James Cameron’s “Avatar: The Way of Water”
Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)
If effects were gravy and story the meat, you would be drowning in a vat of gravy clinging for dear life to a salisbury steak.
Running at 192 minutes, there’s surprisingly little story with much of time involved in characters gawping at the landscape as the audience is expected to gawp at these gawpers. Long self-congratulatory scenes play like clips from the tourist board of Pandora. That’s not to say there’s nothing there as a whole new generation of characters are relatively interesting but get bullied out by the above scenics and extended action scenes.
The film also repeats much from the original. 1) Lots of exposition on the world. 2) Protagonist(s) needs to learn the ways of a native people. 3) Protagonist(s) need to learn to ride some kind of dinosaur 4) Guile from Street Fighter wants revenge 5) Love finds a way 5) Oh lawd they comin’ 6) Screw pacifism, let’s fight 7) Tee up sequel
Thankfully, no one can hear you roll your eyes in the cinema. Some triggers for these eye rolls(avert your eyes if you want to avoid all spoilers): Characters talking to whales complete with Papyrus-style font subtitles. The villain who died in the first film returning to be the villain in this film. Jermaine Clement playing a non-comedic role with an American accent. Unobtainium being usurped by whale-brain juice that extends life like Dune’s spice. All the scenes which rehash scenes from Cameron’s past creations like Aliens(just reminding everyone how much better Aliens is), Titanic, The Abyss, and Piranha II: The Spawning.
There are some genuinely good scenes in “Avatar: The Next Generation” but the camera is so focused on taking in the scenery, it always feels like the characters are left behind. It’s like that meme with the guy walking with his girl friend but checking out the woman walking past except the girlfriend is the characters of ATWOW and the other woman is the scenery. Then there’s the realism of the film. It feels entirely animated and gamey. I know that quite a lot of practical effects were used in its creation, but it isn’t noticeable. It never really convinces that there’s weight, grit or substance to the world and when people are thrown in, they look a bit weird summoning memories of Mary Poppins dancing with animated penguins.
And to underline the gamey-ness, there were parts which reminded me of Horizon Zero Dawn and in my mind looking no more or less impressive. (I’m sure side-by-side I would notice a difference but that’s moot) Linked to this, I also thought how even for a videogame, things are too clean. It’s as if the film is coated in a kind of visual saccharine.
Then there’s the indiginous representation through the Navi. Being introduced to a new race of Navi who are ocean-based with their Maori-inspired tattoos and mannerisms underlined something that sat uncomfortably in the first film in that the tribal forest dwelling Navi exhibited some stereotypical traits of native Americans while also falling into the white saviour trope. None of these issues are resolved here and if anything, it doubles down.
Somewhere in that 192 minutes, there’s an okay 90 minute film struggling to get out but be warned that the film doesn’t fully conclude and Cameron isn’t planning to finish until getting in another two movies in the series. The last thing on my mind leaving the cinema was sitting through another six hours and to be honest, I wasn’t happy I’d already invested that much already on Pandora.
