James Cameron’s high-tech magnum opus Avatar is now a trilogy. The sequels The Means of Water and Fireplace and Ash have turned the story of ex-soldier and alien convert Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) right into a decade-spanning epic with a litany of associated characters. With any fashionable sci-fi trilogy comes inevitable comparisons to Star Wars, and one longtime rap towards Avatar motion pictures generally is that their characters lack the rapid iconography, recognizability, and general cultural impression of Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Princess Leia, and so forth. The Avatar collection does, nonetheless, have the entire of Star Wars beat on one particular, necessary floor: It’s a significantly better story about household.
The entire idea of Star Wars being a family-driven story — “the Skywalker Saga,” as the primary 9 “episode” motion pictures have been rebranded towards the finish of the sequel trilogy — has all the time been just a little extra tenuous than filmmakers let on. Sure, the twist revealed on the finish of The Empire Strikes Again, that Luke Skywalker is definitely the son of much-feared galactic fascist Darth Vader, shifts that trilogy right into a story a few son redeeming his father, fairly than the story of a plucky orphan (or a baby struggling for his father’s sins).
There’s a neat thematic counterpoint, too, in Vader’s origins, with Anakin Skywalker corrupted partially by his worry and anger over his mom’s demise, then redeemed by his personal son’s compassion. The sequel trilogy makes an attempt to construct out one other reversal, with Vader’s grandchild, Leia and Han’s son Kylo Ren, serving because the conflicted dangerous man.
However a lot of the best-drawn relationships within the Star Wars motion pictures are pointedly not about household, or not less than not about blood ties. Luke’s true father-figures within the authentic trilogy are his mentors Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda, who he learns from and, in Yoda’s Final Jedi phrasing, grows past. Over within the prequels, Anakin and Obi-Wan have a wealthy, sophisticated scholar/trainer closeness in Assault of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, as Obi-Wan struggles to strike the best steadiness between fatherly recommendation and brotherly help (and squabbling) together with his “very younger apprentice.” Within the first two installments of the sequel trilogy, Rey works nicely as a nomadic no one, antagonized however intrigued by Kylo Ren, and discovering a short father-figure of her personal in Luke. It’s such an ideal conceit that Rise of Skywalker plot-twisting her as Emperor Palpatine’s granddaughter seems like a panicked echo of the earlier motion pictures, not an natural growth.
Each inside the universe of the film and metatextually as a narrative choice, that plot misstep emphasizes the significance of Star Wars characters defying their lineage. That’s, it’s necessary inside the universe for Rey to rebuke her Palpatine heritage, regardless that that blood tie makes her extra superficially “necessary” to the broader lore than when she thought she was the deserted spawn of junk merchants, and writer-director J.J. Abrams clearly felt it was necessary to echo that dynamic from Return of the Jedi.
In that movie, Luke rejects the concept he ought to comply with in his father’s footsteps and turn into a Sith lord, rejecting his lineage. He does this with a phrase that sounds affirming of his household (“I’m a Jedi, like my father earlier than me”) however he’s really empowered by his pals and mentors, even when he doesn’t all the time take their recommendation. Luke’s wisp of a relationship with Vader is salvaged by his perception in one thing larger than his seeming familial future. Deciding to avoid wasting and honor his father with out following his path works nice within the film; it simply doesn’t make a lot of a case for a wealthy household saga.
Just like the Star Wars trilogy, Avatar makes a second-movie pivot into household issues. Like Star Wars, the primary film focuses extra intently on a hero’s journey, as Jake Sully, a disabled soldier, will get an opportunity to inhabit an artificial avatar of the alien Na’vi race whereas on a mission to help with the colonization of the moon-world Pandora. He ultimately sides with the natives and turns into a full-time occupant of a Na’vi physique, in addition to the associate of precise Na’vi Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña).
