The good:
* The opening scene with Loak and Neteyam playing in the sky goes from amazing to heartbreaking. It is achingly beautiful and joyous with true love of life and Pandora. The next minute, I'm crying. It is the a perfect opening.
* The overall balance between forest and reef is done splendidly. With the Way of Water, I felt "cheated" out the rainforest. We spent relatively little time there and while the reef is undeniably beautifully done, we wanted the Omatikaya and the forest to be represented too. Fire and Ash balances the two perfectly. Both environments and cultures were given weight and respect. I'd go as far to say that it goes even harder than that, showing us side of the rainforest we never really explored before. Both the escape from the Mangkwan through the forest, and representation of the forest within Kiris attempt to "talk" to Eywa expand our perception of the envrionment in different ways, giving it an even greater depth. Both are done beautifully. Seeing the kids escaping up the creek through the lowland forest felt incredibly real and fleshed out. As I was sitting there, my first thought was - in a happy and appreciative way - "That reminds me of the North Creek trail!"
* The exploration and faith and connection with Eywa was explored well. The use of Jake as a foil and neytiri standing her ground is quite heavy handed, but it was lovely just to see these openly put on display and explored, and is returned to a theme throughout ina very satisfying way with both Varang and Kiri, and is also echoed between Jake and Quaritch - which is interesting, as Jake journeys along the faith spectrum from his arguement with Neytiri, to begging Quaritch to "open his eyes". I was so pleasently suprised by this, as I was skeptical that would get anything approaching this exploration - but we weren't let down. That said, there are issues (see below). There's probabaly way more I could say this, but I'm still digesting the movie, and really need to do another watch to let more detail sink in before I can do this justice, I feel. It's pretty personal for me so it was honestly kind of overwhelming first time around.
* I was concerned that Varang was going to be a deliciously evil femme fatale like character, but she comes accross more subtely than that, in that she thinks she's all that - a "legend in her own mind" - but to everyone else is clearly hurt, scared and damaged. When her people ran into an utter horror story for which they are unprepared, she took a wrong turn. Rather than turning the strengths of her community, and the bonds between the clans to look out for eachother and who could help her people - she instead gave in to her ego and hubris, actign almost like a petulant child, while having to navigate the horrors of the world she's conjured up for herself and her people. There's absolutely more to explore with her, but taking the stance of a flawed and scared woman who is ultimately out of her depth, rather than being some slick supervillian, it opened up the way to much more subtle character, with some messages and stories to share.
* The "realistically decent but imperfect" Na'vi. One of the very few flaws of Avatar '09 was that it was essentially the "propaganda film" for the Na'vi. We see all their strengths, but pretty much none of their imperfections. Fire and Ash really fleshes out the Na'vi (both Omatikaya and Metkayina - the Mangkwan ren't really relevent here I feel) as fundamentally decent, good and sound cultures, but not ones without their imperfections and blindspots, especially the attittude of the Metakyina council to taking on board dissenting voices that go against any established consensus. The Tulkun are shown in the same way. This adds a lovely grey area that allows the Na'vi to be the "hopeful future" or "the people we always aspired to be" while also being flawed enough they don't feel ethereal, unrelatable or just plain boring. It's a perfect mix.
The bad:
* The windtraders. They really didn't much screentime, and I suspect this was 1. A good thing, and 2. Something JC and team knew was a good thing, having tried and failed to get them "right", and cutting them back to the bare minimum role. Honestly, it's hard to pick any one thing here, but the whole Windtrader culture just didn't work. They weren't Na'vi of Pandora... If anything they felt like extras blown in from Captain Shakespeare's crew in Stardust. The language they use just doesn't fit. The way their culture works just doesn't fit. They command their vessel, not bond with the other animals who carry them. Even the Mangkwan have a better bond with those they rely on. They were entirely unneccssary to the story, and felt it would have been better to just cut them out entirely.
* The "face of Eywa". This one immediately leapt out at me, and I commented on it when someone else noticed it on the Avatar subreddit. When is Kiri within Eywa and trying to "talk" to her, I was really happy to see this, but wondering how they were going to do it. It's a difficult brief for the artists to work out how to depict it, so I don't envy them or want to diminish their skill, let alone the Avatar team's dedication to presenting this story, as it's a really important part of the message, IMHO.
That said, to be 100% honest, I was saddened by the decision to go with an anthropomorphic - or should that be na'vimorphic - take on how to depict Eywa. I think this is down to the cultural expectation among western audiences (and assumptions among artists) that the awareness of Eywa (as Grace described her in TWOW) must be somehow centred on the Na'vi, as that is what the audience understands and can translate from their own, largely abrahamic culture, with it's anthropocentric and human exceptionalist assumptions - imago dei and all that.
To be fair, Kiri *is* central to the story of how Eywa is involved in the situation, and so there is an understandable wish to emphasise this visually by echoing her image. However, the way it is done is heavy handed and just reinforces the anthropocentric assumptions of the audience rather than challenging them.
For me, coming from an ecocentric perspective that has always found a resonance in the Avatar universe, it honestly cut a little close and felt wrong in the same way the windtraders felt wrong, and I wish they'd gone in a different visual language in this scene. There is a lot you could have done to convey being in the centre of Eywa's awareness in a more ecocentric way. The first movie did this really well. When Grace died, the vines and tendrils of the Tree of Souls transforming into light and threads resembling mycelia as she passing into Eywa was done fantastically without any anthropocentric imagery. I think this could have been done here - as Kiri pushes toward the light filtering through through the vines and canopy of the forest (which is absolutely perfectly done!) it could gradually become less dark and "woody", transforming into bioluminescent tendrils and mycelia following in the shapes of the vegetation and critters, then gradually becoming brighter and more and more overlapped / interwoven with each other. This would reflect the ecocentric concepts of entangled, interwoven and interdependent / symbiotic life, which are prominent themes in the way the Na'vi cultures are depicted, and which is generally done really frikkin well. This entwining of the vines and mycelia would also have worked in reflecting the imagery and role of the tsyong (cephalopods/squids) in the final scenes as the influence of Eywa acting against the humans, where their tentacles are very prominent - which themselves hark back the concept of ecocentric entanglement.
- It dashes along, but still finds time to explore culture. That's damn good pacing.
