Thanks for posting. I think your points are correct. Most people didn’t look at it from a property-rights perspective because most people aren’t libertarian(ish)! I kind of get upset at myself for thinking about movies and other forms of fiction from a too libertarian perspective sometimes, always trying to find a libertarian point to support or an anti-libertarian stance that detracts from the movie. Actually, not trying to find them, but thinking about things from a political perspective by nature. Take WALL-E: that was a great movie that was very entertaining, but it had a ridiculous environmentalist message that a lot of people probably loved because it seemed to say: All business is bad and humans are incapable of taking care of their own environment if left to their own devices (a free market). That’s a load of bull, and if it had a slightly realistic or believable “message”, then I would have liked it a lot more and not let it bother me.

Your point about property rights is very good. However, I suspect that it is lost on most people. From what I cold tell of the trailer, the point most people will get is that: it was not OK to take this property because it was beautiful and because the inhabitants were liked (noble? beautiful?) by the audience. Had this been framed as some hicks defending some dumpy land, I doubt the audience would have felt much sympathy for them. The message the people I know who saw it got was: that it was an environmental movie. It was about defending a beautiful environment, not about property rights. In fact, if instead the owners were to decide to mine their own beautiful land, how many people would have supported the military from preventing them from doing it?