Avatar: The Way of Water – Review

It’s becoming an increasing rarity to see a new film from award winning director James Cameron these days.  Since his Oscar winning epic Titanic (1997) from 25 years ago, Cameron has only directed two narrative films, with a handful of documentaries scattered around.  And both of those movies take place in the same world; one that Cameron is increasingly more invested in.  For the longest time, 12 years in fact, it seemed like no movie could ever catch the box office record set by Titanic, until James Cameron himself took up the challenge.  Avatar (2009) released into theaters with a fairly modest but strong opening weekend, but then it just stayed around, adding on to it’s box office week after week with better and better returns.  It showed long legs at the box office not seen in Hollywood since what was coincidently Cameron’s last film, and remarkably he found himself the box office king again as Avatar surpassed Titanic’s lofty summit and then some.  Most directors dream of making the most successful movie of all time, and James Cameron can say that he’s accomplished that moment twice in his career.  Avatar’s crown has since passed on to the likes of Star Wars domestically and the Avengers worldwide, but James Cameron can still claim to hold two spots on the all time highest grossing charts in movie history.  So, what does he do for an encore.  Given that Titanic and Avatar are so wildly different kinds of movies (historical epic vs. sci-fi adventure) you would think that he would change things up by tackling another genre.  But instead, Cameron decided to not just return to the world of Avatar for an encore, but to commit to a multi part narrative that will likely consume the rest of his directing career.

If the gap between Titanic and Avatar was lengthy, it’s been exceed even more by the 13 years it took to get this sequel.  Truth be told, that wasn’t by design.  James Cameron began rolling picture on this sequel all the way back in 2016, a full six years ago.  One thing that certainly contributed to the lengthy production on this film was Cameron’s heavy attention to detail.  He wanted this movie to push the boundaries of what is capable with digital animation.  The first Avatar was a groundbreaking movie when it comes to the cinematic tool known as motion capture.   Motion capture allows for an actor’s live action performance to be digitally captured and rendered into a CGI character.  This was famously pioneered in The Lord of the Rings trilogy with the character Gollum, but Avatar took the technology a big step forward by adapting it to a larger cast of characters as well as pushing the limits of the technology to make the CGI appear as lifelike as possible.  The end results were impressive for their time, and largely hold up 13 years later, even with the advancements made to the technology since like with characters such as Caesar from the Planet of the Apes series and Thanos from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  At the same time, those same effects were expensive and time consuming to get right.  With James Cameron’s well documented drive for perfection, you can see why it takes him a decade to get a movie made, especially when it requires the level of craft that Avatar does.  But, other factors were in play that delayed a quicker release.  The Disney takeover of Fox, the studio behind most of Cameron’s filmography including Avatar, shelved the project for a while as corporate matters were worked out.  And then there was the Covid-19 pandemic, which saw everything get pushed back on the calendar.  But, now, James Cameron is finally releasing his new movie, Avatar: The Way of Water into theaters, the first of what he plans as series of sequels further exploring the world of Avatar on the big screen.

Despite the 13 year gap between movies, Avatar: The Way of Water picks up right where the last film left off.  The Na’vi race that lives on the moon of Pandora has defeated the colonizing humans who have laid waste to their world.  All the military personal have left the planet, with only a few friendly scientists being allowed to stay, as long as they respect the Na’vi’s territory.  Among the Na’vi, there is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), the once human soldier who has now been fully melded into his Na’vi Avatar and has become the chief of his own tribe.  His Na’vi mate Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) has in time born his children, and the two nutured a family of their own.  Among their children are two boys, Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) and Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), a baby girl named Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), as well as an adopted daughter named Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), who was born from the Avatar of the deceased Dr. Grace Augustine under mysterious circumstances.  Hanging around the Sully family is a human boy named Spider (Jack Champion), who has integrated himself into the Na’vi culture despite being an outsider.  The tranquil life that the Sullys and the Na’vi tribe have enjoyed for almost a decade is broken suddenly when a new fleet of human space ships suddenly arrive and begin laying waste to the environment.  But the new colonizers carry an even more insidious cargo.  A new crop of Avatar clones have arrived with them, filled with the memories of fallen marines that were at war with the Na’vi in years past.  Among them is an Avatar clone of Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who is eager to pick up where his human predecessor left off; seeking revenge on Jake Sully and hunting down the remaining Na’vi.  Sully learns of the danger from this new threat and for the sake of his tribe decides to retreat into a self imposed exile with his family in order to save the rest of his people.  The Sully family eventually find refuge in a community of aquatic based Na’vi, led by Chieftain Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and his queen Ronal (Kate Winslet).  Despite some difficulty, the Sully family adjust to life living in and around the vast Pandoran oceans.  But, as they soon learn, even out at sea they can still be hunted down by Quaritch, who will find Jake Sully by any means necessary.

