Avatar: The Way of Water

• Directed and Produced by James Cameron
• December 6, 2022 (London) / December 16, 2022 (US)

Jake Sully and his family, under threat from returning humans, seeks safety with the aquatic Metkayina clan of Pandora.

Avatar when it came out was quite the groundbreaking film in terms of technology used to tell the story. In terms of story, it was more Dances With Wolves or maybe even Pocahontas than anything particularly original. And it was certainly nothing that screamed a sequel since every element was wrapped up by the credits.

In Avatar: The Way of Water many of the themes and ideas of the first film are continued here-often in a heavy-handed way. At three plus hours it can be a bit much. It is not a long or completely boring slog but Cameron is not big a subtlety when making his points and clearly had nobody willing to suggest he cut some stuff.

Humanity has returned to Pandora in some really cool looking (yet plausible) ships. What I’m trying to figure out is why the ships landed in the most destructive way possible. They came down in a massive fire ball that wiped out the forest. That makes no sense mostly because if you’re trying to land a ship you wanna be able to get outside and a massive forest fire prevents that. I get that Cameron was trying to drive home the destructive nature of the entirely Caucasian landing force. Near as I could tell the entire cast of human forces were white.

The problem now in this fictional world is that Earth is dying. Pretty standard future trope. The plan is to conquer Pandora but before they can do that they need to pacify the locals. Why would you want to colonize an exo-moon whose atmosphere they cannot breathe and whose every lifeform is hostile either to people or just in general? Is this the only planet humanity is aware of? I would’ve taken a line here or there saying that habitable planets are rare or virtually unique or something to explain why this one place is so important.

The movie starts off pretty much right in the plot. Humans come back and Jake Sully is (Sam Worthington) leading Na’vi forces trying to drive them out. It doesn’t build the conflict very much either (not that there’s much build up needed) but just launches into things. As bothersome for me as that was, it wasn’t too bad as things were progressing towards a finale of some type and then Jake Sully decides to run away from the tribe and go live on a beach with a bunch of beach Na’vi. Seriously. And then the narrative comes to a screeching halt.

For about a third or so of the movie Cameron spends a great deal of time building up and fleshing out the intricacies of the Metkayina clan of Pandora and their way of life and everything that goes on there. While some things needed to be done to establish them what we got here was essentially a rehash of everything they went through in the first film with the Omatikaya clan.

Worse the focus of the film becomes Jake and Neytiri’s annoying kids. I would name them, but they are rather generic and interchangeable so they amount to one character spread out to multiple performers. Avatar: The Way of Water for a period devolves into an overpriced teen drama from the CW set in space where the characters use “Bro” to an annoying degree.

Because of that Sully and his wife are pushed into the background with the kids becoming central players. And I honestly figured out the ultimate fate of one of the children within the first few seconds of the movie. I just expected it to happen sooner.

Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) returns through super science in a Na’vi/human hybrid body. For obvious reasons he has a grudge against Sully which drives his actions. He along with several members of his team get copies of their minds popped into Na’vi bodies to use their skills to further Earth’s goals.

The tone is definitely that the native ways are superior to the human ways. When Quaritch and his Na’vi hybrid team of the resurrected are sent out on the hunt for Jake Sully and his family in order to stop the armed efforts of the Na’vi which appear to have halted with his departure anyway they do something that goes against that.

They decide it’s time to use the native methods to get their job done and so the first thing they do is get one of those flying creatures. And it seems to go very easy for them. In the original it sounded like a tough thing to do with some failing but each one tames one of those creatures. I took that as basically saying (and maybe this was accidental on Cameron’s part) the Na’vi put a lot of meaning into things that weren’t that big of a deal.

The theme of environmentalism is largely exemplified by a very Caucasian group of individuals involved in whaling on Pandora. Apparently these space whales have something in their brains that literally halts human aging. A magic potion if you will.

Being that James Cameron now most definitely wants sequels there is a mystery teased about Dr. Grace Augustine’s (Sigourney Weaver) body and who (if anybody) fathered her Na’vi hybrid daughter Kiri (also Sigourney Weaver). Who is the daddy? We don’t find out here. Kiri has abilities of space magic that come in helpful at all the right moments. And apparently she has some kind of epilepsy though I think in future films it’ll turn out to not be epilepsy.

And who can forget the villain’s son Spider (Jack Champion) who was but a baby and could not leave Pandora because babies cannot go into cryo. He is about as intriguing a character as the rest of the teens are. You’ll be forgiven for not remembering him from Avatar because he wasn’t even in it as a character! From all indications of the last film Quaritch was single and married to the job, but it is revealed he had time to get some woman pregnant. I just have an easier time believing unmentioned siblings or relatives but never when it comes to children children.

The more I think about it the more I’m bothered by the distinct lack of internal conflict from Sully-especially in this film. He seemed fairly willing to switch sides for a piece of alien tail originally and now he’s more than willing to let his former species go into extinction by driving them off of the planet they wish to colonize because Earth is dying. Not even a bit of thought is given by the character. I’m not saying he must be willing to let humans move in and wipe out the Na’vi or turn them into slaves or whatever. I’m just saying a moment to consider the impact his actions will have was warranted.

Despite my issues, James Cameron turns in a good movie. But it’s a good movie that’s a bit of a rehash of the first film and a good movie that goes on for an hour more than it really needs to. It could’ve been a great movie and a follow up that was superior to the original if it just eliminated the beach stuff and kept the flow moving but Cameron is more interested in putting message first than he was in telling a good story, which is a better way to get your point across than putting point first.

Avatar: The Way of Water is not a bad movie. I expected it to feel like it was a lecture, but it did not. It’s interesting enough that you won’t feel like you wasted your time, but the 3+ hours combined with the dead spot in the middle is something that makes me say I’m probably not gonna watch it again.