Theatrical Review: Avatar: The Way of Water
You’d have to be living under a rock to not know the highly anticipated sequel to James Cameron’s 2009 blockbuster Avatar is finally out in theaters. I only saw Avatar once, and I was definitely impressed, but I didn’t feel any emotional connection to its story, and I certainly couldn’t understand why they recreated Pandora and built 2 rides around the movie in Disney World’s Animal Kingdom theme park. I wondered, “Did people really like the movie that much?” It seemed like a stretch.
I mean, I knew Avatar broke all the box-office records when it came out, and that it remains the #1 grossing film of all time worldwide, raking in $2.92 billlllllion. But there’s a difference between lots of people seeing a movie and becoming dedicated FANS of it afterwards—for 15 years with no new franchise content—you know?
On top of all that, I always got the impression that Cameron was an insufferable, overconfident ego-maniac after his successes with Titanic (the #3 top-grossing movie globally… with Avengers: Endgame in between) and Avatar, and for already talking about making Avatar 5 years before the second one even came out.
In short, I was a hater.
But dammit if he hasn’t done it. James Cameron has done it. He’s made me a believer.
Avatar: The Way of Water must be seen. It is truly astounding filmmaking. Given my attitude going into it, I was looking for something that didn’t ring true or that seemed fake, since the entire movie is computer-generated. And I couldn’t find it.
One thing to note is that Cameron shot at 48 frames per second (known as “HFR,” or high frame rate) for many action sequences, while other scenes employ the standard 24 frames per second. I have never seen HFR look good until now. It was used by Peter Jackson in The Hobbit trilogy and I couldn’t stand it. Something seemed off and it bugged the bejesus out of me. In The Way of Water, I was conscious that the action seemed hyper-real at times, but it looked amazing. I think Cameron’s choice to not stick with HFR for all scenes was the right one; otherwise it could’ve become distracting.
Onto the plot. I purposely didn’t refresh my memory by rewatching the original, yet I had no problem following the relatively simple storyline of the sequel. A decade has passed since the events of the first film, in which the paraplegic ex-Marine Jake Sully’s (Sam Worthington) mind was permanently transferred into his avatar of a blue, 10-foot-tall forest-dweller—a Na’vi—on the planet Pandora. He now has 3 sons and an adopted daughter with his wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), and they’re happy.
Alas, Sully’s boss and eventual enemy from the first film, Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) is back—resurrected as a “Recombinant,” which is a Na’vi with embedded human memories. He’s out to destroy Sully, which endangers the rest of Sully’s clan. So Sully makes the tough decision to leave with the rest of his family, and eventually they find refuge with the Metkayina clan of Na’vi reef-dwellers. They’re led by Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and Ronal (Kate Winslet), but I honestly didn’t know who played those characters until I looked it up.
For a little while, all is calm, and we get some gorgeous scenes featuring Pandora’s underwater creatures. In particular, the tulkun—which are like whales except that much bigger—have a special role to play in the story. There’s no doubt that our relationship with nature and the non-human inhabitants of our own planet is a major focus point in The Way of Water.
Another recurring theme is the bonds of family—especially when it comes to fathers and sons. Speaking of family, The Sullys don’t get very long to enjoy their new water-centric life before Quaritch and his fake Na’vi show up again, ready to wreak havoc. Accompanying the bad guys is a human general played by Edie Falco, and I honestly think she’s in the film solely to show off some more “cool stuff” in the form of a mechanical battle suit she wears that mirrors her every move. It’s fantastic.
Eventually, I kid you not, there’s a sequence that involves characters trying to escape from a sinking ship. I kept expecting Leonardo DiCaprio to pop out … or at the very least for Winslet to somehow de-CGI herself and turn back into Rose. (No such luck.)
While I will try to convince every single person I know to see The Way of Water because it’s that huge of a filmmaking accomplishment, it’s not going to end up on my “favorite films of 2022” list. Like its predecessor, its story—penned by Cameron, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver—didn’t make me feel all the feels. Rather, this is more of a triumph for Cameron as a director, as well as cinematographer Russell Carpenter and the bleeding-edge visual effects team at Weta FX in New Zealand. And that’s absolutely fine. I still loved watching every minute of this movie and am now actually looking forward to Avatars 3, 4 and 5!