also been about Neytiri, the beauty of Pandora's flora & fauna and its many complex and intricate societies, rules and religions. You are meant to watch the movies and feel the same thing Jake feels, this world should be left alone, the humans cant get their hands on it or they'll turn it into the rainy grey bleakscape of Earth. Its that experience as a human that allows him to understand the true level of devastation they can wreak.
