Avatar, Way of the Water - A nod to colonialism and environmentalism

Hello, I'd like to recommend the movie Avatar, Way of the Water; which is now streaming on Disney+


Typically, I'm not huge into fantasy movies. Many times superhero movies and fantasy movies boil down to non-stop action with shallow plots of good guy vs bad guy, with the protaganist trying to find their purpose in the world (or something like that).

Avatar, way of the water not only showcases some beautiful and fantastic sci-fi fantasy CGI, but it also has a fairly good plot, with a few exceptions (the antagonist wasn't great). I'll try to avoid spoilers here, but if you want to go into it blind, i'd recommend not reading anymore.

The premise of the movie is about the return of human beings to an alien world; Pandora. They're coming back in full force this time to colonize and extract resources. The humans try to work with tribes to avoid conflict. However, if the indigenous aliens get in the way, they'll shed no tears in having to kill and destroy anything that gets in their way. This naturally causes conflict between the Avatars and humans which are referred to as sky-people or demons.

The movie, is esentially about family, our relationship with nature, and the effects of colonialsm. It made me think of how the Americas were colonized and how europeans slowly took away everything that the indigenous people had. It reminded me of the buffallo that almost went extinct because of the carelessness of european settlers due to foreign diseases.

Also, how we (humanity) have grown more and more careless of Earth. We are disconected and allowing endless pollution and extraction of resources to destroy the Planet. We discount the wisdom of indigenous people who learned to live alongside mother earth and respect it.

I think this movie has a great message and hopefully more people will take it to heart. We can't continue the destruction of our oceans and nature; that we need to make an effort to live in harmoney with Earth. We shouldn't be aiming to colonize Mars. We should be aiming to make Earth better. This desire to unneedingly reproduce, which will cause more pollution and extaction of resources, is something I think we have to reconsider (if even possible).

Anyway, maybe I got too ranty on this one. Either way, it's a fun movie with a good message. I know, at least when I was growing up, the effects of colonialism were brushed aside in history class with an over-emphasis on how great America is. And I think a lot of people don't question their own country's history enough. Knowing our history, with all the bad, can hopefully prevent us from repeating it.

It's a great PC movie that is what you expect out of Hollywood these days. Take out the FX and what do you have left?

I love movies and I'm not Critical of any genre I watch them all and will give any movie a Chance.

That being said , Avatar, the way of water was a film I couldn't watch more than 30 minutes of . I may go back and try to watch it again later but the bit I saw was like nails on a chalk board.

It was firstly Predictable from the start , secondly it was strangely corny and just flat out weird the direction they took.

All of this was in stark contrast to the first film which was masterful. I'm not really sure what they were thinking with this sequel and it's scary to think there are at least 2 other films to come.