Major spoilers for Avatar: Fire and Ash lie ahead.
One of the coolest elements of the Avatar movies has to be all the worldbuilding James Cameron has created to make Pandora feel like a real place. In the latest installment, Fire And Ash audiences get to dive deeper into the fictional planet he’s created throughout the story. One highlight of the critically-acclaimed Fire and Ash is the moment The Great Mother seems to be revealed for the first time, and it has a link to 2001: A Space Odyssey.
As soon as I saw what appeared to be a large purple baby when Kiri finally got to connect with The Great Mother, I knew I had to ask about that scene during CinemaBlend’s interview with James Cameron. When posed with the question of whether the scene was inspired by 2001, Cameron confirmed how the Kubrick film informed his approach to that big moment:
This is a really good question because I said ‘I want the luminous quality of the Star Baby at the end of 2001. And, we see that character sort of turning almost toward us, but this is different because her hair is blowing in these kinds of underwater currents. Is it leaves? Is it kelp? Is it seaweed? Sargassum? What is it? We don’t really know. And, what does she look like? We see a big eye.
Based on how James Cameron answers the question, there’s more to explore about the Ewya past what happens in Avatar: Fire And Ash. The Ewya is an interconnected biological network that helps regulate the planet’s ecosystem that Kiri seems to have a particularly strong connection to. Cameron also said this:
I did want to tease to the fact that she’s a real entity. She’s a real being. She really exists, or at least she can manifest herself in some visual form. I always see the spirit world, which the Na’vi call the Oma, when they plug in and they can go there they don’t necessarily get to talk to her. They’re not plugging in straight to Ewya any more than I can go online. I can email people, I can go to websites. All of those functionalities would exist in the Oma. Just because I’m in the Oma doesn’t mean I get to talk directly to the President or the Pope, right? You still gotta go through some channels here.
The more the Avatar movies push forward, the more Cameron gets to explore the fictional world. That includes the ways in which Pandora evolves as a singular entity. It’s certainly a solid reference to take inspiration from one of the best space movies of all time, and, Cameron told me the moment is a window into what questions were left unanswered for future movies.
Now, Kiri obviously has the inside track with The Great Mother for reasons we don’t quite understand yet. But, she also is in a very fraught relationship where there’s something that The Great Mother is hiding or concealing from Kiri that is not explained. It’s one thing that’s not explained in this movie… But, you know, there’s also that idea of hooking forward into the continuation of the saga. And if we don’t get to continue the saga, I’ll just, I dunno, I’ll do a press release. ‘Okay. Here’s the story. This is what we were gonna do.’
Hopefully, the director gets a chance to show us what he’s talking about regarding The Great Mother and Kiri’s interesting relationship. The filmmaker told me he’s “artistically” ready to work on Avatar 4 and 5, but wants to wait for the movie’s global performance to determine what’s next. He also has “a couple of other projects” he’s interested in doing. Additionally, Cameron said the sequel will need to make “two metric fucktons of money” to make a profit.
I wonder if the fact that Spider (a human) is able to tap into the network will change the Ewya or The Great Mother in any way moving forward. At the end of Fire and Ash, Spider certainly had a positive experience there, so I might be wrong about that. However, Cameron’s comments certainly point to more mysteries to uncover, and I’m so curious if we’ll get to see more of The Great Mother beyond his 2001-like moment. We’ll have to wait and see if another sequel heads to the movie release schedule in the coming months.
Check out Avatar: Fire and Ash in theaters now and stream the first two movies using a Disney+ subscription.
