Considering that it has been one of the most highly anticipated movies of the year, and one of the most highly anticipated sequels of the last decade, it’s safe to say that Avatar: The Way of Water lives up to the hype. After 13 years, the latest trip to Pandora is another visual spectacle; a masterful blend of otherworldly and Earthly elements.
James Cameron and his massive team of VFX artists have created something that easily blows past any other blockbuster CGI. It’s easy to forget sometimes while watching that pretty much everything on the screen, from the characters to the wildlife to the titular water is all computer-generated. If the story doesn’t always live up to the visuals, that can mostly be forgiven on the basis that this is a movie in which it’s easy to get lost.
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It’s been years since Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) abandoned his human life to live among the Na’vi, and he and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) have their own family. Their four children (including an adopted teenage daughter played by Sigourney Weaver) keep them busy, and they continue to fight against the “sky people” who haven’t given up on extracting as many resources from Pandora as possible. Also included in the family is Spider, a human who has been raised by the Na’vi. Though he can’t breathe the air and has to paint his own blue stripes on, Spider is accepted as part of the tribe.
Elsewhere, Stephen Lang’s Quaritch, the villainous military commander from the first movie, is back as an Avatar and out for blood, leading to Jake and Neytiri making the difficult decision to leave their tribe and head for the water, where they are reluctantly welcomed into a new tribe of Na’vi who are more suited for aquatic pursuits. The leader Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) is a tough but fair leader, and it is his wife Ronal (Kate Winslet) who is wary of welcoming outsiders who may bring danger to the tribe.
The performances across the board are terrific. Even hidden under their own motion-captured avatars, Worthington and Saldana are perfect as parents who are trying to protect their children and give them a better future by fighting external forces. Saldana, especially, really shines, exuding so much ferocious emotion as Neytiri that it’s easy to forget that there’s still a person providing the performance behind all the special effects.
The big focus of the movie, though, is the children. Jamie Flatters and Britain Dalton really shine as brothers Neteyam and Lo’ak, playing off each other well and really capturing the playful but competitive spirit of siblings. Trinity Jo-Li Bliss plays the youngest member of the family, Tuk, and provides a performance that is precocious and sweet, but not overbearing. Of course, the biggest character surprise for people was the idea of Sigourney Weaver playing a teenager. Admittedly, it can be distracting, but the fact of the matter is that Weaver is a seasoned performer, and her combination of youthful energy and wistfulness fit the character of Kiri perfectly.
Where Avatar: The Way of Water falls a little bit short is in its story. Much like its predecessor, this film is far more about presenting a visual marvel than telling a tight narrative. At more than three hours long, there are plenty of great things to look at, but not a lot of substance to fill in the long runtime. Lang’s journey for revenge is fairly surface-level and isn’t entirely deepened by his interactions with Spider. Jake and Neytiri also don’t really have any further chance for development as they become supporting players for most of the runtime. There’s even a late scene that reveals a new Macguffin-like substance that has essentially replaced the first film’s lazily named Unobtanium.
That being said, the obvious draw for Avatar has always been the visuals, and James Cameron continues to prove that his ambition should never be questioned. This time around, the majority of the story takes place underwater, and it’s these shots that are truly remarkable. Filmed using underwater motion capture, the scenes where characters are gliding through the ocean have a particular veracity that could not be replicated without using actual water for filming. There’s also the fact that pretty much everything on screen is computer-generated, which is particularly impressive considering how hard it can be to properly simulate water. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever featured some fairly impressive underwater scenes, but Avatar is playing on another level.
As for the 3D, when presented in IMAX, Avatar: The Way of Water has a depth and visual field that can’t be matched. However, as impressive as the 3D is in fits and starts, eventually the immersion makes it feel like it’s not even there. The high frame rates can also sometimes highlight the artifice rather than enhancing the experience. Still, it’s hard to knock the movie too much for some very minor technical limitations considering the amount of work in every frame. It’s especially evident how far vfx have come in the scenes that involve other humans. Often integrating a real person into a mostly CGI space just looks wrong, and yet Cameron is able to blend the real and the computer-generated almost seamlessly.
This is all to say that even if the story doesn’t always hold up, the level of immersion the audience is getting from Cameron’s mastery is enough to sell this very late sequel. Cameron also imbues the story with ecological themes that draw a very clear line between colonization and environmental devastation. These were already present in the first movie, but they feel far more pertinent here, considering Cameron’s affinity for the ocean in particular. That ongoing conflict pays off in one of Cameron’s most action-packed climaxes yet, one that tugs at the heartstrings as well as continually ups the stakes.
Avatar: The Way of Water is imperfect, but as far as cinematic experiences go, this is one that cannot be passed up. The sheer audacity and workmanship put into every single frame of the movie is a testament to blockbuster filmmaking. James Cameron is once again showing everyone else how to do it, and it’s hard to even imagine how another movie could top the work put into this one. Still, if Cameron’s plans do come to fruition and there really are five Avatar movies, there will likely still be audiences flocking to see them.
Avatar: The Way of Water opens in theaters on December 16th.
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