When I learned “Avatar” director James Cameron described America under President Donald Trump as “horrifying,” I wasn’t surprised. Even if I wasn’t a longtime Cameron fan who is therefore familiar with his liberal-leaning politics, I’ve seen “Avatar: The Way of Water.”
In my opinion, the “Avatar” sequel is more than a cinematic masterpiece and the highest grossing movie of 2022. It is the perfect work of art when it comes to allegorically discussing xenophobia.
When I first saw “Avatar: The Way of Water,” I did not expect to have that reaction. I was a science writer writing for Salon Magazine, and after smoking a marijuana pen, visited my neighborhood movie theater to see the show. I was writing an article about a linguist named Paul Frommer, who had constructed the Na’vi language for the first “Avatar” movie in 2009. I had loved that movie (here is my review), but “Avatar: The Way of Water” impacted me quite differently.
It seeped into my dreams. It haunted my waking hours. As I watched the film, I was emotionally overwhelmed by the power of its story.
Yet this may not have been for the reasons that Frommer or the movie’s director and writer, James Cameron, intended. I obsessed over “Avatar: The Way of Water” because of what it had to say about immigration.
Please be warned: Spoilers follow.
“Avatar: The Way of Water” begins after protagonist Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) has spent roughly a decade-and-a-half living as a member of the Omaticaya, a Na’vi clan that lives in the forests of the fictional exoplanetary moon Pandora, which is located in the Alpha Centauri A system (4.37 light years from Earth). After the reappearance of Sully’s enemy from the first movie, Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), Sully decides that he and his family must become refugees. As a result, Sully moves them from their home in the forests to a strange new world in the reefs.
The reefs are the home of the Metkayina. As I watched “Avatar: The Way of Water” in a Pennsylvania movie theater in 2023, I identified with the Metkayina so much that it hurt my soul. I recalled being a young child who would visit the New Jersey shore with his parents in the 1990s, and who wished he could explore the oceans with the freedom and agility of the Metkayina. To the credit of writer/director James Cameron, “Avatar: The Way of Water” captures the sense of wonder and curiosity that anyone who shared my juvenile impulses can identify with.
Yet when Sully and his family try to bond with the Metkayina in “Avatar: The Way of Water,” they are cruelly rejected. Even though Sully proved at the end of the first movie that he is Toruk Makto, the divinely-chosen leader for Pandora’s entire biosphere, the Metakyina initially wish to reject both him and his family. They mention valid concerns about the Omaticayans’ ability to carry their own weight in the Metkayinas’ economy, but it is obvious to all parties that they are also prejudiced against outsiders.
As such, “Avatar: The Way of Water” transforms after its first act from a direct continuation of its predecessor’s story to a parable about the dangers of xenophobia. From petty bigotries to legitimate grievances, the numerous Na’vi characters in “Avatar: The Way of Water” struggle with immigration-related plights that are all-too-familiar to their real-world human counterparts.
I believe that if the Na’vi could choose a single human to articulate their philosophy about immigration by the film’s end, they would choose a leader of the humans from three centuries before the events of the 2009 movie “Avatar.” That human is Grover Cleveland, who served as President of the United States from 1889 to 1893 and 1893 to 1897. He said the following about immigration in 1897, as one of the last statements he made as a leader of a human community:
“A century’s stupendous growth, largely due to the assimilation and thrift of millions of sturdy and patriotic adopted citizens, attests the success of this generous and free-handed policy which, while guarding the people’s interests, exacts from our immigrants only physical and moral soundness and a willingness and ability to work.”
In “Avatar: The Way of Water,” the Sullys do their best to assimilate into the Metkayinas’ society. They exercise skill, hard work and loyalty to their community, thereby proving that the Metkayinas’ liberal approach to immigration was smart. Indeed, the only hiccup in their plan is when the Metkayinas’ prejudiced children provoke the Omatikayans with cruel taunts. If not for that incident, the Omatikayan refugees’ attempts at assimilation would have been entirely successful.
“Avatar: The Way of Water” is not alone in exploring themes of immigration in the “Avatar” universe. In the graphic novel series “The High Ground” (based on one of Cameron’s unadapted “Avatar” sequel screenplays), we see that Miles ‘Spider’ Socorro — a human left behind to live semi-ferally among the Omatikaya — is treated cruelly by both humans and Na’vi because of his permanent “outsider” status. Further complicating matters, tensions break out between Pandora natives and the humans who stayed behind to aid the Omatikaya in their first rebellion against Earth colonists. In “The Next Shadow,” a Na’vi next Arvok challenges Jake Sully’s right to lead the Omatikaya despite his victories in battle as Toruk Makto.
Prejudices against immigrants, regardless of context and history, often die very, very hard.
While the author of this review does not pretend to know the future of the “Avatar” franchise, I can confidently state that the plot developments in “Avatar: The Way of Water” will be crucial to the future events that transpire. If nothing else, they demonstrate the importance of multicultural tolerance, both as a moral imperative and as the most effective way of guaranteeing the survival of an individual and their loved ones.
Given that Cameron is now permanently leaving the United States for New Zealand, he seems to understand this lesson all too well. He warned The Guardian that Trump’s election is a “turn away from everything decent. America doesn’t stand for anything if it doesn’t stand for what it has historically stood for. It becomes a hollow idea, and I think they’re hollowing it out as fast as they can for their own benefit.”
Perhaps nothing more quickly hollows out a society than hatred of immigrants, whether practiced by blue aliens on Pandora or red hats in Trump’s America.