From the implications of immortality-granting whale goop to Free Willy tributes, Avatar:
The Way of Water has an ocean of small details you might have missed.
Most of James Cameron's previous films have an anti-capitalist, or at least anti-corporate
stance within the film's narrative.
In the previous "Avatar" film, this was shown through the banal – but nonetheless coldly
malicious – machinations of the Resources Development Administration, or RDA, as they
tried to kill off all the Na'vi "hostiles" and hollow out the natural resources of Pandora
by enlisting a paramilitary unit, led by Stephen Lang's Colonel Miles Quaritch.
In "Avatar: The Way of Water", Colonel Quaritch returns as the sequel film's main antagonist
once again.
The film explains away Quaritch's resurrection by stating that RDA had stored his memories
onto a disk prior to the first film's mission, in case he were to die.
And, since he did die at the end of the first film, his memories were put into a Na'vi avatar
to return to Pandora and finish the mission he started years later.
"They could fix me up if I rotated back.
Make me pretty again."
This brings up another example of the evils of untethered capitalism and corporate power
in this dystopian future: you still have to work for the company, even after you die.
In "Avatar: The Way of Water," Quaritch, now a Na'vi, doesn't seem too disturbed by this
revelation himself.
However, the existential dread of how bad the labor conditions on Earth have to be to
allow infinite forced employment is pretty horrifying.
At one point, the newly-resurrected Na'vi clone version of Colonel Quaritch returns
to the place where Jake Sully and Neytiri had killed him in his original human form
at the end of the first "Avatar" film.
Since many years have passed since his death, Quaritch's human body has now decomposed into
a rotting skeleton.
Na'vi-Quaritch then picks up his dead human skull, in an obvious reference to the "Alas,
poor Yorick" monologue from "Hamlet."
This isn't just a simple visual allusion either.
The speech is about the existential dread of one's inevitable death, as well as the
futility of life itself.
Hamlet had fond memories of Yorick, and as he holds Yorick's skull in his hand, he laments
what he sees as a waste of life.
So, too, does Quaritch as he holds his own human head in his now-Na'vi hands.
He is literally seeing the futility of his past life, as well as the inevitability of
his own death, since it already happened.
He attempts to come to terms with it, but then decides to crush the skull in an act
of defiance to the blatant symbolism of fate and the natural order of the life-death cycle.
In the first "Avatar," actor Giovanni Ribisi played the corporate villain Parker Selfridge,
who was the head of the Earth-based RDA that was seeking Pandora's sacred unobtainium.
He was essentially the main antagonist of that film, alongside Stephen Lang's aforementioned
Colonel Quaritch – and in many ways was worse than the Colonel.
Selfridge himself represented the banal evils of bureaucratic corporate greed.
"Look, look, you're supposed to be winning the hearts and minds of the natives.
Isn't that the whole point of your little puppet show?"
Ribisi's Selfridge is not a major character in the sequel, but he does have a blink-and-you'll-miss-it
cameo in it nonetheless.
His appearance occurs towards the beginning of the film, while Colonel Quaritch's recently-awakened
Na'vi clone watches a recording from his human-self in the past.
In the recording, Selfridge is seen in the background, correcting Quaritch and detailing
the technology behind the memory-transfer process.
When James Cameron's original 2009 "Avatar" film was first released in theaters, one of
the chief complaints was that it was basically "Dances with Wolves," but with blue space
aliens instead of Native Americans.
Both films are about a soldier from a colonizing force "going Native" by falling in love with
the Indigenous people, and deciding to fight his own kind to protect them.
Furthermore, both films talk about how most Native cultures would use the entire animal
after a hunt – utilizing the animal's meat to eat, their hide to make clothes, their
bones to make tools, etc.
"Avatar: The Way of Water," unsurprisingly, has many breathtaking sequences in it.
One of the most harrowing sequences in the film is a chase scene on the Pandoran ocean
between a massive RDA hunting vessel and a herd of sentient alien whale-like creatures
called "Tulkun."
It is an obvious allusion to the inhuman and cruel whaling practices, as we see the RDA
hunting crew using their advanced sci-fi technology to violently corner, trap, and kill an entire
family of tulkun.
It is also reminiscent of the way European colonizers in the West would hunt animals
- like the buffalo - to near extinction for their hides, while letting the corpses rot,
with no care for the wider ecosystem.
Furthermore, while the giant tulkun are hunted mercilessly, it's only so that the company
can extract just one, single vial of brain goop – leaving the rest of the tulkun carcasses
to rot.
What's interesting about "Avatar: The Way of Water" is that, besides some off-hand mentions,
the plot of the film is no longer predicated on extracting unobtainium from Pandora anymore.
Instead, the RDA is attempting to completely terraform Pandora for human occupation, as
in the ensuing years since the first "Avatar" film, it seems Earth has become completely uninhabitable.
We don't spend a lot of time on Earth, but it seems one of the main issues with the planet
in the "Avatar" universe is that it's overcrowded.
See, during the previously-mentioned tulkun hunting scene, we discover the tulkun brain-goop
is used to completely stop aging in humans.
This means that there is a population of people on Earth who are essentially immortal – assuming
they can afford the goop.
Adding to the fact that workers can seemingly have their memories scanned to constantly
be re-cloned as an infinite labor force, it seems the company's short-sighted, profit-motivated,
and anti-labor policies are dooming Earth.
This also goes against the balancing of energy that the Na'vi follow on Pandora.
