Avatar’s test as a franchise wasn’t Way of Water, it’s the Frontiers of Pandora game
The years leading up to the release of James Cameron’s long-wearing avatar follow-up The way of the water were fraught and filled with discussion. Does someone concern about this so-called franchise? Did the 2009 one avatar have real ‘cultural impact’, despite becoming the highest-grossing film of all time by the end of the box office period? Was Kate Winslet holding her breath long enough in a motion-capture water tank to break freediving records really “worth it”? Cameron, heeding the ‘hang up or shut up’ call, silenced the skeptics – The way of the water became a huge hit with positive critical acclaim to boot. The discourse tune immediately shifted from “really, more Avatar?” Unpleasant “avatar3 now please thank you.
Cameron’s triumph sets the bar high for the third installment, which is already in the mail and scheduled for 2024, but even higher for everyone else, with chips on Avatar more than a quadrilogy of theater events. Everyone in the toyscomic books, collectibles and Hawaiian shirt companies need Cameron’s universe to extend far beyond where the filmmaker will eventually take it. Which brings us to December Avatar: Limits of PandoraUbisoft’s attempt to actually turn Avatar into the next Star Wars.
During Monday’s Ubisoft Forward showcase, fans and skeptics alike finally saw more of the grandeur and action promised by the much-delayed game (now set to release on December 7). The first-person adventure puts players in a playable Na’vi, ahem, avatar, a new character who has just awakened from a 15-year cryosleep and is ready to battle the terran RDA forces to save Pandora. It’s not Jake Sully’s story, and as the trailers highlighted, the action doesn’t even take place on the map surrounding the events of The way of the water (it’s moving to the “western frontier” instead – please prepare your All quiet on the western borders of Pandora jokes). The trailer and gameplay footage is bursting with color and awash with wildlife unique to the Avatar movies, with shooter-style gameplay reminiscent of Far Cry. It’s a real game.
Ubisoft frontloads the Borders of Pandora footage on Forward reflects the game’s 2017 announcement and the reveal of the E3 2021 trailer: this is not an IP cash-in. Developed by Massive Entertainment in conjunction with Cameron’s own studio, Lightstorm, the game aims to live up to the director’s filmmaking credentials. Cameron even attended Ubisoft Forward to raise the bar: “We wanted the audience to feel like they were really on Pandora,” he said in the opening speech, “to dream with their eyes wide open and to see this world to explore with our characters.”
The director promises that Ubisoft’s technology has finally enabled both studios to realize Cameron’s world in an immersive style as dimensional and fluid as, say, an Assassin’s Creed or Far Cry game. It’s better.
Star Wars didn’t just become a 46-year mega-franchise on the quality of movies, which is obvious if you saw Attack of the clones or The Rise of Skywalker. Decades of Expanded Universe stories in every type of media have both enriched and deviated from the canonical narrative of George Lucas’s original trilogy in ways the original creator never would. There’s an argument that Timothy Zahn is as important to the longevity of Star Wars as anyone who set foot on it Empire strikes back set. Ahsoka is the #1 favorite Star Wars character of any generation thanks to The Clone Wars’ Dave Filoni distills what he knew was loved all of the Star Wars stories behind him, not just Lucas’s.
Although between the 2009 movie and The way of the water, none of it was as significant as Star Wars’ non-film performance. But games seem to be the modern place for the series to really gain a foothold: while the original trilogy may set the tone for “what Star Wars is,” Dark forces or Knights of the Old Republic or Rogue Squadron the recent Jedi: survivor have redefined it all.
This has not gone well for Avatar so far. Avatar: the game, Ubisoft’s 2009 attempt at a playable Na’vi adventure, took the wind out of the wings of the Great Leonopteryx with rickety controls and paint-by-numbers action. At the time, it was enough to convince me that maybe Avatar used to be a one-off cinema moment and not the start of something bigger.
The way of the waterThe one-up of the original’s world-building and Earthlings-as-alien-invaders drama was compelling, but it also begged the question: Is it just Cameron’s playground? If anyone other than the ocean-obsessed, tech-savvy author tried to aim his digital camera rig at actors covered in ping pong balls, what comes out might not be the “Avatar” as fans have come to love. Disney can spend millions to erect a Tree of Souls in the middle of Animal Kingdom and tell us it’s a franchise, but sheer capitalist will won’t get anything raised. Someone has to take over, see more potential and innovate from within.
Here’s what seems like the hardest part: Star Wars has endless possibilities – Jedi spirit quests, smuggler stuff, Mandalorian mandaloring, the endless wars of Star Wars – to mine for genre and storytelling. Avatar, for now, only has the biomes of Pandora and an endless war between two factions. Annoying. But the creatives behind it Borders of Pandora‘s seemed to have heeded Cameron’s call to push the familiar elements at least to their most playable extremes.
The Ubisoft Forward gameplay footage lays out the story of a young Na’vi who was captured in her youth, trained by the human RDA, and then stabbed in the back during the Battle of the Hallelujah Mountains, the climax of the Avatar movie from 2009. This might be Avatar at his best Star Wars: Pandora now has its own Order 66 and our hero is the survivor Jedi Na’vi warrior tasked with protecting the moon when the RDA returns.
Avatar: the game couldn’t keep up with Cameron’s imaginative ecosphere, but Borders of Pandora hammers home all the experiences that should have been in 2009: players fly the ikran banshees around the floating mountains, they ride giant horses over alien planes, they meet clans of other Na’vi who all have their own agendas, and they will go to war against the RDA in dingy, smog-stained industrial complexes. Naturally, skills are upgraded at the (skill) Tree of Souls.
Cameron took us under the oceans of Pandora The way of the waterBut Borders of Pandora feels like Ubisoft is playing the classics to make sure the new generation’s first big AAA outing actually works, including sticking to 2009 avatar‘s well-known deforestation themes. In the game, players can choose between Na’vi weapons or RDA firepower to take out enemies, but blowing up a mech suit stationed in the middle of an unobtanium refinery looks like a rush to finish anyway social justice. According to a press release published after the show, Borders of Pandora also enables two-player online co-op so friends can join the war against humans. There also seem to be plenty of opportunities to “pet the dog” – or, in this case, a Hammerhead Titanothere or other Pandoran fauna.
Avatar not need to become the next Star Wars. Four gigantic James Cameron spectacle films are enough to satisfy this Payakan stan. But the sheer amount of great Star Wars games makes me a little jealous – Pandora and its corner of the Alpha Centauri system have great potential, from bouncing over trees to floating over oceans or even hurtling into space.
Cameron and his team seem to think so too: Avatar: the way of the water producer Jon Landau told Polygon last year that Lightstorm has taken great care in ensuring its transmedia efforts Borders of Pandora and other Avatar media all line up without overlapping with or outright cannibalizing the saga of the movies. They want this to work and want more Avatar stories to be told by people who incite what Cameron puts down. That only happens if Avatar: Limits of Pandora to work. No pressure.
Avatar: Limits of Pandora arrives December 7 for Amazon Luna, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X.