When I first saw Avatar in 2009, it blew my mind. But then I forgot about it. In 2022 I saw Avatar 2 at the London BFI. The seating was too uncomfortable for such a long movie and I left feeling underwhelmed, although the water simulation was super impressive. I wasn’t planning on seeing Avatar 3 because it seemed like more of the same, but my friends were going so I joined.
I’m glad I did. Avatar 3 takes the existing universe and turns the action up to eleven. Several important characters die or get badly injured, so the stakes are constantly high. I was at the edge of my seat the whole time. In fact, I checked my watch before the final battle because I didn’t want it to finish.
Beyond the visuals, this movie reminded me about the underlying philosophy of the series. On one side there are the humans, blinded by greed. On the other are the Naʼvi, the blue cat-like natives. A powerful aspect of the Naʼvi is their sense of community and connection with nature. When a whale gets outcast, his friends find him and bring him back to the tribe. Even more so than Fast & Furious, the movie reminds the viewer of the value of family. As the little Na’vi says: Sullys stick together.
An interesting aspect of fauna on the planet is how they can connect to each other through a common interface – a series of wires growing out of the brain stem. And yet the planet has biodiversity. What happens to invasive species? How come an adversary hasn’t hacked into this network and exploited it yet?
One view is that Eywa is the most intelligent entity on their planet and can divert resources in such a way that no real adversary can develop. A benevolent dictator of sorts. Only when humans arrive is there a threat of imbalance. Some Naʼvi worship Eywa as their god which fascinates me, because while on Earth I am an atheist, I would probably worship Eywa too. There is plenty of evidence of its existence and its complexity is so great one simply has to respect it.
What intrigues me is why a being like Eywa would exist in the first place. If a fungus (I believe it’s fungal in biology) grew to the size of a planet (call it a mega-fungus), what would stop it from simply devouring everything then dying out? Perhaps this is what happened and mega-fungi evolved over a hundred million years until one was stable enough for complex fauna like the Naʼvi to develop. James Cameron is a genius, truly. It wouldn’t surprise me if eventually we develop fungal networks to run our LLMs.
As we left the cinema, I mentioned to my friend that the only reason the Naʼvi stood a chance against humans in combat was because the humans were physically unprotected. It’s unclear why the military helicopters and boats were not remotely controlled. My friend pointed out James Cameron had already explored the AI vs nature idea through the Terminator franchise. Or perhaps we can pretend Eywa is jamming human communications at long distances. I am fine with a plot hole when it makes for such great entertainment.
To sum up: love your family, stand up for your beliefs, and study hard to make magic real. With such themes, it’s no surprise the franchise is worth billions.
P.S. The Papyrus sketches by SNL are hilarious: vid 1, vid 2