When the first Avatar came out, it was a movie that definitely divided audiences.  A lot of people proclaimed it as a masterpiece, while another significant amount of people thought it was trivial and overhyped.  As for myself, I would say I fell more into the latter camp.  I didn’t hate the movie, and I would dare say that I liked it quite a bit as a spectacle.  But, it was a movie that was more style over substance, as the unoriginal screenplay and it’s wooden characters were definitely it’s biggest shortcomings.  What was unfortunate about the movie was the fact that as a story it was painfully derivative, especially with it’s cringe “white savior” narrative, which led many people to deride the film as “Dances with Smurfs.”  But, it should be noted that where James Cameron fails as a screenwriter he more than makes up for as a director.  I can think of very few directors who can command an action scene as well as he does.  It’s the moments when he leans more into spectacle where his movies shine, and Avatar certainly has plenty of those moments.  The guy can direct the hell out of his movies, and that to me is what helped to drive audiences back into the theater multiple times to see the movie.  So, did something change in between the first and second movie for better or worse?  Honestly, whatever opinion you had about the first Avatar will likely be the same opinion you have about the second one.  That’s where I ended up falling after seeing.  Just like with the first movie I admire the movie for it’s spectacle but at the same time can’t help but feel let down by it’s story.  To be honest though, there were some things that I do feel were improved upon a little bit from the original film.  One of the best changes is the “white savior” narrative being gone.  Sully as a character is far more grounded and believable as a hero in this movie, more passively playing a part in this world’s culture rather than being the driving force that he was before.  He’s no longer bending the Na’vi culture to his will, but is instead playing his part in respecting the cultures of this world while at the same time dealing with his own familial issues on the side within the story.

What I also appreciate is that while most blockbuster films force feed their audience backstory and exposition, James Cameron instead allows the viewer the time to absorb the world of this story.  The movie runs a staggering 3 hours and 12 minutes long (only two minutes shy of Titanic  by the way) and at several points in the movie, the film merely lets the atmosphere take precedent.  While the excessive length does open the movie up to some lagging, particularly in the middle, I do appreciate the attempt on James Cameron’s part to actually slow the movie down enough for us to really soak in the world of Pandora; something most other directors would fear to do.  To the movie’s credit, those 3+ hours don’t feel that long, and it especially peaks up steam in that final action packed hour.  The movie constantly lets the spectacle of looking at the world of Pandora be the driving force of the film.  But, at the same time, you leave the movie with the sense that little if anything was accomplished over the course of the movie.  For a movie with a three hour length, there is surprisingly little story in it.  Most of what we see is roughly a cat and mouse chase between our hero and our villain.  There is slight clashing between the sea Na’vi and the forest Na’vi, but nothing that really adds much to the drama of the story.  It’s hard to even say that Jake Sully is the main character here, as the Sully family as a unit is the central protagonist group of this movie.  Whatever character development there is mostly given to the children, and it’s again James Cameron being very derivative in his writing.  Surprisingly, one of the best character arcs in the movie belongs to a redemption arc for a Space whale of all things.  A lot of the shortcomings in the story are pretty typical of a James Cameron movie, as he likes his characters to be simple archetypes who more or less are shaped by events within the movie story itself rather than through lingering factors from their individual backstories.  For James Cameron, the story has always been secondary to the visuals, so it shouldn’t be at all surprising that he continues to lean more on his strengths as a director to carry his movie.

For Avatar: The Way of Water, James Cameron has surprisingly managed to keep his cast in tact even after a decade long gap.  I would say of the returning cast members, the one who has shown the most improvement is Sam Worthington.  It can be said that the weakest link of the original Avatar was Worthington’s one note performance as the lead.  His Jake Sully was mainly there to act as an audience circuit who follows the tried and true “hero’s journey” in a strange new world.  This time around, Worthington is acting pretty much the whole way through as his Avatar, never once appearing as Jake Sully in his original human form.  He’s also a much different character this time around; a father rather than a warrior.  And as such, we see the years of parenting and growing more comfortable with this world having an effect on him.  Worthington in all these years seems to have also found more interesting ways to bring character to his Sully, and imbue him with more personality this time around.  The Sully children are the characters that get the most development throughout the movie, with middle child Lo’ak in particular getting the lion’s share.  What I like is that they integrated the idea of the Sully children having this extra bit of separation from the other Na’vi people because they are half breed, bearing hands with five fingers rather than the more common four, something that was obviously passed down from their human born father.  This introduces an element of prejudice into the story, showing that the seemly noble Na’vi are not without their own flaws, namely towards those that they view as different than themselves.  One thing that is a bit disappointing in this movie is how the returning cast members, other than Sam Worthington, are kind of pushed to the side.  Zoe Saldana suffers the most from this, as her Neytiri (the best character from the original movie) is given not much to do here.  Sigourney Weaver and Stephen Lang’s performances are also limited as well, even though they do make the most of their limited screen time.  It’s a mixed bag overall with regards to the characters, with some cases being improvements over the original movie while others are unfortunately lessened.

