'Avatar: The Way of Water' Made Me Care About Giant Blue People
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This review contains no spoilers for Avatar: The Way of Water.
I WAS a doubter. When the first Avatar came out, back in 2009, I saw it on opening night. Like any 16-year-old first getting into movies, I had discovered the work of Mr. James Cameron—namely, Terminator 2: Judgment Day—and was going to be lining up for whatever he had to offer. And when that first offering in more than a decade (his previous film was 1997's Titanic) was an original sci-fi idea called Avatar, focused on a distant planet called Pandora and their native inhabitants called Na'vi, I had one thought: "Sure!"
"I've heard the last 45 minutes are absolutely wild," I remember a friend saying. And seeing Avatar on the big screen in December 2009 was an experience for the ages. The movie went on to become the highest-grossing of all-time (passed for a bit by Avengers; Endgame, only to later reclaim the crown), and to be nominated for several Academy Awards. But as the years passed, a quiet refrain became more and more familiar, citing Avatar's familiar story and pretty random set of heroes. As more and more time passed between series installments, more and more skeptics emerged—myself included.
Since Avatar blew up, the blockbuster landscape has shifted greatly; the Marvel Cinematic Universe has become a behemoth, and tactfully made, big-scale adaptations like Dune and The Batman managed to stand out and become big hits while also achieving visual mastery. There's room for different kinds of big movies, but the original ideas are increasingly rare. All the while, Cameron hummed along in the background; the rest of us were doubting more and more, and he remained as confident ever.
After having seen Avatar: The Way of Water, I can confidently say that any skeptics—again, myself included—were wrong. Sure, the Na'vi still are kind of strange in concept (giant lanky blue alien people? Whatever.), but in advancing the technology and finding a far more original and exciting core story, Cameron has one-upped himself. This is a film that far surpasses the achievements of his original Avatar on every storytelling, character, and technical level.
The set-up is simple enough, and one that you, honestly, don't even need to have seen the first Avatar to appreciate. More than a decade after the first film, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) have started a family and continue to lead their tribe of Na'vi on the forests of Pandora. They live in peace, with four kids (two sons, an adopted daughter birthed from the avatar of Grace from the original Avatar, both played by Sigourney Weaver, and a young daughter) who are criticized by some for essentially not being pure Na'vi; you can see in their hands that they come from the human/Na'vi hybrid that Jake is. That's until the "sky people" return and destroy their home. This is James Cameron after all: the war is on, the action is on, and the visual spectacle is on.
The movie jumps into action after a time jump that finds the Sully family leading their people to join with the Metkayina, a sect of Na'vi based in Pandora's water who are particularly good at free-diving and holding their breath for long periods of time. Kate Winslet plays Ronal, one of their leaders, and actually learned to hold her breath underwater for seven minutes—an all time record. Not super relevant to the story or even the character, but just one of those fun James Cameron things; he cares about this world so much, and wants it to feel as lived-in and real as possible.
Perhaps one of the biggest story changes is that Avatar: The Way of Water, instead of following the kind of coming-of-age immersion adventure story that we've seen before (in movies like Dances With Wolves and Disney's Pocahontas), focuses on the entire Sully clan. Yes, Jake and Neytiri are experienced leaders, and have lots to do, but it's their kids (and another new character, a teenager who was left behind as a child after the events of Avatar named Spider) who help the story to feel more balanced and new. Kiri, the new character played by Weaver, and Lo'a, Jake and Neytiri's second son, both have fully-fleshed out arcs, and feel like characters that audiences will really be drawn to.
A handful of performances will blow you away. Stephen Lang's Colonel Miles Quaritch met his untimely (or timely, if you ask the Na'vi) end in the third act of Avatar, but Cameron loves him so much (before Avatar, he almost cast him in Bill Paxton's role in Aliens) that he decided to bring him back as the main villain of Way of Water—and future sequels, should they get made as planned. While Lang only appears in his human form in a brief early video message, his character and motivation are far more nuanced and developed than they were in the first film, while still keeping the chief part of a great villain: being terrifying and ruthless.
The movie was screened for media in a Dolby theater that included 3D and a 48 frames-per-second frame rate. Other directors, such as Ang Lee (with Billy Lynn's Halftime Walk) have tried using this before to mixed results, but Cameron's risk seems to have mostly paid off. For the majority of the 3 hour, 10 minute runtime, I was convinced that Avatar: The Way of Water contained the greatest visuals I've ever seen in any film. The Na'vi look stunningly real, as does their world and everything around them. There are a few moments where it feels like the movie is playing on a TV with the motion-smoothing on, which is unfortunate, but for the most part it's truly a spectacle.
The biggest impediment to Avatar: The Way of Water (if there is one, which, let's be real, there isn't; the movie is going to make 10 zillion dollars) is its bloated runtime. And while moments in the film that may seem unimportant wind up building character or coming back to resolve another story threads, it still feels like a movie that could have been cut down to something more manageable—or, if we're really getting creative, could've been split with an intermission like the old days. I digress!
The first hour of the movie will pretty immediately draw you in. The second hour features stunning visuals, but may find you checking your phone to see how much time is left. But the last hour is a true spectacle, a non-stop action ride that will put you in the kind of trance you can only dream of falling into when you leave your house to go to the movies.
James Cameron is a master of action, yes, but even moreso in his career has been a master of sequels: Aliens and Terminator 2: Judgment Day are some of the greatest genre films ever made. Time will tell, but this is another sequel that he can immediately feel proud of—and we know he does.
And for those of us who thought we didn't care about Avatar before seeing The Way Of Water, here's one more important fact: Avatar 3 is scheduled to hit theaters in only two years.
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