Future film foreshadowing, environmental rage, and a red herring that caught us all off-guard.
These brief lines in "Avatar: The Way of Water" hold an ocean of depth.
Both "Avatar" films have a similar framing device: they begin and end with Jake Sully's narration.
In the prologue of "Way of Water," Jake waxes poetic about his beautiful wife and beloved children.
Besides Neytiri, his family has grown to include adopted daughter Kiri, oldest son Neteyam,
youngest son Lo'ak, and youngest daughter Tuk.
Viewers get the sense that, after the traumatic destruction of Hometree, nature and the Na'vi
people are healing together.
But then he warns —
By this, he means his family, the Na'vi community that's taken him in, and the natural beauty
and scientific wonder of the moon they all live on.
Jake often tells Neytiri that he loves her in conjunction with her people and their world.
It makes sense that he speaks this way; the Na'vi know that everything on Pandora is connected.
His fear of losing his happiness is a fear of losing his family, his clan, and his new
home world.
So when Jake's monologue ends with the line —
— he's referring to his own as well as that of everyone he loves — including Eywa, the
Great Mother.
"What does Eywa's heartbeat sound like?"
"Mighty."
The quote is tragic foreshadowing, indicating that someone's heartbeat is soon to stop.
In his opening monologue, Jake catches the audience up to speed on what he and the rest
of the Sully clan have been up to for the last decade and a half.
The audience sees him welcoming his children into the world, teaching them how to hunt
and fish, and accompanying Neytiri on a twilight banshee-ride date night.
As Jake describes each milestone in English, the rest of the Na'vi communicate with one
another using the language Cameron and a linguist invented for the franchise.
Jake jokes about how long it took him to speak the language fluently.
He concludes by saying that, now,
In that moment, Jake's family's dialogue switches to English, even though the audience is meant
to understand that they're all speaking Na'vi.
This is a slick screenwriting trick, a way to acknowledge and preserve Pandora's on-screen
culture without making the actors do the entirety of their performance in a fictional language.
The remainder of "Avatar: The Way of Water" is spoken almost entirely in English, except
for moments where what's lost in translation is part of the plot.
Jake admits that, although he and his kids love Spider — a feral boy left behind by
the humans — Neytiri struggles to see him as anything but an outsider and a threat.
At the beginning, the audience doesn't know if she's aware of the truth about his parentage,
but by the end, it's clear that some of her hesitation about accepting the boy into their
family has to do with the fact that he's Quaritch's son.
It was Neytiri who dealt the depraved Colonel a fatal blow with her father's bow and arrow
at the end of the original "Avatar," which we see play out again on the mech suit camera.
Years later, Recombinant Quaritch lands on Pandora to seek revenge on the traitor Jake Sully.
He essentially lucks into kidnapping the Sully kids at the site of the old mobile lab, discovers
Neytiri was responsible for his death, and is nearly able to take her out...
all in the same scene.
Before his plan is interrupted, he shouts in her direction that he recognizes her call
sign: the color of the fletches on her arrows.
She recognizes his voice, and though she's confused, yells back —
At the end of the film, Jake and Neytiri think Recombinant Quaritch is at the bottom of the
ocean — but since Spider couldn't bring himself to let him die, he'll most certainly
be back in "Avatar 3."
There's a great deal of talk about the life cycle in "Way of Water," and it begins long
before the Sullys get to the reef.
After their encounter with Recombinant Quaritch, Jake realizes the humans are specifically
targeting his family and decides the best course of action — for the Sullys and for
the Omaticaya — is for them to leave.
This is easier said than done: he's the clan leader.
According to their traditions, the old leader must die before the new one can assume his
place — something Jake learned firsthand all those years ago.
"I will not kill you."
"It is the way!
And it is good."
Tarsem, the incoming Omaticaya leader, ceremonially slashes Jake across the chest and says,
With that, the Sully family takes to their banshees for parts unknown.
Throughout the film, there are a number of hints that Jake may meet his untimely end,
and this reference to his own symbolic death is just one of them.
Jake frequently talks about protecting his family at all costs, which primes viewers
to think he's going to make the ultimate sacrifice when it comes down to it, to save his children
and his people.
That's exactly what the plot sets up in its third act: Quaritch has Jake's kids captive
on the Sea Dragon, and he's only willing to exchange them for Jake's life.
Of course, the emphasis on Jake's mortality is a red herring.
Tragically, it's Jake and Neytiri's oldest son, Neteyam, who doesn't survive the battle.
They will be like babies
When the Sullys arrive safely at the reef, Jake feels relatively confident that the Metkayina
people will grant them shelter — after all, he was the great Turok Makto until very recently.
Tonowari, the leader of the Metkayina, knows of his legend and is welcoming, but is also
concerned about the possibility of war coming to his shores.
His wife and the clan's medicine woman, Ronal, is much more skeptical.
She correctly deduces that the Sullys had to leave High Camp because they posed a problem
to the Omaticaya, and she doesn't want to bother teaching her ways to people who won't
be receptive or capable.
She tells Tonowari —
This line is a callback to when Jake and Neytiri meet in the first "Avatar."
