The scene in twow when Quaritch breaks his past selfs skull is crazy to think about.
Imagine living in one skull your whole life. Getting cloned, then remembering living in that skull and then deciding to crush that skull you lived in. That is wild and crazy to think on from time to time.
It also lends good backing to when he says as much to Spider. Aware audiences catch the "this man is dead" from the action, and then it gets repeated to "lock in" for everyone.
You can certainly critique the "writing" in Avatar, but the plotting, as it where, in terms of how concepts/themes like that are woven through both scripts, really is well written.
You can certainly critique the "writing" in Avatar, but the plotting, as it where, in terms of how concepts/themes like that are woven through both scripts, really is well written.
Yes! It's a more mythological style, which a lot of modern audiences just don't seem to understand. It's theme-driven storytelling; rather than plot-driven or character-driven. It's one of the things I love about Avatar.
That's also why I compare it so much to Lord of the Rings. Both stories have similar themes (although they also have their differences) and both are built around their themes.
Hes pretty strong to just crush a skull like that. Idk if they get weaker after 15 years but that's still probably very hard to do makes you wonder if they can do that to a living human.
I do believe they get weaker over time. For sure. Just going off off animal skulls in the desert. But ya I don't see why the couldn't atleast extremely hurt a human by squeezing there head. But also he looked like he was even trying. So bet he could.
Given the jungle environment, the body would have skeletalized in a matter of weeks through decomposition and scavengers. So the skeleton would have been exposed to the (wet and humid) elements for almost the entirety of those 15 years. My guess is, by then it's probably pretty porous and easy to crush. Still a very powerful scene though.
Jungles are notoriously bad at preserving skeletons, hence why we have very few jungle dinosaur fossils discovered.
Funnily enough in the OmatiCon live stream, Stephen Lang spoke about how the little skull replicas he was supposed to crush in the scene were left for too long in the refrigerator by the props guy and he couldn't crush it on set because it was frozen solid. So the skull had to be microwaved to soften them up.
Honestly disappointed there is no Pixar style in-character fully animated blooper reel where they used the footage of this. Quaritch standing there annoyed trying to crush it while everybody else is watching him and the kids start laughing.
It continues the theme of "giving up your old life" from the first film.
Jake willingly gave up his old life; to the point of burying his old body.
Quaritch tried to hold onto his old life (in both a literal and metaphorical sense) and lost it in the process. Now this new version of him is coming to terms with that.
The first time I saw him hold his skull the way he did I thought of Shakespeare's 'to be or not to be' then he crushes it maybe leaning towards not.
I love the Terminator reference in that. It's also a good character development moment, as you've said. He's probably angry at his old self, disappointed, annoyed, or all of the above.
It remains to be seen if he gets "better", or "worse". Knowing Cameron, he'll probably struggle with both sides for at least another movie, to keep things interesting.
He'll be getting worse until he gets plugged into Eywa.
probably...
He never lived in that skull. But he was about to cry holding it because his donor would have and still felt an attachment to it. Something he struggles with himself about because later on he holds the dog tags in higher respect and looks at Spider after throwing them like he wishes he could bring himself to do that. But instead of leaving them there, he immediately goes to pick them up.
He loathes Colonel Quaritch because of what he let happen to Jake, Spider, Paz, the other SecOps soldiers that died... and himself. But is emotionally struggling to let go of him despite wanting to. Like an abuse victim struggles to get rid of gifts from their abuser/s.
Crushing the skull isn't his first step away from his donor, but it's the first step he was able to do openly and get away with.
A good piece of foreshadowing that sets up that the new Quaritch won't be like the old one. And can forge his own path for himself.