My bf and I watched Avatar the Way of Water over the past two weeks. We found it an unsatisfying experience, and we basically spent the entire movie grumbling. I spent a significant time explaining why CJ Cherryh’s Foreigner series does tall space elves better, and I thought I’d share my rant with the group. This will contain untagged spoilers for Avatar.

So first of all, all the ways I disliked Avatar on its own merits:

From beginning to end, this movie felt like Cameron built this whole beautiful world and wanted to make a documentary about it, but had to add plot to get funding. We don’t even get a new plot, most of it is a rehash of movie 1, with the interesting bits shaved off.

Having the story feel like it’s just there to show off the world is one of my biggest pet peeves, so I am not feeling at all charitable. I will admit the world is stunning. Most of the time it looks so seamless I forgot it was cgi, but sometimes the way water and bodies reacted was very uncanny valley and took me all the way out.

My problem with the world was that it felt a mile wide and an inch deep. We spend almost an entire movie with a new people and what do we learn about them? They swim well, have fish friends, live in woven structures and love their children. Nothing about their society, their economy, their thoughts about the massive threat of the humans on their planet. Does anyone in this village have a personality beyond the role they fill in the story? Swimming around all day and “boys will be boys” hardly counts when there doesn’t seem to be anything else for them to do.

Almost no one from the old movie seems to matter anymore and the new characters are very thinly developed. I guess there wasn’t room in the budget for a new villain so instead we just get the old one motivated solely by revenge, cause that’s so nuanced and interesting.

Oh also, we just skip over all parts of how humans settled in and built a huge infrastructure, what the resistance did/ didn’t do to hinder this. Was there ever any faction pushing for diplomacy? Just like the Na’vi, humanity is flattened, we just all go in for genocide and military action. After destroying the earth, we finally put our differences aside to destroy a new planet, with no conflict between us, ever, (except for one marine biologist looking a little sad in that one scene.) Oh also, we no longer care at all about Unobtainium from the first movie, but have a new MacGuffin that’s only relevant for 5 minutes and served no purpose except to remind me that we’ve forgotten the unobtanium.

It was around this point in my ranting that I stopped to think about Omelas, and Le Guin’s point that we don’t find utopia compelling in fiction. And this is an interesting point to me, because I do not find the Na’vi society believable as it’s shown in this movie. Specifically, the water tribe (because I have so little memory of the first movie at this point), seem to have a completely idyllic existence, the only conflict we see is children acting childishly, they’re not at all concerned with the invading human armies ravaging their planet, or hunting their whale family until it’s on their doorstep. They live in harmony with nature, there’s no scarcity, no one seems to have a job or anything to do but wait around for the plot to happen to them. So while I’m willing to concede that part of it is maybe also me, thinking more I do think most of it is just Cameron not telling a story. He’s not showing anything about these people except the most basic, and human, emotions and reactions suited to the situations. They exist as a location for the plot to happen and to show off the beautiful ocean, but we know nothing of their lives when the main characters aren’t in them.

Also, minor thing but Sigourney Weaver as a fourteen-year-old is just plain weird. I do like her whole Anakin Skywalker deal but I was hoping we’d get more info on Pandoran midi-chlorians in this movie rather than future ones.

Why Foreigner does it better

I wrote a longer review here, but in a nutshell, Foreigner is about Bren, the human ambassador to a race of tall space elf aliens, the Atevi. The humans have been stranded on the planet for a while they’ve had fairly cold relations with the Atevi, until Bren, who’s always been the equivalent of an Atevi weeb, becomes an ambassador. He becomes deeply involved in their society, to the point that he is now other to the humans, his way of thinking changes, he has a >!romantic relationship!< and is a crucial part of Atevi politics.

The main thing Foreigner does better is that the aliens feel alien. There is a fundamental difference in the way they think and form relationships. If I look at Na’vi in any situation, I can say “I would do the same under those circumstances”, the Atevi though have a different structure of priorities, different hierarchy, and different attachments. Through the story as you get familiar with them you can predict how they would react, but it isn’t the natural human reaction. And this is something Cherryh shows at every level. The language is different in the complex way you have to always be thinking about it to be sure of nuance and meaning. Children are treated and raised differently. Things that seem similar on the surface have different motivations, mistaking an ally for a friend can be deadly. Even after 20 years of living with them Bren still gets lonely because he has such limited contact with humans.

I do admit that Cameron has less to work with, it’s easier to show the complexities of a society in the Early Modern period than in such a low-tech society. But I think harder is not impossible if you just spent some more time on the people than the fauna. If the Na’vi are meant to be inspired by real-world indigenous cultures I think the portrayal is shallow and reductive.

When Bren goes to the Atevi everyone relates to him either by trying to use him, to learn from him, to protect him, to manipulate him, or something. When Jake and his family leave their tribe (so at to not put it in danger from revenge villain) and move to the water tribe (so as to put it in danger from revenge villain? Imo, seems a shitty thing for the hero to do but ok), the conflict of “they’re here, what do we do with them” gets solved in a few minutes and after that the adults do their own thing and dont seem to mind the newcomers much. A group of teens show the kids around and do a little flirting and a lil posturing. How does this affect everyone’s lives? We don’t know.

The Atevi change from their interactions with humans. There are strong factions, on both sides, that oppose the exchange, and limit the transfer of knowledge and technology. Keeping their culture and way of life safe from human intervention is a priority for the Atevi, and despite their efforts, they still change. For the Na’vi this doesn’t seem a concern at all. Jake’s taught them a few things about weapons and tactics but it doesn’t seem like that’s affected them much at all. As if the technology to instantly communicate across a significant distance would not have some sort of impact on society.

The Atevi feel real and alive, they have their history, their motivations, their goals and desires, their conflicts. We see that these exist whether the humans are there or not, and how humans affect them is just another side. What do the Na’vi do when they’re not part of the main plot? I couldn’t tell you.

We were chilling on the couch much later yesterday, and out of the blue bf says “you know what really pisses me off about Avatar” (it kept bugging us all day, hence this long ass rant) “it acts like it wants to be taken seriously rather than commit to just being a fun movie”. And I do think that’s where it most fails, it picks big and complicated themes and then just simplifies and flattens them till they just don’t work anymore.