They say the Goddess Eywa gives energy for life, but that it is only borrowed, and that
you end up giving the energy back in death.
However, humans on Earth (presumably rich humans) are trying to hoard their life - and
their energy - and not giving back it back to nature, causing disruption, chaos, and
destruction on their planet in the process.
It's no secret that "Avatar: The Way of Water" director and co-writer James Cameron is obsessed
with the ocean.
He's spent tons of money from his own personal fortune to fund deep sea expeditions.
So, it's no surprise that some of that design aesthetic for the RDA's tulkun hunting operation
would have some aesthetic similarities to real ships and subs.
Even the more fantastical sci-fi designs – such as the subs that have metallic crab-like legs
and mechanical claws – bear resemblances to real tech in the field of deep sea diving.
James Cameron's love for the ocean clearly extends to the various aquatic life that inhabits it.
This includes the whale-like tulkun, who live in the ocean and visit the coastal villages
of the marine-based Metkayina Na'vi tribe.
The Metkayina and the tulkun share a close, sacred bond, as the tulkun are revealed to
be sentient creatures – arguably smarter than both the humans and Na'vi – who are
even capable of complex language, mathematics, and even art.
At one point, Jake's younger son Lo’ak befriends a wounded and "banished" tulkun.
Throughout the rest of the film, Lo'ak and the banished tulkun swim together and grow
a close and special bond themselves.
The tulkun even becomes pivotal to the Na'vi winning the final battle against the large
tulkun-hunting ship.
This subplot seems to be similar to the plot of the 1993 family film "Free Willy," about
a young boy who befriends a mistreated orca and then is able to free it from captivity.
Not only that, but there are seemingly overt visual references to the film – such as
a slow-motion shot of it climatically jumping in the air set right before Pandora's daily
eclipse that is very close to the visuals of "Free Willy"'s cinematography.
The climax of "Avatar: The Way of Water" is set during a battle on top of the ocean, where
the entire Sully family fights off Quaritch and his recently Na'vi-ified Marine goons
on the massive deep sea tulkun-hunting vessel.
Eventually, the raging battle creates enough structural damage to the ship to cause it
to flip upside down throughout the rest of the scene.
This, of course, lets the ocean water flood the ship as it rapidly capsizes and sinks
– with the family stuck inside.
During this exciting sequence, there are many shots and situations that are very similar
to James Cameron's previous action-packed epic set in the ocean, "Titanic."
Speaking of James Cameron's '97 historical blockbuster epic "Titanic," another returning
element from that film is the director casting star Kate Winslet as the Metkayina Queen Ronal
in "Avatar: The Way of Water."
Cameron often likes to bring actors he's worked with before on different projects, such as
Bill Paxton appearing in "Terminator," "Aliens," "True Lies," and "Titanic," as well as working
on multiple films with star Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sigourney Weaver.
"I'll be back."
However, there had been some tension between director James Cameron and Winslet from their
turbulent time working together on the stressful and disaster-prone "Titanic" set.
Luckily, they've since been able to bury the hatchet and finally work together again.
Meanwhile, Ronal is a strong and powerful character, and she is the Metkayina who is
the most wary of helping and giving sanctuary to Jake Sully and his family.
James Cameron's "Avatar" series has often been called a sci-fi version of revisionist
Westerns like "Dances with Wolves" and "At Play In The Fields Of The Lord."
All these films have a sympathetic view of Native Americans and their struggles against
violent and genocidal colonization from European settlers, but they also usually show things
from a white person's outside perspective.
Even worse, they often fall into problematic "white savior" and "noble savage" narrative
tropes, with "Avatar" unfortunately being no exception.
While "Avatar: The Way of Water'' doesn't necessarily alleviate that problem all the
way, the fact that Jake Sully has been fully-integrated for years helps the narrative stay focused
solely on the Na'vi's own perspective at the very least.
This includes more backstory on the intricacies of the politics between the various native
tribes of Pandora.
For instance, there's initially immense tension between Jake's family – who hail from the
forest Omaticaya clan – when they first meet with the aquatic Metkayina tribe.
It's true "Avatar" isn't entirely one-to-one with real-life history, but this animosity
between the different Na'vi clans is reminiscent of how many Native American tribes were warring
with each other, and had trouble working together due to past tensions during the European invasion.
The tension between the Omaticaya and Metkayina seen in "Avatar: The Way of Water" is, unfortunately,
also due to the fact that - like humans - the Na'vi can be biased against those physical differences.
In "The Way of Water," the Metkayina Na'vi have evolved, seemingly for thousands – if
not millions – of years to survive near the oceans of Pandora, which means that their
bodies have adapted specifically for that environment.
This includes thicker, turtle-like forearms, longer and thicker tails, and stronger diaphragms
to swim better.
Meanwhile, the forest-based Sully family are more lithe and thin to make climbing and running
through trees easier.
Beyond those relatively obvious physical differences between the forest and water Na'vi, another
difference that exists - but is not really commented on - is the difference in skin color
between two tribes, most likely due to the different environments.
The Metkayina's skin are essentially light green, while the Sullys are a much darker
shade of blue.
This adds an extra layer of racism and classism to the movie's events.
It also creates complications in mounting a revolution, since past bigotries can make
it hard to bring disparate communities to fight together against their common oppressors,
even when it's necessary.
But as the film shows at the end, when King Tonowari says that Jake and his family are
now Metkayina after they fight together, banding together and looking past bigotry is possible.