Jessie Spoils Everything- Avatar 2 (Patreon)

Navi Jess done bed Red V.

Whether giving away the secrets of the pros to further your writing or exposing the largest oof moments of corporate creations, I’m here to help budding writers by opening up Hollywood for analyzing and spoiling f’n everything.

“I can’t save my family by running”

There are two major themes that pop out to me in Avatar: The Way of Water. Water and running. No, it’s not a ‘don’t leave the water running’ joke, even though the new Avatar is once again an Eco-friendly message. It’s just what the movie continuously dives into them, pun intended. SPOILERS! Jake, and his much larger family (for people into tall, pregnant amazon space cats, the movie will serve you up TWO of them,) there is no peace after winning the war for Pandora years ago. After all, the place is named after Pandora’s box, the mythical greek relic that, once it was opened, well, there was no going back.

The humans are back, even the dead Col. Quartech. Yeah, you heard it right; the salt and pepper assault rifle colonizer has been brought back to life via cloning, but this time, as a Perma-kitty. Everyone is becoming space cat Na’vi. The war starts again, and Jake, fearing for his family, abandons the war and goes on the run. They settle in a beachside community of green water Na’vi with flipper tails and webbed paddle hands and effectively turn the war epic franchise into a “family in a new neighborhood slice of life.” Until the end, it feels much more like a spinoff to me. The scale of the story is brought down, and very

character focused, but lots of its three-hour-plus run time is about “being the new kids in the clan and getting picked on”. We spend a lot of time in the water,  learning the way of water and then fighting on the water… but what I want to focus on is the running. And not by Jake Sully and his litter. I want to focus on James Cameron running from being original.

This essay is about world-building, and Mr. Director of ‘the largest theatrical box offices of all time’ (thoroughly bloated by the fact people are charged more for 3D films, by the way) has leaned on the old trope of taking earth cultures that exist, and making them aliens, again. It’s not very comfortable to see your culture appropriated as aliens just to lean on making sci-fi supposedly more accessible via… well… stereotypes and tokens. So welcome to a quick 101 on how to build your worlds, when it may be a good idea to tap into inspiration, and when to make your people’s thinly veiled cut and pastes of actual cultures. Hint, the answer is never on that last one.

When we tell stories, the genre we are writing in can vastly shape our world building. Let’s say you were writing historical fiction. When doing that, you have to do a butt load of research to get the cultures and events as accurate as possible while still having the freedom to write. In fantasy, you might want to have some of your magical peoples have elements of the cultures from the myths and folklore they come from. Like dwarves, you might want to study  some Norse mythology. You’re not making your dwarves Norse, you are paying homage to the cultures they might have come from. Or if you are doing a prehistoric tale or lost civilization (pre losing itself, like Atlantis) you may attempt to design a proto-culture that has seeds that could evolve into the ancient civilizations we know, again using really well researched historical information. All of these genres have roots in aspects of cultures and history that you can reach out to people, listen, to explore, and honor. Our stories shouldn’t be ONE homogenized cast of people, they should have roots in the things that helped them become what what they are.

But Sci-fi. Oooooo me oh my Sci-fi. Science fiction literally takes you across the stars to planets where the civilizations would have started from scratch with none of our influences. You can take it literally anywhere and everywhere. And you should. But there has been a push, when going to space, that the cultures out there should resemble things we know, or it will feel too alien. That’s right, they don’t want your aliens to feel alien. It’s never considered that you could build empathy as a way to make your intergalactic species approachable, accessible, and cathartic. Just take Star Wars (though many argue it’s intergalactic fantasy) and look at it’s characters like Waddo, the slave-owning merchant in a desert town, with his prominent nose and conniving business tactics.

What about the super formal and deeply shady Newt Gunray with his accent that sounds ripped right from a bad Asian impression.

Do I even need to include Jar Jar to pile onto these stereotypical cultural appropriations?

It might be helpful to figure out why these things happen. In writing and storytelling, there is a thing called shorthand. It’s using an image or call back that relies on what people already know about a thing to fill in the gap of said thing with their knowledge rather than your writing. Everything from the spiritual symbolism of light coming down from the clouds to show hope to, well, the size of the nose of certain villains. You think I’m joking? Look up a history of cartoon noses with villains. Then look up the history attached to “large noses = evil” because you’ll find some nasty stereotypes that may change how you see the history of character design.

It is, sadly, a form of shorthand. And we are often raised with these symbols without realizing their gross past, or how it trains our brain to perceive things in the future. Some people, creatives included, are so busy replicating they don’t dive into the symbols of their pieces. Or, like James Cameron, he blatantly does it.

“You know what would make my piece about colonizers and natives really land home for audiences? If my Island Na’vi had had pacific islander callbacks! Then people understand ‘hey, I know what’s going on!” This is treating your audience as idiots, unable to grasp a manufactured island culture without the facial tattoos and tongue-out challenges borrowed from Maori culture. Some creators think it’s an honor, after all, the Navi are the good guys, so they believe they honor the cultures they are mimicking. Said cultures seldom feel honored but rather used and contorted. Good, bad, it doesn’t matter. Humans are often based on white colonialists, and aliens are cut, and pasted imagery ripped messily from Nat Geo.

The second deadly sin of this narrative, is what we call in writing the white savior trope. Where not only does one of the colonizers become a hero (which is fine for someone to see the wrong and fight against their old ways) but they become THE hero. The KEY and center piece for the indigenous and foreign lands they protect. Worse, they often do it by taking something from they culture their in, and are magically better at it than anyone from said culture who have been doing it for centuries. From martial arts to magics of mysticism, the outsider becomes the literal savior, making it not about the story of the oppressed people, but of the heroics and amazingness of the outsider who shows them how to be them better.

Jake Sulley was able to tame a beast that was almost seen as a god, and now, SPOILERS a child who is a genetic clone of one of the scientists from the first movie (voiced by Weaver again) now has a connection to the whole planet no one else has.

Imagine if we weren’t doing a space opera here. Imagine if the story was about a cow boy, who saw the wrongs they were doing to a native population, and rather than just stand and fight with them, he taps into their spirituality and becomes the most powerful shaman any tribe has ever seen, doing it their way. It would come off insulting. And now, that same concept which shows up in many many stories, has been added to space again, in a movie series that has been clear what aspects and people’s of our history it is retelling. Jake and Kiri are the magic cowboys, here to show the blue-cats what they have never been able to do. And it it’s either the deepest of irony, or the height of arrogance, that the creator of the franchise is a white director, showboating his ability to tell the story of oppressed indigenous people better than they could, by turning them into aliens, and making the most powerful characters rooted in the outsiders, not the oppressed.

If you want to be praised as a world builder, the spectacle of it is not enough. It needs detail. It needs originality. You can’t be lazy and fill in the blanks with aspects of earth's cultures that never touched this planet. You can’t fool yourself that every earth conflict can just be pushed into the future and represent indigenous tribes and other earth cultures with a slap of blue-kitty paint. Do the work. Make alien worlds different, , and fresh.

And if your worlds aren’t so alien, make sure your diversity is informed by diverse voices as part of a larger backdrop, and that you aren’t trying to make a spectacle out of real people for cheap thrills and less work.

The stories we tell, and the worlds we build, are about people, and we should never run from delivering a piece that honors people. Don’t run from responsibility like James Cameron. Don’t run to push something “new and innovative”, while actually ripping the story off from those that are hindered from sharing it. Run towards world creation with empathy, understanding, and true ingenuity. That is how you make it both new to explore, and approachable to delve into. That’s the way to do it right.