Avatar: The Way of Water transports audiences back to the lush alien world of Pandora and spends even more time than the 2009 original avatar on exploration and characters just hanging out. But this time, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his family leave the jungle and head to sea. It’s no secret at this point that director James Cameron loves the ocean. Long sequences in the new film are devoted to a panoramic tour of this strange sea with its beautiful coral reefs and all the creatures that live in them. There are all sorts of new life forms, from snappy steeds with flying fish to fairy jellyfish that allow underwater breathing. But the underwater creatures that are by far the stars of the film are the space whales – the tulkun!
[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for Avatar: The Way of Water.]
The tulkun look a lot like normal whales, except their mouths are bigger, their fins are a little crazy, and they have four eyes. Great soulful. And oh, they are also apparently sentient, intelligent and able to communicate with the Na’vi. I love her.
We first meet the Tulkun when an outcast whale saves rebellious Na’vi teenager Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) from being alien shark decoy. At this point, we have no idea that the Na’vi can communicate directly with these walker creatures. Oh sure, they can do their whole connect-the-braid psychic vibe check with most of life on Pandora, but that’s on another level. Lo’ak communicates with the Tulkun via sign language and the whale answers
More specifically, Lo’ak asks Payakan (that’s the whale’s name, because yes, they have names) what happened to Payakan’s severed fin. And the Tulkun replies that the story is too painful to tell. He doesn’t speak Na’vi – he makes melodious whale sounds, with a subtitled translation in that distinctive papyrus-like Avatar font. That just makes it even better. It’s just so darn adorable to see non-human beings – animals, aliens or robots – communicate through sounds or beeps and the people on screen can still understand them. I call it the R2-D2 effect.
The bond between Lo’ak and Payakan is not unique to Riff Na’vi culture. The Tulkun and Na’vi are so intertwined that they form deep, spiritual bonds with one another. When the Tulkun pods return from the migration, it becomes a big event with all the Na’vi swimming out and reconnecting with their spirit siblings. They share stories and updates.
“The conceit is that Tulkun culture and Na’vi culture are connected through music, song and dance,” explains Cameron in the film’s production notes. “The Metkayina [the reef-dwelling Na’vi clan], for example, would make tattoo designs on the Tulkun expressing their family history. Adult Tulkun who have passed their coming of age ceremony have tattooed bodies and tattooed fins, just like the Metkayina got their first tattoos when they were teenagers.”
In the film, we learn from the humans who hunt whales that the Tulkun are even more intelligent than humans and that they are capable of art and reason. Also, they have a liquid in their brain that halts human aging, making them tragic heroes because people want to slaughter them for profit. They are strong, gentle and wise creatures that we must protect and I love them very much.
What makes the Tulkun even more compelling is their strong sense of ethics. Payakan is banished from his group for leading a charge of young Tulkun to ambush the human hunters who killed his mother. Though he did not directly kill the Tulkun who followed him, they died trying, and his group still holds him responsible. As an exile, he must live with the double burden of his guilt and its condemnation. That’s why he and Lo’ak bond – Lo’ak feels similar to an outcast for not living up to his father’s expectations.
The trope of a maladjusted child bonding with a misunderstood animal is tried and true: look at every horse girl story of all time. But there’s an added twist here because (1) it’s a whale, a creature more elusive, rarer, and more powerful than a horse; (2) it is a extraterrestrial Whale; and (3) it’s a super-intelligent alien whale capable of maintaining a conversation. Combine Free Willy with How to train your dragon made easy and throw it in the middle of the ocean on a distant planet, and you get something a little close to the wonder of Lo’ak and Payakan’s relationship. All friendship strengthens Lo’ak’s bow and it’s just really sublime.
There are many good things aboutt Avatar: The Way of Water. The gorgeous landscape! The new Na’vi clan! The tight action scenes! The entire final act, which basically says James Cameron, “What if I recreated the scenes from my movie titanic where the boat is sinking, except this time everyone is a blue alien, plus they fight to the death?” But the absolute best part is the Tulkun, which not only fleshes out this new watery world the Sully family is in, but also helps to emphasize the coming-of-age narrative. What says more about growing up and finding yourself than connecting with a mystical, misunderstood animal?
Tragic backstories and complex emotional stories are appealing in any medium, and characters connecting through their tragic backstories and complex emotional arcs are an important part of any film. In this particular case, one of the characters happens to be a space whale. And any story in which the society of the space whales is sophisticated enough to produce a tragic backstory of revenge and isolation and healing from it is a story worth seeing, at least in my book.
Avatar: The Way of Water is now in cinemas.