Currently: The Way of Water

Andrews University, welcome back! Hope you all had a merry (and restful) holiday break. This semester, Alannah and I have chosen to shift the theme of this column slightly away from lists of new releases and more toward current discussion in the entertainment industry, be that a thought-provoking new movie or debate over an album cover. I hope you, the readers, enjoy the more spirited and controversial takes in the upcoming months. A disclaimer, of course, the opinions of “Currently…” are my (the author’s) own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Student Movement or the greater Andrews University community. Enjoy!

Who can deny that the sequel to James Cameron’s “Avatar”—“Avatar: The Way of Water”—was a box office smash? But while the film may have broken records, turned an incredible profit, and made James Cameron the first director with three films that each exceed a stunning $1.5 billion dollars, the film has also generated a lot of discussion about representation, indigenous culture, and Hollywood’s continued reliance on white saviorism to tell stories about oppressed people.

First, some context. If you are one of the five people on earth who have not seen the first “Avatar” (I’m kidding, the number five is not rooted in any data, but it feels like everyone has seen the movie at this point, whether that is a good thing or not), it tells the story of Jake Sully, a disabled ex-Marine who has been recruited to travel to the faraway planet of Pandora to participate in scientific research of the local people, flora, and fauna. He undergoes some sort of “Avatar” process (the science is sketchy) where his brain is transferred to a “being” who resembles the local people (tall, blue, alien-like creatures with tails). Anyway, to make a very long story short, he falls in love with one of the locals and leads her people to victory against the colonizing Americans (who wish to destroy the natives’ sacred tree in order to mine some kind of very valuable metal). Doesn’t it feel a little like, I don’t know, history class?? Oh right, Europeans did this to almost every nation on earth. The people are hesitant to fight at first (the Na’vi are naturally a peaceful people), but Sully convinces them to fight and in the end is rewarded with a permanent place among the Na’vi (as their leader, Toruk Makto) and a permanent Avatar body.

Unfortunately, the sequel follows in the footsteps of the original, introducing us to yet another sector of Na’vi that Jake Sully must save: the Metkayina clan, an oceanic tribe inspired by the ​​Maori people of New Zealand. However, Cameron and the team’s best intentions fail to land, with Kate Winslet (infamous for her Titanic role as Rose and also a white woman) playing Ronal, the tribe’s spiritual mother and wife of the chief. In fact, it is primarily in casting where “Avatar: The Way of Water'' continually misses the mark, as well as a multitude of issues discussed in this article by the New York Post. The film’s characters, especially the two sons of Sully and Neytiri—Neteyam and Lo’ak—are clearly coded to be perceived as people of color. From their African-American style braids to the accent of their voice, I watched the sequel firmly believing the two were being portrayed by African-American actors. Imagine my shock when I googled the cast later and found that Jamie Flatters, a London-born white man, plays Neteyam; and Britain Dalton (let’s be for real, the name gives it away) plays Lo’ak. It felt strange, almost like they were mocking the culture of the Na’vi in their portrayal, once I discovered that they did not grow up in places that taught them to speak the way they did, nor do they share any cultural similarities with the Na’vi. The choice to not diversify the cast, but narrow the lens as Avatar embarks on a 5-film series, was one I find it hard to defend.

The truth is, my stomach churned at the realization that the Avatar sequel was out. I cannot deny that the lush environment of Pandora, each time filmed with breathtaking new technology (the sequel is the first motion capture filmed underwater) welcomes me in a way that only original content created for film can. White savior trope or not, each time I’ve taken a figurative trip to Pandora I have never been disappointed in the result. I just wish the situation wasn’t so dire behind the camera. James Cameron, a director praised for his innovative technology and expansive universes, is an infamous perfectionist. Requiring thousands of takes, handbuilding things from scratch, and an attention to detail are all hallmarks of his remarkably successful film career. However, a quote of his from 2010 during an interview with The Guardian resurfaced amid all the sequel hubbub and it is as disappointing as it is painful:

"This was a driving force for me in the writing of “Avatar”—I couldn't help but think that if [the Lakota Sioux] had had a time-window and they could see the future… and they could see their kids committing suicide at the highest suicide rates in the nation… because they were hopeless and they were a dead-end society—which is what is happening now—they would have fought a lot harder."

“They would have fought a lot harder.” In Cameron’s world, the brutal realities of colonization and its horrific aftermath could have been avoided if only they had fought a little harder—and his films reflect this. If only… Jake Sully could have convinced them to fight a little harder, the way he did the Na’vi. As if in some way the indigenous Americans, the Maori people of New Zealand, the countless cultures and countries shattered by colonization’s effects, could have and should have outrun the outstretched sword of European imperialism. In Cameron’s world, the fault lies not with Quaritch and not with those thinking to use Pandora as a safety net in the event of Earth’s likely demise (the human reasoning behind colonization in the sequel), but with the Na’vi, who needed Jake Sully to convince them to fight a little harder.

In the interest of ethical consumption, I find it difficult to even discuss what the movie did right. How the murder and hunting of the whale-like tulkun is yet another excellent depiction of what a planet means to the hands of white greed. How the costume designer and team at Weta Workshop (who painstakingly handled all the art animation and filled in the world to make it believable) found the perfect intersection between barely clothing the Na’vi and yet not sexualizing their bodies. How moving the story into the water not only allowed us to further explore the planet (which to me is really the purpose of these movies, to see and appreciate something natural, new, fresh, and beautiful) but create new, meaningful characters to relate to. How revisiting Jake and Neytiri as parents allows us to see an entirely new dimension to their characters (I’m a sucker for a mama bear character and Neytiri smashes it out of the park), one where they have more than a place to protect, but people.

However, imagine how much more they could have done right if they had indigenous people behind the screen—behind the camera, behind the script, silently settling into all the pieces that make a movie. Imagine if the actors looked the way they talked, allowing their characters to be a beautiful celebration of a culture instead of a strange mockery of one. Imagine if you didn’t feel that all-too-familiar vein of thinking through the film, that if the Na’vi only fought hard enough—as hard as Jake Sully fought for them—they could win. Pandora may be a beautiful planet of escape, but the story’s themes hit too close to home. And a movie about colonization could be a smash hit, if only it wasn't the colonizer's rhetoric that made it.