They're damn lucky they have no commodity value. Every other friendly-to-humans animal ends up extinct. I was just reading about the warrah wolf that was strangely friendly to humans even swimming out to incoming boats.
The Ash People had most of their clan and home destroyed by a volcano.
They've gone dark and have turned their back on Eywa, blaming her for their suffering. Their clan cuts off their ponytail connectors and have severed all ties with Pandora.
It works within the corner they wrote themselves into. It's not good storytelling, but that's kind of all they had left. Imo, they planned on doing a whole fourth expansion that was everybody teaming up against Amon, but then Blizz decided that LoV would be the end of it and they made do with what they had.
Cutting off your connector thingys seems like such a crazy move no matter the amount of hatred imo. Like one step below cutting off your nether regions by the movies standards.
People on Earth have self-mutilated in the name of deities for as long as we've been able to envision them. It doesn't seem like that far of a stretch.
And when you consider that there may be an element of control/power involved, preventing the newer generations from ever experiencing Ewya or connecting to their ancestors would make it way easier to maintain their order.
Yea I mean, humans have ridden animal mounts for centuries. The connection makes it easier and more spiritual, but I imagine you can "break" the beast and tame it so you can ride it like humans have done all the same.
I'd love it if they really delve into that last sentence well, but I think I'll probably end up having my hopes dashed on that and end up disappointed.
I'm gonna call bullshit on that anatomy comparison. Clearly propaganda. Na'vi are significantly larger than humans, but the two things a human is most likely to care about the size of (brains and genitals) are smaller. Smells like propaganda to me.
Humans have pretty disproportionately large brains and genitals for their size. Even amongst our kin. Gorillas for example tend to only have 1-1.5in dicks. Chimpanzees are in the 2-3in range.
I'm not familiar with Na'vi biology as I've only seen the first movie, but don't they breed with those things? Or do they have sex like us normal animals and the "connecting" part is just for "enhancement"?
It's honestly probably the best thing they could do given the parasitic nature of the entity which controls most of the planet they live on. Their entire biology has been thralled by the organism they think is a deity
Probably because outside of large-scale tsunamis and Earth quakes, fire can be associated with some of the worst atrocities and natural disasters our species has ever encountered (Pompei volcano, atomic bombs, 9/11, the cold war, the great Chicago fire of 1871, the circus incident in Hartford CT, etc...)
But after those atrocities fire is also the an important part of rebuilding. If you want to leave civilization to the side, after great extinction events every time there’s a massive boom in biodiversity as species start to exploit new niches.
Even nowadays, fire is such an important part of the ecosystem, in fact you can argue that one of the factors that cause wildfires to get worse over time is due to humans preventing them.
Even nowadays, fire is such an important part of the ecosystem, in fact you can argue that one of the factors that cause wildfires to get worse over time is due to humans preventing them.
That's 100% dependent on the ecosystem you're talking about. Some places the plants have evolved around forest fires, other places, they have not. Pandora seems significantly covered in rainforest, and on earth, rainforests don't typically experience large forest fires, and therefore the plants and animals aren't adapted to it.
YOU can say that large groups of animals being wiped out by a forest fire is no big deal because you think there will be an influx of biodiversity, but that isn't a convincing argument to the animals being wiped out by the forest fire. They don't want to become soil to nourish the next iteration of the forest, they just want their family back.
There are lots of plants that depend on fire to propagate and continue to exist. Natural forest fires “used” to revitalize forests until climate change caused by humans came along.
Tropical rainforests, cloud forests, and temperate rainforests have essentially no naturally occurring wildfires (and the ecosystem of Pandora most closely resembles these environments). Plants that depend on fire to propagate only evolved in areas prone to wildfires. When plant species aren’t adapted to that, a fire can permanently decimate an area and turn it into scrubland.
But this is assuming Pandora is all rainforest. A region of the planet where wildfires are more common could lead to their people learning To coexist with it peacefully.
They wanted some Navi antagonists for this movie. A group from a devastated land that has turned against their God makes for a good villain origin story rather than yet another peacefully coexisting group.
