Why ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ feels different
The long-awaited and even longer-developed sequel swings big and hits hard
There’s a story my dad loves telling about the first time I saw Avatar.
Picture this — I’m eight years old, and all I’ve been hearing about on the TV for the past few weeks is this movie Avatar. It’s getting great reviews for its visuals and all that, and I see TV trailers sporting… lots of tall blue people? What’s that about?
And then my parents see the movie. They come and rave about it to me as well, talking about how insanely good the 3D is and how much I would probably enjoy it. My curiosity is officially piqued!
Soon after that I’m sitting in the cinema with my dad, my groovy 3D glasses on and sitting in the dark. The film immediately puts its hooks in me, firmly planting me into a totally alien world filled with vibrant life and colour. It’s far from my first time at the movies, but Avatar was (if I recall properly) my first big action spectacle on the big screen. Across nearly 3 hours, I was taken to another world literally and figuratively — it’s one of my first experiences with total cinematic immersion as the sweeping vistas of the dense jungles and floating mountains of Pandora forever ingrain themselves into my brain.
Walking out of the theatre, my little mind was BLOWN.
“What did you think?” my dad asked.
Three words from me.
“Best. Movie. Ever!”
In fact, I remember I signed up for a kids movie club afterwards and labelled Avatar as my favourite movie — which made me feel delightfully cultured. Little did I know that it would go on to become the highest-grossing film of all time while allegedly leaving little cultural impact. However, I have to admit that I still have a soft spot for the original. There are plenty of valid criticisms of the film (perhaps the most potent being Jake Sully as a white saviour character), but even when I rewatched it recently I found it hard not to be swept up in the escapist and fantastical world of Pandora.
But now, retribution is here. James Cameron and his crew have been in the mines working on the sequels for the last decade or so, and finally the fruits of their labour are ready for harvest — The Way of Water has touched down on our screens after a long, long wait. The biggest question mark around this film before it released was about how many people were going to see it. After all, it had been 13 years since the first and latest film in the franchise, which is a far cry from the terrifyingly successful MCU model. Yet James Cameron has done it again, grossing over $1.5 billion at time of writing with little drop-off each week.
There’s numerous factors that contribute to its success, but one that really helps is the fact that Avatar: The Way of Water is actually really good. In the tradition of the first one, there are plenty of valid criticisms to be had here and the narrative is hardly what I’d call boundary-pushing. But The Way of Water has that thing I’ve been begging for blockbusters to have for years now: a near-overwhelming amount of heart.
The Way of Water is what a movie that needed to become one of the 20 highest grossing films of all time just to break even should look and feel like. It’s both a technical and visual achievement the likes of which I don’t think we’ve ever seen before while simultaneously not feeling like it was made solely to test run that technology. There’s zero denying that this is the film James Cameron wanted to make, and even if not every single stroke of his brush is impeccable, I find it difficult not to be awestruck by the final painting.
The Way of Water resumes the Avatar story over a decade from where the original left us (art imitates life or something) as Jake Sully and Neytiri have started a family. They and their children, Neteyam, Lo’ak, Tuk and the adopted Kiri are all living in the same forest living in peace until conflict finds them once again — Pandoran colonisers RDA are back, and they’ve revived professional hater Colonel Miles Quatrich as an Avatar, and he wants Jake’s head. To protect their people, the Sullys find refuge with the seafaring Metkayina Na’vi and… well, do lots of swimming.
Much like the first Avatar, I doubt you’ll come out of The Way of Water singing the highest praises about its narrative. It’s pretty easy to track the story’s trajectory from the very beginning, and I would hardly call the morality of the film “complicated” (although in its exploration of colonialism, maybe it need not be). But I think where the sequel improves over the first one is in its storytelling, which is so ridiculously earnest that it’s scarcely a challenge to connect with the completely computer-rendered characters on the screen.
That connection is possible both due to the actors and the technology that facilitates their performances. Like the first film, cameras in the traditional sense were not really used on The Way of Water, but instead performances are motion captured with impressive rigs that transport motion to a digital space. With this technology, I sincerely believe this is the closest a film has ever come to coming out the other side of the uncanny valley, the CG looking essentially photorealistic.
Pair this with other insane rendering — I have no idea how they made characters getting out of the water look so good — and the world of Pandora feels even more tangible than it did 13 years ago. The performances are all great too, fully taking advantage of the technology. Stephen Lang’s return as Quatrich is a welcome one as he chews up all the scenery, but what surprised me most was Sam Worthington’s performance. In The Way of Water, I found myself liking Jake Sully as a character a lot more, and Worthington’s surprisingly tender performance is certainly no small part of that.
Yet despite the artifice of The Way of Water’s world, the secret ingredient that truly brings it to life is the beating heart at its centre. That heartbeat is loudest in the second act, when the Sully family’s youngest son Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) connects with a Tulkun (essentially a whale) called Payakan. Initially, this plot point hardly even seems connected to the rest of the film — Lo’ak is stranded beyond the Metkayina’s sea borders after some interpersonal drama with the chief’s son while the Sullys try to integrate into the clan.
Yet it soon becomes apparent that Payakan’s story is core to Cameron’s storytelling methods in the film. Rejected from his community for violently retaliating against the RDA, Payakan swims the seas separate from his Tulkun brothers and sisters who believe that peace is the only way to live. Soon after this information is revealed to Lo’ak, we see more Tulkun being hunted by the RDA, more Na’vi being cruelly interrogated by Quatrich and his squad — is peace truly the only option? The film emphatically responds no in the third act as the Na’vi fight back against their would be oppressors and, most importantly, Payakan gets his due in a sequence that is equal parts spectacular and thematically relevant.
There’s a lot of great things about this film that I won’t even be able to mention for this review. If I shouted out every good performance, it would be the entire length of the review. I could write up a good thousand words just about how good the final action setpiece is. I could continue gushing about the unreal CGI and why it’s worth seeing alone just for that.
But Avatar: The Way of Water receives a whole-hearted recommendation from me on the basis of its sincere genuineness. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a film cost this much money, look this good and feel distinctly made by a person. On top of the fact that the world of Pandora is a gorgeous place to escape to, it truly feels like James Cameron loves being there with us and telling this story. It really did feel good to return to Pandora, and sitting in the theatre with 3D glasses on made me feel how I did all those years ago. I was once again enamoured throughout The Way of Water, and it’s my sincere hope that you are too.
8/10
