Oh, I don't know about that. Humans have been and can be invaders and killers. We often dress it up in some ideals or another, but we are killers if the circumstances are right, especially in groups with leadership issuing "orders".
If you don't care for the plot, then you likely didn't like Dances with Wolves, Little Big Man, Broken Arrow, nor the story of Pocahontas and Captain Smith, nor the story of Jamestown after they gained their foothold in part due to the aid of Powhatan. Then they started taking rather than trading for, employed mercenaries and by 1628 celebrated a massacre of a peaceful green corn ceremony by their mercenaries with religious observances and the governor of the colony wrote in his report to the stockholders to the effect and 136 of the godless heathens were sent to the nether world and their lands opened to settlement by the decent godfearing people of Jamestown.
Don't forget it was our own past governments policy of "pacification" to unleash the buffalo hunters on the Plains Native American's primary food source with such superior weaponry that in only 10 years the bison was nearly extinct, and Native Americans were reduced to starvation or going to reservations where their culture was to be replaced with a poor euroamerican version. If they survived at all.
Andrew Jackson appreciated the aid of the Choctaw and Chickasaw in the Battle of New Orleans so much that he ordered the siezure of their lands by forced treaty to appease some of his white supporters after his election as President, which resulted in their wholesale removal to Oklahoma. Earlier, the Cherokees (relatives of the Powhatan) were similarly treated, and the whole were followed by the Creek, Seminole and Osage removals.
Then there was the decimation of the Mandan and other tribes unto extinction by traders, missionaries, and US Army commandants giving those tribes along the Missouri River blankets contaminated with small pox and retrieved from recent graves or death beds, all of which were ordered by the heroic U. S. Grant who's main claim to fame was slaughter during the civil war, or his flunkies in the War Department as part of his Indian Pacification program.
Custer's last stand (Battle of Little Big Horn) was stimulated by investors back east wanting the gold of the Black Hills, which has never been successfully mined on any scale even today. Custer was a perverted little jerk who was seeking a higher generalship by grandstanding, the primary reason for his entourage including members of the press on all his "battles" which should have been called massacres. He made his adventures popular by including local people such as contractors supplying his army, allowing them to kill some Indians and have some fun.
Before Little Big Horn, he descended on the Washita River in Oklahoma destroying the dispersed winter camp during the desparate time of the year, taking lives and possessions of Cheyennes, including Black Kettle, the peace chief. No quarter was ordered. By his own account, they also slaughtered the horses.
Long after the removal, the Osage were being systematically murdered for their oil lands early in the 20th century by certain unscrupulous captains of industy in the east (by proxy of course, have you heard of Standard Oil?) until the FBI accidentally became involved.
Most recently, corporate greed has largely contributed to our current economic concerns which are far from in the past but are ongoing. Very typical of corporate America, actually where decisions are made in anonimity with rarely "anyone responsible". And the current "War on Terror" lead to the invasion of Iraq, using the excuse that Saddam might have been helping Al Quaida, though the intelligence sources said no. Chaney and his cronies tried to get Bill Clinton to do the job, but he saw what they were up to and declined. So they installed Shrub and of course he was ready for it to take care of his Daddy's mistake in '91 in leaving Saddam in power.
So, I think the depiction of greed, avarice and bloodlust by certain of the directors and mercenaries of the corporation in Avatar in the name of "progress" and the rallying speech by the director is quite likely to be accurate. I really don't see our species reacting any differently to the potential for fortune via ill gotten gains in only 154 years from now. Certainly has not changed over the last 10,000 other than in the sophistication of the weaponry.
