My hot takes regarding Avatar: Fire and Ash

Hi all! I hope everyone is taking care of themselves and having a good day/night. This'll probably be the last blog I'll make regarding any movie or anything bc I wanna write about other stuff too, but I'm very passionate abt this franchise and Fire and Ash has been available on streaming services for a while now so I've deemed it a good time to speak on it! As with my last blog, my language will be pretty blunt here, as well as very opinionated, so beware. There will also be heavy spoilers for Avatar: Fire and Ash. You have been warned!

So, starting off strong, my primary hot take is that if you idolise Varang, you're weird. Sorry not sorry. Now this is NOT targeted at those who just think she is a fascinating villain, because she very much is! She is an amazing villain and a breath of fresh air for the franchise. You're also more than welcome to sympathise with her, as that is part of her character. This is aimed at the people desperately clawing for ways to excuse her actions, which I think is really gross. This also leads into my opinion that a lot of people are misunderstanding how Ewya works, but I'll rant about that a bit further down. Let's get Varang out of the way first.

Varang is a horrible person. Let's get that straight. She harms the world and her people, and is extremely violent. The amount of trauma she causes in just the first quarter of the movie is insane. That's not an opinion, that is fact. Nevertheless, I'm seeing a lot of folks brush this off (if not flat out ignore it) and visualise her as some poor little baby that needs someone to hug her. That, or they say that her actions are fully justified because of her backstory. THIS IS WEIRD. REALLY, REALLY FUCKING WEIRD. Is Varang's backstory tragic? Yes!! Extremely!!!! One can understand why she chose the path that she did. BUT THAT DOES NOT MEAN HER ACTIONS ARE JUSTIFIED OR EXCUSABLE IN THE SLIGHTEST. She is still an abhorrent person that has done abhorrent things. No amount of tragedy will ever justify her actions. Plus, there are SEVERAL characters in the franchise that have been through the same exact thing as her if not worse, and they never did what she did. If you still idolise and/or romanticise Varang after this, block me because I do not want anything to do with you.

Moving on, as I said earlier a lot of people completely misunderstood how Eywa works after seeing Fire and Ash, which I personally find very annoying. One of the worst takes I've seen was someone saying that "She only helps the Sully family! She ignored Varang's people altogether!! She's biased!" which is absolutely not the case. Allow me to explain.

Eywa, as explained in the first movie, simply protects the balance of nature. She isn't some trump card one can pull out of their ass when things start to suck. "But that's what Kiri di-" NOPE. Don't even start.

Varang's backstory is often used as a staple in the argument that Eywa is biased, and to that I say that you're just being manipulated by Varang's words in the movie. Varang's clan was decimated when she was a child, so of course she sees that tragedy through a child's eyes. "The Great Mother provides, so why didn't she do so for us?" That is the thinking of a child. The truth is, the tragedy was caused by a natural disaster. Eywa has no control over that. Fires start. Volcanos erupt. Tsunamis level the land. Earthquakes tear scars in the landscape. Hurricanes and tornadoes shred everything to pieces. That is the natural order of things, and Eywa will not interfere with that, because it's in the name. Natural.

"But Varang said her people cried for help! And Eywa did not answer!" Again, those words came from a child's traumatised perspective. Think back to the first movie, when the RDA destroyed the Hometree of the Omaticaya. They too cried for Eywa's help during and after the disaster. But she did not stop the Hometree from being felled, nor did she bring the people some magical remedy that would fix all their problems afterwards. Jake came and roused the people to fight the RDA, and Eywa assisted in the final battle because the RDA were threatening the balance by choosing to carry out an all out assault on the ecosystem. The Hometree's destruction had nothing to do with that, the Omaticaya still had to find and build a new home afterwards. They recovered through their own efforts. "But Eywa sent Jake as a saviour" Wrong again. Everything Jake did was through his own choices. Eywa merely gave some signs along the way that he could be of service, she never directly caused anything that he did to happen.

