{"id":241327,"date":"2025-12-19T17:24:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T17:24:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/241327\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T17:24:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T17:24:14","slug":"the-avatar-whales-are-back-and-now-they-have-clothes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/241327\/","title":{"rendered":"The Avatar Whales Are Back and Now They Have Clothes"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n They are real and my friends.
\n Photo: 20th Century Studios\/Everett Collection\n <\/p>\n

Say what you want about Avatar: Fire and Ash<\/a> \u2014 it\u2019s a retread of The Way of Water, James Cameron has run out of ideas, there\u2019s too much Spider (Jack Champion) \u2014 but you cannot deny the greatness of the Tulkuns, AKA Pandora\u2019s version of whales. They\u2019re big, they\u2019re majestic, they\u2019re both cetacean in nature but somehow also have four eyes. Each Tulkun bonds with a member of the Metkayina, a clan of oceanside-dwelling Na\u2019vi, and they call each other spirit brothers or sisters. Avatar: Fire and Ash introduces a new and completely ingenious detail regarding our friends the Tulkuns: this time some of them are wearing clothes and jewelry.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen an animal wearing clothes and jewelry before,\u201d you might be saying. Okay, congrats, but you\u2019ve never seen a creature this fictional and this huge wearing accessories. Big gold hoops! Long majestic cloaks. Does this affect their ability to swim? Doesn\u2019t matter; they look incredible. Tulkuns are, per James Cameron\u2019s Avatar Wiki<\/a>, the largest creatures on Pandora and three times the size of even the biggest blue whales. When you see one of these guys wearing an earring, you have to imagine that the earring is the size of a car.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n Those are PIERCINGS on an ANIMAL.
\n Photo: 20th Century Fox\n <\/p>\n

Prior to seeing Fire and Ash, you may think that the Tulkuns wearing clothes is a good thing, but actually, to see the Tulkuns in their garb portends something bad. All is not well with the alien whale community since The Way of Water<\/a>. Payakan, the Tulkun bull who bonded with Jake Sully\u2019s son Lo\u2019ak (Britain Dalton) in the last film, is on trial for being violent towards humans. Yes, the humans were hunting innocent Tulkun for the anti-aging liquid in their brains, but per Tulkun laws, they are not supposed to resort to violence in return. When Payakan goes to trial, he\u2019s forced to meet with the patriarch and matriarch of his clan \u2014 both of whom are wearing capes and other accessories to denote the formal nature of their council. In that sense, it seems like the Tulkun approach to clothing (capes, robes, and so on) is kind of like how lawyers (\u201cbarristers\u201d) in England wear wigs to go to court.<\/p>\n

The novelty of seeing Tulkuns wearing articles of clothing is one of those great details from the twisted mind of James Cameron \u2014 the type of artistic decision that inspires more questions than it can answer. For instance: Who is making the clothing the Tulkuns wear? Who is piercing their ears? Are those ears? Because the earrings and clothing on the Tulkuns are to scale, does this mean they have to get new accessories every few years? How many Na\u2019vi does it take to get a cape on a Tulkun? There are no satisfying answers to these questions, but wondering about it is half the fun of Fire and Ash. It\u2019s just a shame that their outfits are only ceremonial and serious. Hopefully we\u2019ll get to see what they wear to parties in the next movie.<\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They are real and my friends. Photo: 20th Century Studios\/Everett Collection Say what you want about Avatar: Fire…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241328,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[73460,56379,62991,18,117,19,17,96751,327,5,127048,127045,127047,127046],"class_list":{"0":"post-241327","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-avatar","9":"tag-avatar-fire-and-ash","10":"tag-avatar-the-way-of-water","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-jake-sully","16":"tag-movies","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-payakan","19":"tag-save-the-tulkun","20":"tag-tulkun","21":"tag-tulkuns"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115747400519692141","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}