avatar: the way of water

The only issue with James Cameron is that he’s evolved to a point where movies can barely contain the level of his ambition anymore. Avatar: The Way of Water is only the second feature he’s made in the 25 years since Titanic, and it frequently feels as if he’s working in a completely different medium from any other filmmaker. The original Avatar, which released in 2009, was a very good - at times genuinely great - movie that was rightfully hailed for its groundbreaking innovations in 3D and motion-capture technology, even if its shopworn sci-fi narrative was merely serviceable… the edges smoothed and sanded, its dimensions meticulously and self-consciously tailored for mass consumption in a way that fell short of his stone-cold genre classics of the 80s and 90s.

The Way of Water returns us to Pandora - the lush and untamed alien planet fueled by Cameron’s unbridled imagination - where Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), the ex-marine turned heroic savior and clan leader to the blue-skinned, feline-like alien race known as the Na’vi, and his fierce-hearted warrior-mate Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) have settled into a peaceful life of domestic normalcy. But, inevitably, humans (also known as the “Sky People”) return en masse, with designs on ruthlessly milking Pandora for all its many resources (in addition to unobtanium, a special brain enzyme unique to a whale-like creature known as a Tulkun has become a priceless anti-aging drug back on Earth) - and that unexpectedly includes Jake’s arch-nemesis Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), whose memories and consciousness have been downloaded into a new, state-of-the-art avatar body, along with the rest of his gum-popping, “hoo-rah” war dogs who were collectively slain in the first movie (and don’t feel guilty if they were collectively purged from your memory banks the moment the end credits started rolling).  

Recognizing the immediate danger his family is in, Jake elects to sever ties with the Omaticaya clan and seek asylum with the reef-dwelling Metkayina people - effectively entering self-exile. Pandora isn’t always as conceptually enthralling as Cameron seems to think it is, but in this case the cultural and physiological differences within the Na’vi legitimately compel. The Metkayina, with their fin-like bone structure and paddle-shaped tails (and foam green skin tones), have acclimated to a life spent in the ocean; the forest skills of the Sully brood are of little use to them. As Jake’s family attempt to integrate and adapt, Cameron - in a brazen move - all but sidelines Worthington and Saldana as he shifts the narrative focus squarely onto their children - specifically Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), who was birthed by the avatar body of the late Grace Augustine (don’t ask), and their younger son Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), who, a strong case could be made, is the actual protagonist of the movie. The gambit pays off. The teen drama is fairly artless on the surface (Lo’ak squabbles with the Chief’s sons, but strikes chaste romantic sparks with his daughter Reya), but such are Cameron’s gifts as a storyteller - he takes simple and familiar building blocks, paints with the broadest of emotional brushes… and yet the end result consistently transcends the sum of its parts. 

For those who’ve grown numb to the artificial pallor of increasingly cheap, homogenized green screen in studio blockbusters, it’s difficult to overstate the level of technical brilliance on display here. The 3D craze sputtered out between Avatar releases, mainly because - with a few minor exceptions (Scorsese with Hugo; Ang Lee with Life of Pi) - no director came close to Cameron’s exacting visual standards. Rarely was the tech showcased over these past dozen years with any true artistic vitality or sense of purpose. Even for those (such as myself) who remain agnostic in regards to the cinematic necessity of 3D, it’s impossible to deny the immersive, scalpel-sharp clarity of the imagery Cameron conjures - particularly when he leads us into uncharted waters (literally), beneath the surface of Pandora’s fantastical oceans. As was the case with the first Avatar, the visual seams literally do not show. Every frame maintains the highest visual fidelity. It genuinely feels as if the movie were filmed on location on some distant alien planet (which, knowing Cameron’s fanatical perfectionism, doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility). This is astounding moviemaking.     

The Way of Water is a deeper, richer experience than the original Avatar… but it’s also the peculiar film that somehow suffers from too much story while - conversely - not quite having enough of it. There’s so much going on (we receive an almost Moby Dick-level immersion into Pandora’s stomach-churning Tulkan trade), and yet… the driving conflict never amounts to much more than Quaritch’s rabidly one-note pursuit of the Sully brood. I was a big defender of Stephen Lang’s performance in the first film, arguing that his lack of moral shading was an effective throwback to 80s action villains who were deliberately bad to the bone. But the character’s shtick feels more tiresome the second time around. A Wrath of Khan approach - in which Quaritch’s bulldog-like obsession with Jake actually comes to threaten his side’s overarching goals - might have paid dividends… but Cameron actually has a far simpler solution. That would be the character of Spider (Jack Champion), Quaritch’s teenage son, who was left behind on Pandora as an infant (babies can’t be put into cryo) and effectively grew up feral as a surrogate member of the Na’vi. Frustratingly, their relationship can only skim the surface - even in a 190-minute movie, the subplots keep crowding each other out of the way, fighting for precious oxygen.      ​

However, such criticisms tend to get swept aside in the face of Avatar’s towering final hour. As an action director, Cameron remains second-to-none. Jake and the Metkayina engage in ocean-based combat with Quaritch’s battle fleet (a tidy inversion of the aerial climax of the first film) and Cameron’s iron-gripped control of the logistics is absolute. But what truly impresses is the balance between the epic and the intimate… the familial bonds tested by the crucible of war. “Wherever we go… this family is our fortress,” Jake comments at one point - a theme that will undoubtedly echo across future sequels. For those who grew up on Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss and Titanic, there’s a dispiriting sense that Cameron’s filmography has been left wanting in the 21st century - that we’ve been deprived of one of the medium’s great blockbuster visionaries. But the reason no one else makes movies like these is because no one else can. Cameron appears wedded to Pandora for the foreseeable future (as many as three more could be on the way), but if he continues to raise the bar on what’s possible on-screen there’s no reason to feel blue about it.