At the very least, I commend James Cameron for being vegan, because he’s pretty famous so it’ll further normalize the lifestyle. At the celebration he organized for the premier of Avatar 2, all the food was plant-based
But I do agree that the way James Cameron presents his own franchise is almost quintessential false leftism. There was a thread online that someone created, where they asked fans if the Avatar franchise had made them vegan (I’m assuming because of the producer’s self-proclaimed veganism and the franchise’s emphasis on the relationship between the Na’vi and their companion animals). And the one comment that I really think said it all, was something to the effect of “Why would I go vegan? The Na’vi themselves aren’t even vegan”. I think that’s the main issue with the franchise in my book, outside of the fact that it doesn’t really have an interesting story to tell and is just eye candy. It doesn’t really emphasize the unfortunate nature of the lifestyle of the Na’vi. In fact, it glorifies it.
There’s also another piece of unintentional symbolism that the franchise provides: If you look into the lore provided outside of the movies, Eywa, the goddess of the Na’vi, embodied by their sacred tree, is implied to have destroyed every single attempt at civilization the Na’vi have ever made, in an effort to preserve the balance of nature. This implies that the only two options are gentilism (“the noble savage”), or progressive “civilization”. This is obviously wrong, because we support regressivism AND value civility. True civility