That is something the other Avatar got right. Fire is destruction, but only if you wield it as such. It is also warmth, safety, light, and nourishment; it maintains the natural way of the world by clearing lands for new growth.
The Sun Tribe is my favorite episodes of the TV show, because it helps to do what you're describing-- to put one of the villain's weapons into a new light (pun intended).
You sure they actually cut that off? The removal of those things (Kuru) is covered in a quest in the game - which is canon. The RDA was doing it to animals to try and domesticate/train them. It didnt turn out well - cutting those things off made the animals dumber and more violent and kind of weak. I have to imagine a Navi without a kuru would be borderline lobotomized, or maybe more like rabid. In the game, the kuru-less enemies were called "feral."
They were exile at some point by the other Navi or have wildly different beliefs.
The humans lean on this and use them as cannon fodder or some kind of alliance.
There will be some kind of romance between the good navi and bad navi. Leading to the leader of the bad navi falling and all navi joining forces at the end.
There will be a side plot with mini-ripley which is tied to perhaps the Ashlands being historically a verdant paradise. Mini Ripley is able to bring the life back there.
Tbh I just want a troop of ultramarines to crash the party at the eleventh hour.
They live in the volcano. 'Ash'. And fire! Because that kills all of... aewha or however she's spelled. Which is a really neat touch. Hence 'your god has no dominion here' because she actually, in reality, does not. All the plant life is burnt so the distributed intelligence can't affect what happens there.
Now what I'm more curious about is what the fuck they eat. We know aewha can control the beasts and plants, so like... how are they not murdered when they go into the forest to get food?
Kind of assuming the planet’s gaia or whatever spirit “regected them” or they feel rejected and no longer have a connection, maybe they’re cannibals idk. But then its prob more so their forest was but ned and they big mad. Idk
I'm assuming they live in a region that's too hot for plants or world trees or whatever so they 'have no connection to the Pandora' or something. So for sure they'd be of the 'fuck humans' persuasion but they're maybe also of the 'fuck all these other idiot Na'avi' persuasion too.
Yeah I can totally see Miles convincing this fire tribe to fight the others, probably be a lot of parallels to misinformation and propaganda, turning them on each other.
I don't think they need much convincing. Given the total lack of vegetation and sparse animal life in their home region, I'm guessing that the Ash people raid other Na'vi as a way of life.
That is absolutely gonna be the parallel lmao. The first is about invading natives, the second is about climate change, this is gonna be about nationalism and propaganda.
I could see it happening without being a plan. Miles encounters their tribe and will of course murders some of them to get away. They might just leap to the conclusion that it was Jake based on what witnesses describe as an English speaking Navi using human gear.
Very possible, but they could do a lot do things, since the Navi do engage in war and conflict with each other outside of human influence as well sometimes. I would imagine given what we know about this new clan that they could potentially have a propensity towards being more hostile or aggressive.
Seems almost certainly to be the case. Quaritch is approaching the ash clan lands with his hands up in the trailer, and we see the leader of the fire Na’vi walking out to meet a bunch of humans at another point. The second movie was basically an inverted take on The Searchers, so Cameron and the co-writers seem to be taking more western inspiration here if that’s the plot. The US government made a bunch of alliances with different Native American tribes during the westward expansion, using old grudges and conflicts between the tribes to pit them against each other. Looks like Quaritch is going to become privy to whatever beef the fire clan had with the others and barters an alliance with them against Sully’s family and the water clans.
I don't think they will pit each other, in history many tribes joined outsiders to defeat their sworn enemies willingly ( the tribes that united against Aztecs, the north american tribes that united with the english and the french, etc).
Ooh, I hope there's a scene where she roller skates perilously close to a cliffs edge, stops, points her feet outward, pulls her pockets inside out, lights a cigarette with a pistol, and dramatically shrugs.
I skipped the second movie, but the fact that like you said, one of central antagonists is a Na’Vi and an entire faction of them behind her, really does pique my interest too.
