Avatar: The Way Of Water Has Tons Of Overlap With Avatar: The Last Airbender, Making Everything Confusing For Everyone
This post contains heavy spoilers for "Avatar: The Way of Water."
Earlier this year, it was revealed that the beloved cartoon, "Avatar: The Last Airbender," was actually forced to add its subtitle not because the creators thought it was a cool-sounding title, but because James Cameron already had the rights to that name, years before he broke every box office record out there with his own "Avatar."
Not that the two were really that much alike. One is a giant blockbuster movie with live-action actors and CGI, motion-capture blue aliens set in the far future and in a massive forest moon where people rise up to fight an oppressive imperialistic force with advanced technology. The other is an animated TV series set in a fantasy world where people can control the elements, and there are dragons and other fantastical creatures. Still, it has not stopped fans from jokingly confusing both franchises based on the name alone.
But that was 13 years ago, before we even knew what a crushing disappointment a live-action "The Last Airbender" could be, back when M. Night Shyamalan was still riding high off his hits. Even "Avatar" itself changed in that time, with James Cameron finally returning to Pandora with "The Way of Water," a sequel that is much better than its predecessor, with a more focused story that feels bigger while being smaller, a sequel that hands the franchise to the next generation, and with a poignant message about saving the oceans.
It is also a sequel that complicates the confusion over the two "Avatar" franchises beyond just one being a cartoon and the other one being blue.
A tale of two Avatars
More than a decade after the events of the first film, we catch up to Jake Sully having become a father and a tribe leader (albeit not a very good one). He has five kids that he treats like a military unit — including one he consistently dismisses as a disappointment, one he abandons for most of the movie without a care in the world, and one with a mysterious and powerful connection to nature and to Eywa herself.
When this film's version of the T-1000, Colonel Miles Quaritch, returns from the dead and becomes the coolest character in the film, Jake Sully is forced to take his family and run away. Like Aang, Jake Sully and his family arrive as refugees at the home of the water tribe, known as the Metkayina clan. And just like the Southern Water Tribe in "The Last Airbender," the Metkayina are uniquely suited to their environment, having evolved to have physical attributes that allow them to essentially bend the element of water to their needs to allow them to move better underwater.
While most of the Sully kids have a hard time adjusting because they are not as physically adapted to the water as the Metkayina, there is one exception: Kiri. The biological daughter of Sigourney Weaver's Grace Augustine and, well, we don't know. Kiri has a strange connection to the natural world around her. Animals and plants seem drawn to Kiri, and she says she literally feels the mighty voice of Eywa speaking to her, allowing Kiri to kind of control the energy of the animals — like the way Avatar Aang becomes able to bend the very energy of living beings.
Go full Aang, James!
But wait, those are rather superficial similarities, you might say, and you'd be mostly right. That is where the big similarities stop, but the fact that the film is giving us both a child with special powers that cross over different element-based tribes, and just the idea of element-based tribes alone are enough to make this fan of Avatar Aang and his friends raise an eyebrow and wonder just how far James Camron is willing to take this.
Really, why stop at a forest tribe and a water tribe? Give us more element-based Na'vi tribes! Where is the desert tribe? Or the volcano tribe, with red skin tones and some kind of physical attribute that lets them endure high temperatures? Where is the sky tribe, which probably has some kind of parachute-like patagium that lets them soar through the sky like a flying squirrel? Or the underground tribe that has really strong claws that allows them to dig tunnels? Show them all, Cameron! Give us the four nations like in "The Last Airbender" but with Na'vi instead of benders.
As for Kiri, it is clear that Cameron is teasing some kind of deeper connection to Eywa, maybe even having the young girl be a personification or incarnation of the deity, but why stop there? Just outright make her the avatar! What's stopping Kiri from controlling the elements? From commanding all flora and fauna, and sending them after the enemies of the Na'vi? And, if Cameron is planning to jump forward in time to a new generation in every film, why not have Kiri reincarnate after death in a sort of cycle, each time being born in a different tribe, kind of like ... well, the avatar? At this point, there is no avoiding the confusion or comparison, so let's just fully lean into it.