Apocalypse Na’vi

With James Cameron’s Avatar 2: The Way of Water waiting in the wings I decided to watch the first Avatar again. 

I saw it for the first time in 2009, in IMAX 3D (did we have IMAX 3D back then? I saw it in 3D for sure.) on opening weekend. I enjoyed it then, for what it was, and then I never watched it again. 

But for 13 years, we have all lived in a world where Cameron was working in secret, if not silence, to make four sequels to Avatar. Avatar land opened at Animal Kingdon in Disney World in less time than it has taken to make the first sequel. 

And the question — for me at least — is what did Cameron see in this story he was telling, that enraptured him so much, that he’s going to spend a good part of his working life putting together a franchise? 

Avatar is a broad and familiar story set in a science fiction universe. Jake Sully, a space marine, is in a wheelchair after being injured in an unseen conflict. He travels to Pandora and is given the ability to get into a virtual reality pod and mind-meld with a cloned suit that will make him one of the Na’vi. The Na’Vi are tall, blue, catlike creatures who can connect with animals on their homeworld via a genetic mutation in their tails. 

Sully is supposed to work with a group of scientists to connect with the Na’vi and convince them to move away from their sacred tree so that the Space Marines and an evil corporation can mine for (I kid you not) unobtanium. 

All of this plays out and looks like the opening of a video game. If you’ve played say Halo, and gone through the opening encounters where the game teaches you how the controllers work, then you have watched the opening of Avatar. 

The rest of the movie hits every story beat exactly as you expect. Will Jake Sully fall in love with a Na’vi woman? Will this woman be the daughter of the chief? Will he betray the evil corporation and lead the Na’vi into battle against the bad humans? Will everything mostly work out in the end?

I’m beating up on it more than I should. 

It’s visually stunning. Everything Stephen Lang — as the evil head of the evil space marines — does proves he’s an incredible badass villain. He also gets all the best lines in both movies. 

“If there is a Hell, you might wanna go there for some R & R after a tour on Pandora. Out there beyond that fence every living thing that crawls, flies, or squats in the mud wants to kill you and eat your eyes for jujubes.”

Col. Quaritch

And a story like this demands that it be broad and simple and be understood in multiple languages for those sweet foreign markets. 

I never doubted how the first Avatar was going to end. Just as I never doubted that Thanos would ultimately be defeated in Endgame. 

What I did doubt was that Cameron could take what he gave us in Avatar and then make a compelling sequel. And, having seen that sequel, wooo boy was I wrong.