Avatar: The Way of Water

Surrender is really the best option for 2022's AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER, the long delayed sequel to the smash hit original from 2009.  I'm speaking to those cineastes among you ready to dismiss the latest juggernaut from co-writer/director James Cameron, who spent years perfecting the effects he desired for this next chapter, the second of a proposed five films (pending box office reception, naturally).  On that point, I think it's safe to say we will get more Na'vi adventures over the next decade, each effectively outdoing the previous.  A mind blowing thought, as part two seems impossible to best.  But, you know, it's James Cameron.  The guy who went on scuba expeditions in preparation for TITANIC.  Introduced us to liquid metal cyborgs in TERMINATOR 2.  Showed us how humans can breathe underwater in THE ABYSS.  And so on.  

Cameron shares screenwriter credit with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver.  As before, the story and its development are far from narrative innovation.  Many familiar beats are hit, and the heart plucking emotions work most of the time.  Technology births characters who become real to us, and I did forget I was watching something patently artificial a good deal of this film's well paced three hour plus runtime. Their struggles are age old.  Fighting imperialists who seek to conquer and destroy lives and the ecosystem for profit.  To make way for colonization.  In the end, the story this time boils down to something almost embarrassingly simple: revenge. 

Recall from the first film a hissable villain named Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) who lead an organization called the Resources Development Administration (RDA).  His dispatch was a Marine named Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) who landed on Pandora and instead of following his directive, fell in love with a Na'vi named Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and joined her in pushing back the Earthlings.  Many years later, Jake and Neytiri have raised a family, and those sons of bitches from the RDA, the "sky people" have returned.  Quraitch, by now deceased, will land in the form of a "recombinant", which has the mind and memory of the old cuss.  He and other soldiers will take on the appearance of Na'vi avatars, a plot idea that didn't get enough mileage.  He has a single minded goal of apprehending Jake Sully, no matter how much money or how many people and resources are squandered.  This shit is personal.  It reminded me of when George Bush went after Saddam Hussein, the "guy who tried to kill my dad".

One complication - a human named Spider (Jack Champion) who is Quaritch's son.  He was born on Pandora and remained, becoming an unofficial member of Jake's family.  Is he conflicted?  He performs an action near the end of the film that would suggest this, one that nicely paves the way for the sequels. 

THE WAY OF WATER gets its title from the family's stay in the Metkayina reef colony of Pandora, an outer reach of retreat after Spider is kidnapped by Quaritch and his team.  Jake and his family are met with suspicion by the locals for their human/Na'vi makeup, and told they, such jungle people, must learn how to thrive in the sea in order to be "useful."  The younger members of each clan will clash and fall in love and make friends, etc.   Plenty of coming of age drama.  For good measure, Jake will find that he has to prove himself worthy to the clan chief, Tonowari (Cliff Curtis), who has legitimate concerns that this Na'vi human will bring his war to their peaceful island. 

Cameron and colleagues took their time to develop this world, with painstaking efforts utilizing motion capture for underwater filming, all done in a high frame rate (more than the usual twenty-four per second).  The New Zealand based Weta FX company was recruited, and their work is stunning, even if you don't see this movie in IMAX and/or 3-D.  I was able to put aside any reservations about dramatic content and derivation and just marvel at this unprecedented creation, in many ways what moviegoing is all about.  Creating the world, the atmosphere for a film is the bare essential, and James Cameron has more than succeeded in bringing off a credible and immersible space in which we can almost feel the water on our skin. 

The third hour of AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER is mighty exciting, positively breakneck.  Many of the shots are inspired by past Cameron epics, mentioned in this review's first paragraph.  Amidst the violence are warm embraces of family and friendship that aren't especially deep but work well enough in this realm.  I also enjoyed Sigourney Weaver's role as Kiri, the avatar daughter of the deceased Dr. Grace Augustine (who she played in the original), who is adopted by Jake and Neytiri.  She made a convincing (Na'vi) teenager.