The Big Picture · Discussion

Diving Deep Into ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ and ‘Triangle of Sadness’

February 21, 2023/ 86 min/ Sean Fennessy · Amanda Dobbins · Van Lathan

Sean, Amanda, and Van Lathan open on the Oscar race and who got shut out of it, then take a second pass at two Best Picture nominees set on the water: Avatar: The Way of Water and Triangle of Sadness.

28 films across 3 segments.

AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.

The Oscar race and who got left outbefore the two features

The Woman King 2022

Van and Amanda's case study in how a commercial hit with a bona fide star and a real cultural conversation still missed every major nomination, a Sony release with a distributor that hasn't fared well with the Academy lately.

Women Talking 2022

Amanda likes it, but notes it landed a Best Picture slot with almost no box office or cultural footprint. It's the movie they keep pitting against The Woman King.

Everything Everywhere All at Once poster

Everything Everywhere All at Once 2022

Got the loudest applause at the Academy luncheon; Sean has long pegged it the presumptive winner.

Top Gun: Maverick 2022

Van's best-of-the-year pick; the Spielberg-thanks-Cruise-for-saving-theaters moment at the luncheon left Sean wondering whether it could actually win.

TÁR 2022

Van has seen it two and a half times; a running bit about whether Amanda has too much Lydia Tár energy.

Down with the King 2021

Van's example of a great performance, Freddie Gibbs, that won't generate any Oscar buzz.

Avatar: The Way of Water

Avatar: The Way of Water 2022

$2.2 billion and change; nominated for Picture, Sound, Production Design, and Visual Effects. Van was floored: a simple family-in-peril story anchoring generational effects. Sean admires the engineering but keeps snagging on the storytelling seams; Amanda found the mythology overwhelming.

Avatar 2009

The one Van dug as a world without needing a sequel; Sean's touchstone for a Cameron movie that dazzled in theaters and shrank on a 40-inch TV.

Titanic 1997

Van loves it and defends Cal as pure one-note evil; Sean plays the skeptic and gets branded a Titanologist for it.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day 1991

Cited as Cameron's binary-villain craft: the T-1000 with almost no lines, a brainless killing machine that makes the hero human.

Aliens 1986

Part of the early-Cameron run that took Sean's breath away when he was young.

The Abyss 1989

Loved, with flaws Sean admits to.

True Lies 1994

Named as the kind of movie Cameron is done making now that he's blue forever.

Piranha II: The Spawning 1981

Even the Cameron film he disowned has greatness in it, Van argues.

Murina 2021

Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović's seaside debut, exec-produced by Scorsese; Cameron lent it his name because it's a simple story set on the water.

The Matrix 1999

Sean's example of lore bloat: a sleek, minimalist first film that later drowns under its own council and mythology, the trap he half-sees in Avatar.

The Patriot 2000

Van's gym story about Jason Isaacs, who insisted his simple-villain writing did the work: kill a kid early, coast on evil the rest of the way.

Triangle of Sadness

Triangle of Sadness 2022

The Palme d'Or winner, nominated for Picture, Director, and Original Screenplay. Van is all the way in on the class-warfare satire; Sean finds the overwrittenness the point on a rewatch but still can't get past the middle act; Amanda credits the Dolly de Leon reveal and the ambiguous ending.

Force Majeure 2014

Östlund's treatise on frail modern masculinity.

The Square 2017

His art-world satire; the other Östlund movie Van has seen.

Play 2011

The early Swedish film about a social experiment among kids, smaller than what he makes now.

The Menu 2022

Amanda's comparison point: a more on-the-label eat-the-rich satire she found less engaging than this.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery poster

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery 2022

Named alongside The Menu and Succession as the current glut of rich-people-are-frauds storytelling the hosts try to explain.

Babylon 2022

Sean's passionate mess to defend; Van gets the asshole-of-LA sequence and the closing movie-magic montage but keeps needling Sean about what Babylon is actually trying to say.