Yeah, I see you, dude, and you're kind of an asshole.

This is what I would expect Neytiri's response to be after she makes zahelou (hair lock) with Jake Sully. (By the way, why doesn't she know everything his mind after they mate? Possible continuity flaw, or maybe lack of explanation of zahelou). I have no problem with flawed characters; in fact, I prefer them. So I was willing to see how our notorious member of the Jarhead clan might evolve over the course of James Cameron's Avatar. In the end, I was not moved.

The theatrical release did not show enough of Jake's evolution. I had little sense of how he felt about being a traitor to the Na'vi while he was actually betraying them because the movie never shows him really freaking out about it. Almost as soon as he meets her, Jake clearly has feelings for Neytiri, the chief and shaman's daughter. Yet, Jake is not merely a passive member of the science team who "knew this would happen," as Neytiri discovers when the Sky People come to attack Home Tree. He actively performs recon for Colonel Quaritch, who is not his direct superior, but who asks Jake to spy on the Na'vi based on a sense of loyalty instilled by his military background. When the colonel, head of security for the mining base, asks Jake if he'll be a double agent and report to him, Jake agrees without any sign that it bothers him. It doesn't seem to bother him either when he provides structural details about Home Tree that will later allow the attack on it to succeeded.

If not for Jake's intel, Home Tree may not have fallen. Neither Neytiri nor the Na'vi ever learn the depth of Jake's betrayal, at least not in any scene included in the theatrical release. Jake does confess to his knowledge that the Sky People would come, but his confession is only a half truth. He says he was sent "to learn your ways, so that when it came time to deliver this message, you would believe it." In fact, he was also sent to gather information that will allow Colonel Quartich to obliterate their fortified home.

Jake is still living a lie at the end of the film, so I can't feel that he truly redeems himself, but the movie pretty clearly wants to portray Jake as a heroic, not a tragic character. The only time we see him look really troubled about what he's doing, before he switches sides, is when he has to face up to the Na'vi. Well, everyone feels remorse after they get caught doing wrong. That doesn't make a sympathetic character, or even a truly dynamic character, not in my book. I don't even know if I buy that Jake as portrayed in part I would have changed sides--dude has a long way to evolve, and it doesn't happen onscreen.

There are various scenarios I was prepared to accept that would have made Jake sympathetic to me--his and Neytiri's love is deep enough that she gets the basic idea of what a bastard Jake was and tells him she doesn't need to know everything, she forgives him; Jake believed so much in whatever Unobtanium could do for humanity that he felt there might be a morally significant reason to  betray the Na'vi; or  he wanted his legs, promised him as a reward for spying, so damn much that he was prepared to do anything; or perhaps, he actually feels so bad about what he's doing that it rips his character apart, even if he doesn't tell Neytiri, making Jake somewhat sympathetic as a tragic figure. But the film didn't bother to show us this level of detail about what was going on with Jake, so I was left to guess, and given the evidence, I have decided that he is an asshole, a brave asshole, yes, but an asshole nonetheless.

There are hints that he is growing less comfortable, such as when he fails to report to the colonel for longer than usual, but we never see him lose it. If there had been one scene where Jake really broke down over his double-crossing of the Na'vi before he had to tell them, and maybe Dr. Grace calms him down saying, You have to play the game, we all do, don't report to the colonel anymore, but please don't stop using your avatar, this would have gone a long way for me. I'm actually hoping there will be something like this in the director's cut. James Cameron's director's cut of Aliens (a perfect movie) has a deleted scene in the beginning where Ripley receives the news that her daughter is dead, and this scene heightens the intensity of that bond between Ripley and Newt because you understand Ripley's emotional need to save her. It's not just some generic BS about a woman's maternal instinct--Ripley's motivation is specific. But that scene wasn't priority enough to keep in the theatrical release of Aliens, probably according to somebody other than Mr. Cameron who was interested in making it a blockbuster, so maybe the same attention to character will show in Cameron's cut of Avatar. We shall see.

But even if that scene I want to see were there, and I knew Sully were conflicted, I would not feel comfortable watching him "choose," or shall I say violate, his aerial beast of burden. I tried to tell myself as I watched Avatar, It's not a rape; it's kind of like watching Augustus McCrae break a wild horse, some of the same overtones, but not over the line. Even as I realized that Grace implies Jake's braid is at least parallel to a sex organ when she tells him, "Don't play with that, you'll go blind," and even as I wondered if that deleted sex scene I'd heard about between Jake and Neytiri involved them locking hair (it does), I was willing to accept this fantastical element on its own terms, let the fairly salient allegory go, until Jake stuck it in and said, "Hah. Now your mine." 

Ew! This line sums up the dynamics of ownership, power, and ultimately hatred behind acts of rape. Any chance Jake had to become sympathetic to me flew out the window with his delivery of that line. I was surprised not to get too many hits on this topic when I searched for "Avatar rape," but I did find this, which may say what I'm trying to say better than I'm saying it., ie., in a lot fewer words.