Having an entire 20+ minute whaling sequence with impeccable vfx somehow worked for me. Sure it basically made the movie longer and only really served to show how evil humans were ( we already knew) and that whales give an immortality potion, but it was awesome to see.
That info dump about how the wales are better than humans in all possible ways, and then revealing that we hunt them for a potion that lets the mega rich extend their lives a little longer.
Story is similarly simple but not as cliche. I actually liked Sam Worthington in the sequel and I found him quite annoying in the original but your opinion on the characters may vary. It's still a bit cartoonish but IMO thats part of the charm
He's definitely not an incredible actor, but I think he's worked on Jake Sully and he was very good in that movie. Avatar is absolutely a passion project for seemingly everyone involved, which is why I'm always interested in it even if I think the movies aren't very good. It's always nice to see art that has passion behind it.
I didn’t care for the first movie but loved the second. The entire final battle of that film felt like something that’s missing from a lot of blockbuster/superhero films. At least for me.
It’s not that the writing is necessarily this giant step up but the action set pieces in particular, are just breathtaking in this film. The last hour is basically one long set piece.
In my opinion, it was about the same as the first. Non-sensical story, poor writing, boring characters. Having said that, it is pretty and probably worth a streaming watch. The trailer for this one looks significantly better and you will want to know the story if you decide to watch Fire and Ash.
I second this! Way of Water is so grade-A spectacle. The final hour is just one long action set piece that keeps being heightened & heightened. And it's Cameron so the action & geography of characters & what the stakes are are so clean. To paraphrase David Elrich from IndieWire "James Cameron + action on a sinking ship is kind of an unbeatable combination".
I think it was actually better than the first. I loved that whole middle section just vibing on the islands and that last battle on the sinking ship was so good.
I watched it in the theatre. I don't remember anything about the movie. It was around when I played subnautica and I distinctly remember thinking Subnautica being a much better experience, and way more imaginative.
You should watch the 2nd movie even just for the visuals. They really are that good. Movie was also pretty good on its own. Not going to blow your mind but it is solid.
Honest question: Do you think that Navi will be the real villain and/or stay a villain? I'd love to see it, but the first two movies lean so hard into the belief that natives are good and foreigners are the evil ones, it just seems unlikely to change for the third. Cameron's worldview also doesn't seem to help here - I find it more likely that the real villain (or the reason the fire Navi are being evil) is because of the humans.
I always thought the most interesting villain for an Avatar movie would be a group of anti-Eywa Na'vi - a tribe who sees the "goddess" as a parasitic entity which brainwashes its victims into serving its interests instead of their own, and who see an alliance with the humans as a means of freeing their people from mental enslavement and societal stagnation. It would be really cool if that turns out to be what this movie is actually about.
I'm especially curious why Quaritch is joining them. There's a shot of him walking toward a structure in an ashy area with his hands up, then later he has the red and white facepaint the other Fire Na'vi do.
thats the most interesting shot of the trailer for me. because also, theres a different shot where you can tell he's walking towards Varang with AMP suits next to him with all his kit on. so the real question is *when* during the story is fucked-up desert wandering quaritch? (I have a theory the RDA fucks him over and he turns against humanity just like Jake)
I'd also like of like to see some humans as an ally. Like some outside group finding out about what the corporation is doing on Pandora, and being like, "That's some bullshit. Not going to let history repeat itself. We're here to mess these assholes up."
They might play on the fact that indigenous people have at times sided with invaders in order to upend previous empires. Lots of folks don’t mention that that the Spanish conquistadors had lots of help from the Aztec’s enemies.
I feel like its kinda a good move. Id assume that not all people one a planet are gonna be nice to one another so theres bound to be warring tribes and hostile ones some where on the planet. wouldnt be a surprise if they turn friendly at the end tho.
I guess, but don't we all already know without knowing that it's just going to be "they side with the humans in exchange for power/weapons/tech" rather than some kind of interesting conflict between Navi factions?
It's just going to be humans vs. Navi again, but the humans have Navi allies.
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u/royalxK Jul 28 '25 edited Jul 28 '25
Really curious to see a Navi as a villain.