The thing that definitely does not disappoint with Avatar: The Way of Water is the breathtaking visuals.  James Cameron, for most of his career, has been all about transporting his audience.  Whether it’s to the bottom of the ocean floor in The Abyss (1989) to the decks and hallways of the Titanic, to the natural wonders of Pandora in Avatar.  His goal is to make his audience feel like they are there.  The original Avatar did a magnificent job of creating a world that was alien, but also familiar to our own world in many ways, and make it also feel organic and lived in as well.  He succeeded at that in a magnificent way, which makes it even more of a challenge upon revisiting that same world in a new movie.  The smart thing James did in this movie to change things up was switch biomes.  The original movie took place mostly in the rainforests of Pandora, but that’s just a small part of a much larger world.  With The Way of Water, Cameron takes his story out of the jungle and out into the open ocean, and that helps to make the visual feast of this film feel fresh and less like a retread.  We are getting more of a sense of just how diverse the biology of Pandora is, even among the Na’vi, and that helps to give this movie it’s own character as well.  Cameron of course makes good use of the refinements made to computer animation made over the last decade, and in particular, I think that his effects team may have made yet another big leap forward.  I was particularly blown away by how well the digital water looks in this movie.  Apparently, Cameron’s team invented a whole new way to do motion capture of his actors while they were in actual water, thanks to a state of the art sound stage pool that they recorded their foundational raw footage in.  The underwater scenes in particular are the main reason to get out to see this movie on a big screen in 3D.  They are absolutely breathtaking, and show off the best visuals that they movie has to offer.  Until now, water often looked strangely artificial in computer animation, but in The Way of Water, the digital effects team may have finally cracked the code to make digital water look as close to the real thing as possible.  At the same time, the motion capture technology is very much improved since the first film.  Skin textures in particular feel more authentic, and the subtleties in the actors’ facial acting is much better translated now.  Even still, they managed to make the movie feel like a natural continuation of the first movie.  In overall visuals, this movie in many ways improves upon the first.  James Cameron enlisted his Titanic DP, Oscar winner Russell Carpenter, to shoot this movie, probably because of his expertise in shooting scenes in water, and you can really see the impact that Carpenter’s keen eye had in shaping the look of this film.  The Avatar franchise above all else must be a feast for the eyes, to the point where it feels like a real tactile world, and it’s pleasing to see how well James Cameron has maintained that over all these years.

So, for some this movie will likely not win them over to liking this franchise if they disliked the first film already.  Cameron’s weakness as a writer is known, and even in iconic films of his like Titanic he’s had the tendency to have very poor judgement in his choices within the dialogue.  The same problems are found here too, but like most of his other movies, his film is buoyed by the incredible spectacle of it all.  He is an epic filmmaker without equal, and it’s clear that he knows where his strengths lie.  I was able to be on the edge of my seat during the breathtaking action sequences in the movie, while at the same time feeling like the movie would’ve been better served with a different polish of the screenplay.  Cameron needs a writer who understands character development better, like what George Lucas had with Lawrence Kasdan in the Star Wars franchise.  A writer with a strong character building background could work well with James Cameron’s world-building, and help bring this franchise to it’s full potential.  Unfortunately, Cameron’s a filmmaker who likes to be more hands on, even in script process, so the likelihood of him doing that are pretty slim.  In the end, Avatar: The Way of Water is shiny and beautiful on the outside, but hollow inside.  The story, even with the 3+ hour runtime, doesn’t really amount to much.  It’s just the same story with a different setting.  That being said, I could see this as being a much worse sequel.  James Cameron clearly made this movie out of his love for the project, and not as a cynical cash-grab mandated by the studio.  That’s why he’s committed to making several more, which are thankfully going to be released in much shorter windows across the next couple years.  The best thing I can say is that it does interest me in seeing where James Cameron decides to take this franchise next.  Hopefully he continues this world tour aspect and explores even more corners of Pandora in other movies.  Like I said before, if you loved the first one, you’ll probably love this too, and if you hated Avatar before, you are likely going to feel the same with this one as well.  I was more of the mind of being mixed on the original film, and that extended into this movie as well.  It’s got some moments of absolute wonder, as well as the typical Cameron spectacle in it’s action scenes, but it also has a story and screenplay that fall well short of greatness.  For the best experience, find the biggest screen you can (preferably IMAX) and try to see it in 3D.  Full immersion is James Cameron’s goal, and his preferred viewing experience is the one I just described to you,  And if that’s not possible, there’s still enough good about the movie to help keep it afloat.  It’s a job well done for James Cameron, but let’s hope that in the further adventures on Pandora that he adds more depth of character and story to match the out of this world visuals that have distinguished this series so far.

Rating: 7.5/10