AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER

AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER. James Cameron, director; producer, with Jon Landau; script, along with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver; story by Cameron Jaffa, Silver, Josh Friedman, and Shane Salerno, based on characters by James Cameron. Dylan Cole, Ben Procter, production designers.[1] USA: Lightstorm Entertainment, TSG Entertainment (production) / 20th Century Studios (distribution), 2022. Running time 192 minutes (3 hours, 12 minutes).[2][3][4] As of 16 December 2022, there was a very complete synopsis on IMDb, at link.[5]

Sequel to Cameron's AVATAR (2019): A family film that should inspire some robust and useful arguments on authority in the family and on teenagers (possibly including gangs?), especially in military families and among refugees.

Relevant here for the premise of computer-assisted uploading and downloading human personalities into avatars, here with the possibility of downloading an additional personality; still, relevant primarily for images reinforcing the thematic emphases of the film. (Erlich has studied, taught, and written propaganda, so he can say in a neutral voice that the images drive home the useful anti-imperialism, pro-environment propaganda messages of this movie.)

See for images of military and/or hunting mechanisms including exoskeletons of the "Soldier Boy" variety (or Ellen Ripley fighting the Alien Queen in ALIENS), military vehicles on the model of crabs and insects, boats and weapons for hunting analogs of sperm whales, etc. With the exception of captured automatic weapons used to protect indigenous people, most technology beyond the composite (?) bow is associated with evil, perhaps suggested by its clunky (though not cyberpunk) appearance. There are images of containment within high-tech environments, which, if not imprisonment, is for the production of military "Avatars" — bioengineered humans in Na'vi form.[6] As a strict rule, militaristic mechanism is contrasted with the beauty of the natural world of the film — as we'd expect from Cameron, there is much underwater cinematography of great beauty — and the mechanism is threatening and, well, evil. For many older American viewers, analogies with what we call the Vietnam War are inescapable (for others: other colonial wars). The analogies with whaling are also quite direct. (Nuance can be a virtue in artistic propaganda; subtlety is not.)

NOTE: Students of the work of Ursula K. Le Guin who want to follow up on the original AVATAR's debt to her, should take seriously the subtitle WAY OF WATER and its Daoist possibilities. In AVATAR 2, Cameron goes through the traditional Western elements of Air, Earth, Fire, and Water, and the more mundane element of earth and the yielding but very strong element of water have much more positive emphasis than air — and fire is just bad.

RDE, finishing, 16/17Dec22