The sequels soar ahead in time, with Jake and Neytiri elevating a household collectively within the interim. Three of their kids are natural-born Na’vi, although they carry the mark of their father’s alien DNA. A fourth adoptee is the organic youngster of Grace (Sigourney Weaver), a human scientist who died within the first film. A fifth, of kinds, is Spider (Jack Champion), a human child born within the scientist camp of Pandora, who tries his finest to maintain up together with his adoptive Na’vi siblings. (He reads as a really shut cousin, or maybe son-in-law.) Immediately, a narrative a few man challenged and altered by native tradition is a narrative a few household blended from a number of totally different instructions.
As a author, Cameron shouldn’t be particularly much less corny than George Lucas when it comes to mechanics. What makes each The Means of Water and Fireplace and Ash work surprisingly nicely, lengthy after the novelty of Pandora itself has worn off, is how convincingly Cameron and his co-writers depict an advanced household dynamic.
Not each Sully member of the family will get equal display screen time within the sequels, and there are stretches the place most of the siblings don’t have a lot to do. However the presence of this sophisticated blended household feeds again into Jake’s relationship together with his newfound Na’vi identification and his lingering instincts as a human soldier. His mantra “This household is our fortress” isn’t simply lip service; Jake Sully arguably has no precise pals, only a devoted associate and a miniature platoon of kid semi-soldiers.
The youngsters’ particular person relationships with their dad have an uneven, lived-in high quality that’s far faraway from Star Wars’ formalized, symbolic household connections. Jake Sully isn’t a totemic father determine whose destiny haunts his kids from afar. He’s an up-close-and-personal dad who encourages his children, yells at them, loves them, and screws up on the common. Equally, his children exist within the current. Their relationships are with dad and mom they need to stay with, not blood relations whose invisible lineage looms over their fates. That makes it simpler to see the Avatar kids coming into their very own.
And, essential by comparability to Star Wars, the place motherhood is essentially equated with demise and/or sacrifice, Avatar’s Neytiri each defies and conforms to fierce-mother stereotypes. She goes positively feral in her efforts to avoid wasting her daughters on the finish of Means of Water. However Fireplace and Ash finds her unmoored by grief and unforgiving towards Spider, the human youngster whose life her eldest son Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) helps save within the earlier film, dying within the course of. The characters are CG-enhanced, however the rawness of the motion-captured performances feels tactile. The Avatar collection leans closely on spectacle, and has among the most spectacular fantasy motion sequences round. However a few of its most spectacular results work is devoted to protecting the actors’ feelings on faces whose particulars are closely modified by computer systems.
The interconnected (and generally overly busy!) ensemble of the Avatar sequels lacks the easy-to-scan Hero’s Journey archetypes that Star Wars writers and administrators have labored to take care of, however the tradeoff for that lack of on the spot iconography appears worthwhile. There’s spectacular unity in how most of the Avatar characters’ motivations derive from their positions within the Sully household, whether or not it’s youthful son Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) combating to show himself to his father, Kiri’s frustration together with her dad and mom’ choices concerning Spider, or the gulf between Neytiri’s parental instincts and Jake’s hybridized Na’vi/military-guy strategy.
These depictions of parent-child struggles don’t make the Avatar trilogy inherently superior to the Star Wars motion pictures. They do, nonetheless, mark an important level of separation between probably the most influential fashionable sci-fi/fantasy franchises — and extra importantly, they set up Cameron’s motion pictures as extra advanced than the reskinned Dances with Wolves they’re nonetheless generally described as. The Skywalkers have turn into each an everlasting promoting level and a significant weak spot for Star Wars, exerting a pull on each viewers and creators that the franchise’s overseers have solely just lately appeared in resisting.
If two extra Avatar sequels do ultimately materialize, it’s potential they’ll resurrect Star Wars’ Skywalker obsession in taller, bluer kind: Why does every thing on Pandora join again to the Sully household?! However Cameron has accomplished the work to really assemble a household saga, fairly than gesture towards one. The world of Pandora isn’t as huge because the Star Wars galaxy, however its richer household story has much more depth.
