In the endless cycle of discourse that every new release film seemingly has to go through, few movies have been as thoroughly discussed before their release as James Cameron’s long-awaited Avatar: The Way Of Water. And how could it not? This is the sequel to the on-and-off highest grossing film of all time, a film that is in itself not without controversy. It has been delayed a ridiculous amount of times and is now heralding the arrival of three more sequels. All to a film, that if you believe the loudest voices in the discourse, nobody cares about. It has been filmed with revolutionary underwater motion capture and largely focuses on a gaggle of alien kids. All ripe sources for mockery and disbelief.
For the longest time of its discourse lifespan, The Way Of Water sounded like a disaster waiting in the wings. Though that is of course only true if you discard one key piece of internet and Hollywood wisdom: never bet against James Cameron.
This is the director whose last couple of films have all sounded like the follies of someone too high on their own supply. And, at the very least from a financial perspective, these wild bets have all panned out. Whether box office returns this time will be anywhere close to the first film’s, or just close to anything anyone involved in the making of this film would be happy with, of course remains to be seen. But now that The Way Of Water is finally out in the world, to my eyes, one thing is very clear. As a big budget blockbuster spectacle, this film is pretty close to undeniable.
For a sprawling three hour plus epic, The Way Of Water is heavier on vibes than on plot. We kick off roughly ten years after the events on the first one. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) now permanently inhabits his Na’vi body, and has fathered three children with his mate Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). They have also adopted Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), the mysteriously conceived child of the deceased Dr. Grace Augustine’s avatar. All seems peaceful on Pandora, until the humans – or “sky people” – return, bringing with them Jake’s nemesis Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), now resurrected in a Na’vi body of his own. This leads the sully family to abandon their forest homestead and travel to the coasts of Pandora, where they seek refuge with a tribe of water Na’vi.
When you type it out like that, it still seems like a lot. But after a somewhat laborious first half hour where most of the above information is dispersed, the plotting in the film is relatively light on its feet.
A full hour of the film is spent just familiarizing the viewer with the Sully family’s new surroundings, with a lot of beautiful, blissful scenes of the characters learning to hold their breath underwater and bonding with sea creatures. Not only do these scenes feature some of the most breath-taking imagery Cameron has ever captured on screen, they are also where the film’s ensemble of kid actors really begins to shine.
Putting most of the weight of this entire enterprise on kids could have easily backfired spectacularly, but these kids are a miracle of casting. They’re all extremely likable and soulfully performed, sometimes making it feel like even the ample time we spend with them isn’t quite enough. Jake’s oldest son Neteyam and his youngest daughter Tuk (portrayed by James Flatters and Trinity Jo-Li Bliss) are the least central to the film’s narrative, but still make a solid enough impression thanks to the performances and Cameron’s talent at conveying broad characterization.
But the stand-outs are the aforementioned Kiri and the middle son of the family, Lo’Ak (Britain Dalton).
Kiri is maybe the biggest swing in a film not short on big swings. A teen played by an iconic actress in her seventies is something that should by all measures come off as unsettling at best and moronic at worst, but due to Sigourney Weaver’s extremely committed performance it all goes down smoothly. But it’s Lo’ak who emerges as the real star amongst the new characters in the film’s middle act. He is a familiar archetype, the brash and impulsive middle child struggling to earn his stern father’s approval, but Dalton plays the broad beats the script desires of him beautifully. His friendship with a Tulkun – large whale-like creatures that are integral to the film’s plot – blossoms from a wonderful one-off scene into the beating heart of the film, almost all due to Dalton managing to convince you of his deep bond with this gigantic CGI creature.
There is one other major kid character in the film, a human boy named Spider (Jack Champion) who was left on Pandora as a baby when the humans forcibly evacuated from the planet at the end of the first film. The insertion of a Tarzan-esque teen with white boy dreads who spends the entire film running around in a loin-cloth into a franchise that has already raised some not-underserved questions about its cultural sensitivity with the first installment is another one that could’ve been a disaster. And while Spider is probably the least successful element of the film overall, that has more to do with the character’s somewhat muddy role in the story, as Champion’s performance is very winning.
It helps that he shares a large amount of his scenes with Stephen Lang, who is once again a total delight. Quaritch’s new form as a Na’vi (who retains the human Quaritch’s memories up to a bit before his death) brings a shift in the character’s energy from gleeful hammy villainy to something a bit more complicated than that, which Lang clearly relishes sinking his teeth in to. Together with a squad of similarly resurrected soldiers, Quaritch is on a mission to fully learn the ways of the Na’vi, which makes his plotline a nice mirror of Jake Sully’s journey in the first movie.
Lang, always a welcome presence, was already great in the first film, but this time Sam Worthington rises to his standard, delivering a way more compelling performance this time. He is probably helped by not having to shoulder the entire film this time due to the larger focus on the ensemble, but he still has to pull off some very complicated stuff and does so with gusto. A confrontation between him and Lang in the climax is one of the most fist-pump inducing scenes in a film full of those, really escalating the rivalry between them into mythic heights that would’ve seemed far too lofty on the basis of the first film alone, all due to the strength of these two performances and the improved characterization.
This is especially true in the film’s lengthy climax, which must be seen to be believed.
It features some of the most astonishingly fluid action, cross-cutting and spectacle of James Cameron’s career, taking great advantage of the High Frame Rate and including more inventive carnage than most films can muster in their entire runtimes, really stretching the limits of the PG-13 rating. There are tons of great individual set-pieces contained in this section alone, the best of which probably being a dizzying journey through the bowels of a sinking ship, obviously but effectively harkening back to Titanic. But taken as a whole, it is a dizzying assault on the senses that really proves once again that nobody makes an action spectacle quite like James Cameron.
This is far from a perfect film. Zoe Saldana, who was the stand-out of the first film, is badly side-lined for large chunks of this one. Issues with representation and cultural archetypes remain and the increased focus on the Na’vi’s brand of spiritual enlightenment will surely rub some the wrong way. And the plotting, especially in the first hour, is often very clunky. At times Cameron’s assembled writers’ room clearly struggles to comprehensibly convey all the information the plot requires.
But this is also a film in which, 90 minutes in, a character asks an alien whale he has befriended what is troubling him, to which the alien whale replies in mournful whale song, which is conveyed to us in subtitles as meaning: “it is too painful to talk about”. Which then becomes the emotional spine of the film and leads to great catharsis in the third act. No one else could make a film like this, and for all its foibles, I’m extremely glad that James Cameron now has, as this is one of the most beautiful and transportive blockbuster extravaganzas in quite some time.
