AN EPIC SCIENCE FICTION MASTERPIECE BY JAMES CAMERON “AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER”
Cinema Writer/Film Critic Efe TEKSOY; wrote the action, adventure and science fiction film “AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER” for America’s Los Angeles based Internet Newspaper @alaturkanews.
AN EMOTIONAL FAMILY STORY
Avatar: The Way of water, the sequel to Avatar, the most watched movie of all time, entered the vision like a meteorite. This giant blockbuster, produced by 20th Century Studios, TSG Entertainment, Lightstorm Entertainment and Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, is one of the biggest projects in the history of cinema with a budget of 400 million dollars. The film, directed by Oscar-winning master Canadian director James Cameron, was nominated for the 80th Golden Globe Awards in the categories of Best Picture (Drama) and Best Director. The Avatar series, which broke new ground in the history of cinema with its first movie, continues to create the same effect in this movie. In the shooting of certain scenes; Exceeding the industry standard of 24fps, High Frame Rate (HFR) technology is used and the window to reality is increased with higher frame rate. In the production where the highest underwater shootings were made to date; Kirk Krack, founder of Performance Freediving International, worked as a freediving instructor for the cast and crew for the underwater scenes. Oscar Actress Kate Winslet broke Tom Cruise’s record of six minutes of underwater footage in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015), setting a new record of seven minutes and 14 seconds. With the sequels, the series, which will have a total cost of over $ 1 billion, is the seventh production in the history of cinema with a budget of over $ 300 million. In this sequel; We see the Na’vi species in the Avatar universe divided into clans living peacefully in the world of Pandora. Each clan has a different living space and these are; in the form of forests, mountains, seas. This time we meet the Green Na’vi people who live on Pandora’s reefs and shores. Known as the Metkayina clan, they live in suspended houses above bodies of water and spend most of their time exploring the ocean and interacting closely with sea creatures. In this story, which is based on a family story, transition elements from narrative to teaching are seen. Written during World War II, Dialectics of Enlightenment is the most influential publication of the Frankfurt School, representing one of the main thought traditions of the 20th century. Written as a work of philosophy and social criticism by the important philosophers of the time, Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, this work, which had a great impact on the philosophy, sociology, culture and politics of the twentieth century, focuses on the philosophy, sociology, culture and politics of the 20th century on had an extraordinary impact. In the book; “Myth is both to declare, to name, to reveal the origin; but he also wanted to tell, record, explain. The collection and recording of myths further strengthened this trend. They soon turned from narrative to teaching.” In their words, they talk about the transformation of myths from narratives into teachings. In the movie, we see that this epic narrative evolves into teachings through the characters (especially the young Na’vi).
TOPIC OF THE FILM
The story takes place 10 years after the first movie Avatar. Jake Sully lives happily with his family on the planet Pandora. When the problems they faced before come true again, Jake is forced to fight again with the army of the Na’vi race to protect both his family and their planet. This fight for survival will once again take viewers into the magical universe of Pandora for an action-packed and exciting adventure.
Stars; Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Kate Winslet, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Edie Falco, Brendan Cowell, Jemaine Clement and Jamie Flatters.
AVATAR FLOWER “UDUMBARA”
When we look at the story in general; we see that sky people beings are threatening the habitats of the Na’vi people. However, in the subtext of the film, a structure that centers on environmental issues such as the climate crisis and political ecology emerges. For the Na’vi people and Pandora creatures, the only way to escape this threat is; there seems to be intelligence, intuition and struggle. The great German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling is one of the important thinkers of the philosophical movement called German Idealism, which developed with the work of Immanuel Kant. Known as a transitional philosopher between Fichte and Hegel, the thinker has an important place in the development of German philosophy. He coined the term “Absolute Idealism”. This concept came to be known as the combination of a romantic view of nature and physical processes created by the soul, or ‘Geist’. He tried to combine the concept of nature, which he developed in his masterpiece Transcendental Idealism System, one of the key texts of German Idealism, with the philosophy of the famous German thinker Johann Gottlieb Fichte, which takes the ‘self’ as its starting point. Considering the performative structure of the work, which is knitted with the dialectical method, the whole subject of the investigation is the disclosure and history of self-consciousness. Schelling; “The obligatory tendency of all natural sciences is to reach intelligence from nature. This is the basis of the effort to theorize the phenomena of nature.” He states that the highest competence of the natural sciences will be to spiritualize all the laws of nature as laws of intuition and thought. The “Udumbara Flower”, which became famous with the movie Avatar, or the Avatar Flower, has an important place in the ecology of Pandora and the fictional universe of Avatar. Udumbara is actually a miraculous flower in Buddhism, and in Sanskrit, which is the oldest form of the Indian language, it means “a charity flower from heaven”. According to Buddhism legend, a king will be born when the flower appears. Schelling, who is accepted as one of the pioneers of natural philosophy, said about plants; Saying, “The most obvious proof for transcendental idealism is organic nature, because it can be said that every plant is a symbol of intelligence” he says and the Empiricism Current, which accepts that everything comes and enters the intelligence from the outside, explains in his words that the nature of intelligence is fully mechanical.
BIOTECHNOLOGY AND BIOETHICS
The character of Miles Quaritch, the antagonist of the movie, who died in the first episode, returns again, this time with the cloning method. Thus, the subjects of Biotechnology and Bioethics have an important place in the film. Slovenian Marxist sociologist and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek, who is known as today’s pop-star philosopher, illuminates the radical possibilities and dangers of our age’s technological and scientific developments and their exciting effects for humanity in his book, Like a Thief in a Broad Daylight. Žižek; “Biotechnology explores new possibilities for scientific intervention (genetic manipulations, cloning, etc.) and bioethics seeks to impose moral limits on what biotechnology allows us to do.” He clarifies the purpose of these concepts in his book.
AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER
Filmed in New Zealand and the USA, Avatar: The Way of Water takes the viewer on a unique adventure accompanied by an incredible visual atmosphere. Even though the movie is over three hours long, it offers a unique experience where you can’t understand how time flies. Definitely don’t miss it.
EFE TEKSOY
References
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Transandantal İdealizm Sistemi (Transcendental Idealism System), translate. Merve Ertene, Doğu Batı Yayınları press, Ankara: 2022
Theodor W. Adorno-Max Horkheimer, Aydınlanmanın Diyalektiği Felsefi Fragmanlar (Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments), translate. Nihat Ülner-Elif Öztarhan Karadoğan, Kabalcı Yayınevi press, İstanbul: 2014
Slavoj Žižek, Güpegündüz Hırsız Gibi İnsan Sonrası Kapitalizm Çağında İktidar (Like a Thief in a Broad Daylight) translate. Ilgın Yıldız, Eksik Parça Yayınları press, İstanbul, 2018
