Warning: This post contains major spoilers for Avatar: The Way Of Water.
Like its predecessor, Avatar: The Way Of Water is a political movie, but its meaning goes deeper than James Cameron’s ecological activism. For all the pointed warning about treating nature as a mere commodity, Avatar 2 is also about a far more intimate story, whose meaning actually explains the sequel’s most controversial moments.
Though unwavering in his depiction of the urgent need to treat nature differently, Cameron uses Avatar: The Way of Water’s new family dynamic to introduce more complexity. For a movie that is otherwise completely on target with its message, having the portrait of family be more complicated is as surprising as it is challenging. Just as Jake Sully’s paradise is under threat, so too is the dream of his family. Because for James Cameron, family is an even bigger challenge in Avatar 2.
Avatar’s Real Meaning Reveals Family Can Be A Dangerous Idea
In Avatar: The Way Of Water, Cameron challenges the idea that family unity and strength is a miracle cure to all problems. At first, the director plays to conventional family imagery, of protective parents and obedient children providing all solutions. Jake Sully makes the impossible but noble decision to uproot his family for their own safety, frequent urging and sometimes threatening his sons to follow every instruction. He imagines order and unity, and a normal hierarchy of family power will be the key to them surviving.
But Avatar 2’s idea of family is actually way more complex than that. It’s only by defying their father that the junior Sully tribe save the day, and the conventional image of the protective mother is destroyed by Neytiri’s apparent hatred of Spider. In Avatar: The Way of Water’s ending the fluidity of family and rules of hierarchy replaces convention with the Sully kids introducing their own powers but also honouring their parents.
Kiri’s links to Pandora are suppressed at first (and even “punished” by the assumption that they cause seizures) and Lo’Ak’s rebellious spirit - as nurtured further by his link to Payakan the Tulkun. But crucially, both play key roles in defeating Quaritch and the whalers. And it’s only by both accepting the “rebellions” of his children and also accepting help from them - challenging his fiercely protected hierarchy - that Sully survives. The idea of family evolving and incorporating supposedly rogue elements is the true meaning of Avatar 2.
Spider & Neytiri’s Avatar 2 Mistakes Are Explained In The Way Of Water
On the other side of the complex idea of family is the danger that reinforcing old conventions can be. Unfortunately, Avatar: The Way Of Water uses Neytiri as a scapegoat in that idea, and putting her at the heart of 2 very confusing decisions. She is almost reinvented in the sequel, in fact, turned more animalistic and volatile by her desperate love and need to protect her family.
Neytiri is portrayed as a tragic hangover of old family systems. First, it’s revealed that she is suspicious of Spider and refuses to consider him true family, in direct contradiction of the message of Avatar and her love of Jake. She then refuses to leave the sky caves at first, despite how easily the family would be found and killed, out of fear. She is stoic but stagnant, reluctant to allow anything other than what she seems to think of as the real way family should be.
In the darkest but most confusing Avatar: The Way Of Water moment, Neytiri turns on Spider, threatening to kill him if Quaritch doesn’t free her “real” child. It’s not something we’d expect of the original Avatar’s Neytiri, but it fits with how she struggles with her family, mortally weakened by her love for them. Ultimately, it’s also her rejection of Spider that leads to him feeling contradictory affinity with Quaritch and saving his life when he’s about to drown.
Why Spider Really Saves Quaritch
Pushed out by his Pandora family and always reminded of his difference - reinforced tragically by Neytiri’s coldness to him - Spider perversely finds the value of his bond with his estranged father’s clone. Quaritch’s kindness, which the villain legitimately offered despite himself, made sure Spider realised that blood is thicker than water. His rescue of Quaritch is done almost under duress; his internal conflict playing out obviously on screen and without Neytiri’s rejection of him, is it really certain he would have saved him?
Even that isn’t a straight-forward enough answer for Avatar: The Way Of Water, because Cameron also plays with the idea of essential love. The Tulkun/Metkayina clan bonds exist to reinforce the idea that some ties cannot be resisted and breaking them come at greater cost. The same is true of Neytiri’s bond to her kind at the expense of Spider (even if her family aren’t really her kind either), and also of Quaritch’s clone seeking a relationship with the child her never met nor known.
Fundamentally, while Neytiri could be blamed for Spider saving Quaritch, and Spider’s actions could be criticized for their inevitable outcome, but the key point for Avatar 2 is that family is almost too complex to classify. But Cameron refuses to judge either for their mistakes, because family is both a joy and a burden. So unnatural is the effort to challenge family “rules” that it only happens in Avatar: The Way Of Water when death is a very real threat.
