The Way Of Water Everyone Ignored

Most people don’t go to the movies to read, so subtitles can often be a deal breaker when you’re browsing the Netflix menu. If you have to read subtitles, you can’t also laconically be on your phone while bingeing, after all. As Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) learned the ways of the Omaticaya Clan of the Na’vi in the first “Avatar,” the movie was committed to showing both English and Na’vi being spoken consistently, and subtitling the alien dialogue (in Papyrus font, no less) whenever necessary. The way language was treated was logical and consistent.

But in “The Way of Water,” director James Cameron and company must have realized early on that since Jake now has been living with the Na’vi for more than a decade, they would essentially be making a foreign language film. To solve this, very early in the sequel, Jakes tells us via voice-over that he’s learned the Na’vi language so thoroughly that when he hears it, it “may as well be English,” and presto: Suddenly we also hear his children and all other Na’vi speaking English. When Na’vi interact with other English-speaking characters later, they’re still subtitled, but whenever Na’vi are talking to each other, it’s all English for convenience’s sake. It does save the audience a lot of Papyrus-reading, but it’s a bracingly dumb and inelegant tweak to the rules of the way the reality of what we’re seeing it being depicted.

After the earnest pride that the first “Avatar” took in realizing Na’vi culture, it’s kind of shocking that “The Way of Water” just shrugs and transforms 90% of potentially Na’vi dialogue into plain old English.