In Varang's case, instead of trying to understand the process and helping with the efforts to recover and rebuild, she chose the dark path. She chose corruption over recovery. She poisoned her people and rejected the natural world, choosing to destroy it in exchange for what happened to her. If she chose to seek asylum in nature instead, her people would have recovered. But a hurt, bitter child could never make that choice, and that is what makes her a compelling villain. She is controlled by her own traumas, and Eywa had nothing to do with that. She bends the final fight in Fire and Ash in favour of the main characters because the balance was being threatened again, not because of Kiri. She was simply the one to call on Eywa like Jake did in the first movie. Kiri's deeper connection to Eywa didn't influence that result, if the balance wasn't being threatened Eywa wouldn't have come just because Kiri called. People need to understand that.

Speaking of Kiri, my biggest hot take is in relation to her and Spider getting together. I'll start by saying you are well within your right to dislike and reject this ship. I'm not its biggest fan myself- I care about Lo'ak and Tsireya a lot more. But I am of the opinion that everyone is overreacting.

To start, of course, it is well known that James Cameron has confirmed that the two aren't siblings, which is the main reason folks have a problem with the ship. Now personally I think James is a terrible person, and you should too, but that is a can of worms I frankly do not wish to unpack here. There are plenty of recourses online you can take a look at in your own time. Point is, I'm not going to make that my entire argument.

From my own perspective, never at any point did I get a sibling vibe from the two in either of the movies they were in. Spider is an outsider, every time he was hanging out with the Sully kids he just felt like the kid from down the street that the Sullys would invite to hang out. "But Spider called Jake dad!" That is true, but you also have to remember these are all very young characters. Excluding Tuk who is a lot younger, the age range of the kids is 13-15 if memory serves. Have you never accidentally called someone else's parent mom or dad? That isn't even mentioning all of Spider's trauma that bubbled up to the surface in that scene. Of course he will seek out a parent in Jake. That doesn't automatically make Kiri his sister.

"But Kiri said Spider is like the brother she never had" Now that, I acknowledge, is weird. Be it a writing hiccup or something else, her saying that and then the two getting together definitely made me cock an eyebrow. As much as I adore these films I won't deny that Fire and Ash had weaker writing in some areas. That said, I choose to believe that either Kiri said this because she felt close to Spider but hadn't figured out her feelings yet, or she already had feelings and simply worded things wrong. Or, again, it was a writing hiccup. I'll just let James answer that question. Ultimately my point is that while Kiri and Spider definitely would've worked better as friends, calling the ship problematic is a bit of an overstatement. Teenagers will catch feelings for one another, and sometimes that can be kinda messy. That's how teen relationships go. One line of dialogue doesn't make the ship incest, nor does it make it comparable to ships that are ACTUALLY problematic (take TCOAAL for example. Ew).

I'll close this long ass blog off with a final note on Spider. A lot of people think he doesn't deserve to have a kuru, and/or that he's a bad person. Both of these stances are wrong. Spider is a deeply traumatised character, and at no point did he do anything that was irredeemable. "He saved Quaritch!" Yeah, because that is his FATHER who spent the entirety of the second movie MANIPULATING him. Notice how Spider didn't start kissing Quaritch's ass when he regained consciousness? He still despises him, but a child is wired to seek love in their parent. I actually echo this sentiment a lot, my own father isn't a good person but a part of me still holds some love for him, because he is my father. If I was Spider, I would've made the same choice. 

As for him being a bad person, if that is genuinely what you believe then you're choosing to flat out ignore all the times Spider did his best to protect the ones he loved in any way that he could. He literally begged for Kiri's life whilst having a knife to his throat. End of discussion.

Okay, phew. All done. Thank you for reading this far! I'll always have a lot to say regarding Avatar because I was raised on the first movie and this franchise means the world to me. As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts and feelings regarding my words and/or the subjects at hand. That said, any heated/insulting comments will be deleted. I want my corner of the internet to be for mature and friendly discussions only, please! Drink water, eat fruit, and always remember to make the world you want to live in. All the best! :)