Avatar: The Way of Water

“Avatar: The Way of Water reaches new heights as James Cameron returns to the world of Pandora. Set a decade plus after events of the first film, this breathtaking new movie tells the story of the Sully family and introduces audiences to the majestic ocean tulkun.”

James Cameron’s passion project finally comes to life in the next installment of Avatar, the sequel no one really asked for. With the first being the top grossing film of all time, it makes sense financially to continue to explore this interesting and beautiful world the filmmakers have created and dive deeper into the culture of the planet’s inhabitants.

If you know anything about James Cameron, his passion seems more in the realm of inventing rather than filmmaking. He often creates, or most likely hires people to create new inventions in order to make possible his visions. From inventing new underwater technology for The Abyss and Titanic, he pushed the limits of the newest trend in filmmaking in the late 2000’s: 3D technology. What’s turned out to be mostly a gimmick for moviegoers and mostly disappeared from theater and home theater experiences, the first Avatar was released at the height of its popularity, and I’m sure the extra fee for 3D didn’t hurt propelling the film to number one of all time.  

The first film, released in 2009, beyond its technical achievements, didn’t do anything special in terms of story or characters. The ‘American Colonizer’ aspect has been told many times before, and much better than Avatar, however, that didn’t stop the population from flocking to theaters to marvel at the 3D technology and see the revolutionary methods of turning actors into tall blue-people. Now, thirteen years later, everyone was waiting to see if lightning would strike twice with Avatar: The Way of Water, and somehow, it did. I was very surprised to see the numbers continue to skyrocket, even after movie theater attendance took a hit after the Pandemic, with how easily it is for the masses to stream new releases the day of or near the release date.

I’m sure my experience with the film is like many others. I didn’t go back and re-watch the original. It’s probably been a decade since I’ve seen it, and admittedly, I was a bit lost at the beginning during the introduction that was a catch-up for what happened after the events of the first film. Thankfully, you have over three hours to get some sense of understanding of the world you’ve been thrust back into, but even then there are things that I found hard to follow. After the opening sequence and when it transitions to one year later, I thought that the Na’vi person waking up on the ship was Jake, captured with his hair cut. By the end of the film, I still couldn’t tell you a single name of the characters besides Jake, and not for lack of paying attention. I saw that Kate Winslet was in the film, but as of writing this I could not tell you who she was or what character she was playing, even if you did tell me the name. Also, Sigourney Weaver’s character, who is a teenage Na’vi, sounds so strange having the voice of a seventy year old coming from a teenager. Despite whatever processes it underwent to modulate it, it still took me out of the scene each time she was featured, which is a shame, because she was my favorite character of the film and the one I was most curious about.

The point of all these ramblings of my dislikes lead to the reason that the film didn’t resonate with me: I found no connection to the characters, probably because the technology got in the way. That’s not to say you can’t be bold with technological achievements in film and not be able to get emotion across. Hell, WALL-E is an animated film about a robot that only says his name and I cried like a baby in that film. Avatar is undoubtedly a marvel of technological achievement, but the story isn’t. There is only so many times it can try and stoke the fire with the ‘American Colonizer’ moments: displacing, murdering, and exploiting other species, and I feel that this will be the trend throughout the future films to come as well. Avatar: The Way of Water tried to fill the film with deeper character and family moments, but it’s only designed to enrage the audience with the colonizers come for their manifest destiny.

While I may be overly critical of the film in some ways, I did enjoy the world of Pandora and the new creatures we got to see. I found it more interesting looking at it in the eyes of watching a documentary of a newly discovered planet, and the film is kind of set up in that way in many sequences, highlighting the beauty of the animals and their habitats. That being said, it’s the technological achievement that is so stunning to watch, and you don’t get the full effect of that streaming it at home. If James Cameron can be counted on for anything, it’s to hold his films to a high degree of scrutiny when it comes to the best visuals and audio presentations, and that simply can’t be achieved streaming. While we were given a digital code to review this film, those aspects cannot be accurately measured given different internet connections, and found myself waiting to buffer or with blurry images after pausing the film. The physical release date has not been set for this film, but if you are wanting to experience it anything close to what it was like in the theaters, how it was meant to be seen, wait to purchase this, hopefully on 4k, so you can have the best visuals and audio possible.

Avatar: The Way of Water proved that audiences want more of Pandora, and want to see it in theaters. While I think the story is vastly disproportionate to the technological achievement of the film, it was still an enjoyable experience, one that I will be looking forward to on a future 4k release. As for now, this is available now for purchase digitally and streaming.