Alright! Today I'm reviewing the long-delayed sequel to the highest-grossing film of all time Avatar, which was released in 2009 and served as the motion capture pioneer/remake of Pocahontas Disney was too scared to make. It was about Jake Sully, a paraplegic marine, who is given the chance to walk again through his titular "Avatar" body that allows him to join the nine feet tall blue Na'vi people of Pandora, a luscious planet the U.S. government is scourging for the raw material Unobtanium. The sequel, The Way of Water, has arrived after 13 years to deliver the story of the Sully family as they join the sea-dwelling Metkayina clan to try and evade the human invaders.
While it's typically a red flag for the visuals to be the very first thing praised about a movie ("At least the effects were decent"), Avatar is the absolute exception to the rule. The movie is capital-S-tunning, a visual decadence that requires - no, demands - to be seen on the biggest screen imaginable. Words fail to describe the lushness that coats of every frame, the glorious high definition of every. single. frame. It is the greatest-looking movie I personally have ever seen. Waiting 13 years to make the sequel was a risky gamble, but one that paid off with the development of the new technology that makes the movie look so incredible.
The motion capture performances are fantastic, the water details magnificent, the artistic direction, production design, creature design, and every single thing you're watching is of the utmost beauty. The joy of the movie comes not through the plot of the Avatar world continuing, but rather just exploring the world of Pandora in all its beauty. It's art through and through, a pure beauty that James Cameron makes look effortless. Words fail to describe the beauty, it is truly something that has to be seen in a theater to be properly enjoyed.
Unfortunately, to see it in theaters is a three-hour and ten-minute commitment, and the movie cannot justify a run time of such superfluous length. Half an hour easily could have been trimmed out of the movie, especially during the lead-in to the third act. It makes the entire finale feel random and just a thing that happens rather than a thing that was inevitable. The movie is beautiful - but even something this beautiful cannot be entertaining for this long. It's like a screensaver that happens to have a plot.
In that regard Avatar: The Way of Water is very much the sequel to its predecessor. The complaints you had about the franchise in 2009 - the long runtime, bland characters, lackluster writing, pacing, character development - every aspect that could be, should be better to match the visuals - carries over to the sequel. You're not going to walk away from this thinking Jake Sully and Neytiri are cinema icons, see the seeds of well-written character development. You're going to see some tall blue people splash around in some water and be perfectly content with that.
Could it be better? Absolutely. Is it serviceable? Once again, yes. As I said, it's a screensaver that happens to have a plot. The only true difference between this and the first Avatar is that while the first one had an extremely generic plot that was just fine, this one has a much stronger, emotional story that is drowned in the three-hour runtime. It feels like a filmmaker trying to tell a story, a beautiful story, and not a sequel that exists because popular movies need sequels. The devotion is there. It just loses you in the runtime.
The other unique difference between this and the first Avatar is the hints of things for sequels yet to come. While nothing feels like obvious "yes, that is sequel bait," there are enough unanswered questions and set-ups that feel destined to be explained in sequels - connections with Pandora, virgin mystery births, and, in the most baffling moment of the movie, a cure for aging is introduced and then never brought up again Star Trek Into Darkness-style.
Other vague praise/ambivalence about the movie extends to the scoring, which I thought was a much lesser work when compared to the first Avatar soundtrack by the late James Horner. I thought the action setpieces were absolutely fantastic and wonderfully well done, brutal in execution. The creature design was magnificent and had loads of personality more than the actual Na'vi characters. I found the movie full of James Cameron-isms, such as superfluous swearing that felt out of place when not spoken by military characters. I found everything to do with the whale-type creatures absolutely fantastic.
I was immeasurably disappointed that the movie never had a scene that absolutely floored me with an impressive music/visual Genndy Tartakovsky-type combo that would live rent-free in my head forever (Such as Primal's season two opening moon scene and Oblivion's StarWaves scene). I really liked the youngest of Sully's children, but I found that Sigourney Weaver voicing a teenager sounds a lot like a 70-year-old woman voicing a teenager. I loved the fact that the protagonist of the action blockbuster was a dad trying to protect his family. I find the fact that they took a bunch of actors in a grey jumpsuits with dots on their faces and turned them into... well, this... I find that eternally astounding. And I wholeheartedly believe that this is the greatest CGI ever put to film. This is probably what watching Star Wars felt like in 1977... or what watching Avatar felt like in 2009.
Overall, if you didn't like the first Avatar, The Way of Water will not tide you over. If you thought the first Avatar was a passable but visually stunning movie, you'll think the same of The Way of Water. It's more of the same, if not better, but with a runtime that drowns out the improvements. It's emotional and epic, visually stunning, and yet I did not leave the theater moved or any more invested in the Na'vi than I was when I entered. My feelings toward Avatar remain the exact same - beautiful, but not much more, with just enough gravitas to pull off the rogue gambit.
If the rest of the audience feels as I suspect they feel, they collectively do not care about Avatar as a brand. However, they can and will go see the movies because they like them and, frankly, they're cool. Did I like Avatar? Yeah, it's alright. Did I like Avatar: The Way of Water? Yeah, it's alright. Will I be first in line for Avatar 3? You betcha. Words cannot describe just how great these visuals are. Good enough to overcome tepid stories and unforgivable runtimes, I'll tell you that much. Good enough to get me on board for any and all sequels. I mean... just wow. Wow.
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| See you in theaters 2035, Cameron. |
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