Avatar: The Wake of Water
Is bound to disappoint. Like puberty, anything you wait for for more than a decade’ll do that. But, on second thought, there’s The Curse of the Rat People and Splash of the Cat People ([as in Sleepless in Atlantis] with First Love, True Love and the cat/water contradiction built right in. Curse of the Fat People too, because the Sky People (that’s us) are assholes through and through, except for Col. Miles Quaritch, whose son, Spider, is a good guy who comes nearer than anybody ever has to having sway over his father’s nasty choices, choices which are always on-mission, with a side order of vengeance and cruelty mixed right in with the abomination salad upon which the colonel prides himself on the personal ingredient, his own special sauce. And speaking of the colonel’s own special sauce…
What if Kiri, daughter of Grace’ inexplicably-pregnant Na’vi avatar and Eywa(?) isn’t the product of immaculate conception, but what happened that one special depraved and desperately-lonely weekend when Grace and Quaritch hooked up? Wouldn’t that provide the reach-around that takes most of the stink off Miles, what with the hero son and the Eywa-sorceress daughter? He couldn’t be all bad, just because he persists in perpetrating evil acts at the bidding of us cursed Earth-murdering FatRat People who hunt whales on at least two planets and cruelly take only the ambergris from the Pandoran Tulkun variety because it’s the Fountain of Youth and Pandora’s now fucking Florida. How’s that for a kick in the Ponce? I mean it ain’t just upside-daisy-um {or was that unobtainium} anymore. Now the flobotnam is eternal youth, so the second film in this franchise has raised the stakes on which red-blooded assholes, like us, feed in perpetuity.
Hell! I’m okay with that brand of sophomore-movie disappointment that feints toward decent Traditional American Family Values and pivots to debauched, irresponsible weekend frivolity in the blink of an eye in which cancel culture (see Ronal’s attitude toward the Sullied) and wokefulness (that’s the past tense of wake) suffer by intelligent, heuristic comparison with fresh world views and open, tolerant acceptance of what actually is, not what conforms to stale, old, Traditional Pandoran/American Tribal Values.
I think this franchise will turn a few heads and kick tons of ass, but The Way of Water is really just a wake
up call.
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