AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER Review
James Cameron pulls off another filmmaking miracle by making us want to return to Pandora even more.
It’s might be a little too easy to be snarky or cynical about the length of time it took James Cameron to make a sequel to his blockbuster Avatar, and there could be plenty of reasons for that, from wanting to get the story right to wanting to make sure the technology was up to snuff. I wouldn’t be so bold to say that “perfection takes time,” but making quality films certainly does, and it won’t be long into the sequel’s 3 hours before you’ll understand why he decided to revisit Pandora.
15 years have passed since the first movie with Jake Sully (in Na’vi form, played by Sam Worthington) and Zoe Saldana’s Neytiri having built an extended, blended family that never really answers the question of how a human can mate with a Na’vi. (Obviously, VERY carefully.) Bigger questions involve the father of Kiri, Grace’s daughter – also portrayed by Sigourney Weaver – and we also meet Spider (Jack Champion), a human child that may be the son of Stephen Lang’s Colonel Miles Quaritch. Speaking of the “Sky people,” they have returned to Pandora, and this time, Quaritch’s thoughts and memories have been placed in a Na’vi Recombatant avatar, and he’s returning to Pandora with only one thing on his mind… revenge!
If nothing else, it’s pretty amazing how successful James Cameron continues to be in terms of being able to pull viewers into whatever world(s) or ideas he has at any given time. Avatar: The Way of Water works in a similar sense as the original movie, because after you’re introduced to any new characters and the set-up for the sequel’s central plot, it pulls you right in. Although the movie spends its first hour mainly in the same jungle environment on Pandora, Jake and Neytiri are forced to flee their home by Quaritch and his team, so they flee with their family and end up in the reef community of Metkaynia, a water-based group of Na’vi who allow the Sullys to join them, as long as they make an effort to learn their water-based ways.
The storytelling might not seem particularly groundbreaking and the writing, especially the dialogue, tends to falter when compared to the visual spectacle, but the younger cast of characters are able to achieve their full potential by having rich and plausible story arcs and real stakes in the battle between their father and Quaritch. Loak, the couple’s younger son, forms a bond with a whale-like Tulkun after he saves the boy from drowning, while Kiri seems to have a deeper connection with nature and the spiritual side of Pandora than anyone else in her family. The youngest child Tuk (Trinity Jo-li Bliss) is just so adorable that she wins the audience over whenever she speaks. By comparison, there’s a little weirdness in having Sigourney Weaver portraying and voicing the teen Kiri, which isn’t necessarily hard to believe, because she’s a good actor, but it sometimes does take you out of the movie when you start thinking about what must have been involved, especially in the scenes where every other character is played by a significantly younger actor.
In general, the younger characters are a welcome addition to the mix, because Worthington’s performance as Jake Scully in the original Avatar was never particularly great and Zoe Saldana doesn’t seem to have nearly as much to do, other than to growl at Quaritch.
The original Avatar won an Oscar for its visual effects, and I fully expect The Way of Water to do the same, since the entire movie is just a visual effects spectacular with some next-level work from WetaFX, who has become the gold standard for VFX in the past two decades. (I will have an interview with a few of them over at Below the Line very soon.)
There are only a few lulls in the movie’s three-hour running length, but the last act is particular satisfying – if not more than a little bit like the end of Titanic complete with sinking ship – because everything that’s been set-up beforehand comes to a climactic finale with a few sadder moments but also plenty of set-up for whatever the third movie is going to deliver. Normally, I’d be annoyed with a movie that doesn’t have a definitive ending, but Cameron already told us what he has planned and hopefully a third movie can be equally satisfying.
I sometimes strain my brain trying to figure out what filmmakers were going for and who they are trying to appeal to with their work. With Avatar: The Way of Water, it’s fairly obvious that James Cameron is trying to make a movie that will appeal to a fairly broad audience, and while flawed, it certainly seems to do that job.
Rating: 8/10
Avatar: The Way of the Water opens nationwide on Friday, December 16 with previews on Thursday night starting at 3pm.