"You're like a baby."
What Neytiri means is that Jake was loud, clumsy, and unaware of his impact on the world
around him.
When her mother charged her with teaching Jake the ways of the Na'vi, she bristled,
reasoning that they'd essentially have to start from scratch.
Now, the tables are turned.
While Ronal's daughter, Tsireya, is noticeably more up for the challenge, Ronal still asserts
that it won't be easy for the forest Na'vi to fit in at the reef.
Her comment is both a statement of prejudice and a reasonable attempt at isolating her
clan from danger...
two themes seen consistently throughout the "Avatar" series.
The flip side of Ronal's line is Jake's answer to it: he tells the Metkayina,
Jake has adapted before, and he'll do it again.
He did it as a human after becoming paralyzed, again when he was reborn as a Na'vi avatar,
and once more when he was finally accepted into Na'vi society with a permanent, true
Na'vi body of his own.
Jake is also pointing out that, on a long enough timeline, the Na'vi physically adapt.
Evolution has made the Na'vi distinct from each other depending on the habitat in which
they live: the Metkayina have evolved to have lighter teal skin, thicker and flatter tails,
muscular, almost finned wrists, and bigger lungs.
They've adapted to their ecosystem, as will the clans of Na'vi that audiences are likely
to meet in "Avatar 3" and beyond.
Given his circumstances, Jake is much less prejudiced about physical differences than
other Na'vi.
The "Avatar" films are deeply interested in the intersections between technology, biology,
and environmental science.
Messages can be found throughout that not-so-discreetly plead with humans to be better stewards of
their resources, their planet, and each other.
Cameron is challenging humans to evolve to live within what Jake calls "the great balance"
rather than to continue old, destructive habits.
If "Avatar: The Way of Water" has a thesis statement, it's the words of the Metkayina
people — wisdom that Tsireya imparts to a troubled Lo'ak.
She tells him —
She goes on to compare water to a womb that births us into a world which exists before
we're here and remains after we die.
It's a moving speech, made even more lovely by the actor's calm, contemplative delivery,
and the entrancing shots of Pandora's marine wildlife.
"Alien, that's all they see!"
Tsireya's lesson is meant to make Lo'ak feel as though he's a part of something bigger
than himself and his family.
More broadly, it's meant to teach the forest-dwelling Sullys about her clan's specific philosophy
when it comes to the "great balance" that Jake speaks of — the great balance that
Earth's humans don't respect.
These Metkayina sentiments are religious in-world, but they also represent the environmentally-conscious
Cameron's personal philosophy.
If that philosophy sounds strikingly similar to the notion of the Force from "Star Wars"
— especially as a more mature and slightly jaded Luke Skywalker taught it to Rey in "The
Last Jedi" — you're not alone.
Both borrow from Eastern spiritual traditions like Taoism and pantheistic religions that
revere nature.
Pandora's sky is one of its most spectacular, yet fraught features.
Instead of days and nights with a sun followed by a moon up above, this habitable moon has
an enormous planet on its horizon.
It has nightly eclipses and some peculiar seasons — but like any big rock floating
in space, its sky is full of stars.
Lo'ak, trying to make his father sound like a hero for once, remarks:
It's a touching moment… in theory.
Lo'ak not only views his once-human father as a true Na'vi, but that he's mythologized
his origin story to an extent that he'd probably never actually admit.
But in the past 30 years, what appeared to be falling stars turned out to be spacecraft
from Earth, sent mostly for nefarious purposes.
It's the white light of a ship burning its way into Pandora's atmosphere that alerts
Jake and Neytiri to the return of the humans at the start of "The Way of Water."
"The humans are returning.
They're hunting us."
And since the audience knows that Earth is dying and humans have little choice but to
take over this distant moon by any means necessary, it's not the last time these young Na'vi will
see an ominous star in Pandora's sky.
Quaritch convinces his sort-of son, Spider, to ride along on his squad's mission in order
to avoid the military's mental torture.
He remains antagonistic to their efforts throughout his captivity, making fun of their slow speed
and poor understanding of the Na'vi language.
He's a Tarzan-like teen among ten-foot-tall blue Jarheads until he meets marine biologist
Dr. Ian Garvin.
As heartless and hot-headed alphas Quaritch and Captain Mick excitedly discuss the killing
and harvesting of tulkuns, a more subdued and guilt-ridden Dr. Garvin walks through
each step of the operation with Spider.
Once their target — the mother tulkun that was Ronal's spirit sister — has been eliminated,
the hunting party ventures inside her corpse, where a makeshift workspace has been set up.
The team drills into the tulkun's brain, and out comes a golden liquid... about enough
to fill a thermos.
Captain Mick claims it is worth about $80 million.
It turns out, Earth scientists have discovered this substance has the power to stop human aging.
Spider has an issue with this, though.
He asks, in rage —
This is meant to show how irresponsible modern industrialized humans are, compared to indigenous
populations who live in harmony with their natural resources.
The whaling operation's wastefulness is even more horrific once the film explains how acutely
tulkuns are able to think and feel.