I don’t really care what the symbolism is in this movie - it’s a great movie. Very enjoyable and a monumental achievement in filmmaking. Any movie like this is going to be examined for what analogies it supposedly attempts to make - think of Star Wars and all of the comparisons of the Empire and the Rebels to various political groups. However, taken as what it is - a movie - Avatar is fantastic.
At the end, I made sure to explain to my son that the portion of the movie that dealt with the mother tree/life force was all bogus. My brother did the same with his 9 and 6 year old girls (who also LOVED the movie, by the way).
Star Wars had all kinds of hokey new-age/quasi-Buddhist themes but they were not the message of the movie.
In fact most of the sci-fi critics that hated Star Wars was because it was fluff and mindless or a space opera, pretty much that it had no message and was just entertainment.
Yes, all art pushes a world view but this one pushes it HARD and without subtlety. The message is what Mr. Podhoretz and others clearly see on the screen and in the story.