"Avatar: The Way of Water" - Film Review
It has been thirteen long years since we were first introduced to the world of Pandora in James Cameron’s Avatar. Despite the fact that, adjusted for inflation, Avatar is the second-highest-grossing film of all time, it has had a nominal impact on the pop culture world. Save for the immersive land in Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Florida, Ryan Gosling’s perfect Saturday Night Live sketch about the film’s font, and the looming threat of four sequels, Avatar disappeared from public view. That all will change with the release of Avatar: The Way of Water.
Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), the human hero who permanently became a Na’vi at the end of the first film, has started a family with Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña). They have four children (Jamie Flatters, Britain Dalton, Sigourney Weaver, and Trinity Jo-Li Bliss) and live peacefully in the forests of Pandora. The violent Sky People (humans) from the first film have gone, and there has been tranquility amongst the Na’vi. Now, a new group of Sky People descends upon Pandora and brings a new threat for the Na’vi. Not only are the Sky People looking to colonize Pandora as a back-up plan for when Earth becomes uninhabitable, they’re looking to settle the score with Jake Sully.
©2022 20th Century Studios
Like the original, Avatar: The Way of Water is visually stunning. The creation of such a lush, expansive underwater world is a mystical feat of filmmaking. Cameron’s insistence on using the latest technology pays off in spades. The new underwater creatures are primordially futuristic, sharing the same bioluminescence as the forest creatures from the first film. Unfortunately, this awe-inspiring sheen wears thin fairly quickly as Avatar: The Way of Water forgoes plot development in favor of essentially turning into an episode of Planet Earth Pandora.
The first film was focused on the Sky People’s obsession with mining the rare unobtanium. One would expect such a central plot point to play an equally similar role in the second movie, but that’s not the case. The mineral is mentioned briefly in Avatar: The Way of Water, and the desire the Sky People have to colonize Pandora is far more vague the second time around. At one point, they are there to make Pandora inhabitable for humans when Earth dies. That thread is quickly dropped in favor of mining a whale blubber that stops human aging and sells for $80 million for a small vial. Even that development is forgotten in favor of a multi-billion dollar personal vendetta against Jake Sully.
©2022 20th Century Studios
Despite how visually different Avatar: The Way of Water is, Cameron is borrowing from his own filmography. Both Avatar movies end in exactly the same way and have multiple scenes that are beat-for-beat identical. They just swap the forest for the ocean. The film culminates in a sequence lifted right out of Titanic, and the fight scenes would be right at home in Terminator. This film is a pastiche of movies that already exist, dressed up in fancy technology.
Avatar: The Way of Water is not the only culprit stretching its runtime to obscene lengths. It’s almost as though writers and directors view length as synonymous with quality. Only a 2+ hour film can be deemed cinematically important. One would think that these sprawling new runtimes would bring vibrant, rich character development, but that has not proven to be the case. None of the characters in Avatar: The Way of Water act in a way that’s cohesive with what little the audience knows about their personalities. Instead, they serve merely as pawns that allow the writers to force events to happen, no matter how out of character they are.
©2022 20th Century Studios
It’s hard to write off Avatar as a passing trend. There must be something that made the original into the huge box office phenomenon that it is. Perhaps it’s because of the uncanny valley aspect of the Na’vi people, but it remains difficult to connect emotionally with the performance-capture characters. It’s more noticeable in Avatar: The Way of Water because of the sheer number of Avatars.
As with the first film, there will likely be droves of people who will keep showing up to screenings of Avatar: The Way of Water. It’s impossible to deny that they will be treated to a visual feast, but those looking for a more character-driven movie will be left adrift in the open water.
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