REVIEW: Avatar - The Way of Water

Once upon a time, James Cameron ordering four sequels up front to a single movie seemed, at best, excessive, and at worst, pompous. But from the other end of Avatar: The Way of Water, we'll have to see if five volumes are enough.

It's been thirteen years, almost to the day, since our first adventure on Pandora, and the time between that first film and this new sequel is roughly the same. After their humiliating defeat, the industrial forces that terrorized the planet way back then have regrouped and are back to finish what they started. But for a vengeful enemy, this larger mission is a blanket covering for something a little more personal. An old foe wants retribution against the warriors who defeated him. Once upon a time, Jake and Neytiri would have stood their ground and struck right the heart of anyone who dared take what is theirs. But they're no longer just fighters. They're parents, and they're not about to lead their young children into a warzone. This leads them to leave behind their home in search of a place where they might be safe again.

It would be easy is to write-off the film's visual wonderland as nothing more than cinematic opioid. But the strength of this film, and its predecessor, doesn't really lie in its incredible texturing or even the neon color palette. Cameron is the kind of filmmaker who knows that when an audience wants romance, they want to see two young lovers spreading their wings together at the head of the boat at sunset. He knows how to anticipate what experiences will unlock the audience's sense of wonder, and he knows which experiences can only be brought to life onscreen. Taming a dinosaur whale, for example, really high on my list of things I wish I could do.

These cinematic playgrounds play out in time with the story's emotional pulse. Jake and Neytiri have earned their happy ending, but larger forces with sinister intentions leave that happy ending in question. The story sees some colossal set pieces and action sequences (including a thrilling underwater chase through a kelp forest that must have been a marathon to choreograph), but the tensions are more localized and more intimate than the first film, which isn't always the case in follow-ups. The stakes are weighed in the lives of individuals, not just broader communities.

There's a whole new generation of characters in the ensemble, and audiences will have to wrestle with which of Jake and Neytiri's kids are their favorite. The two that receive the most attention are Lo'ak, their second oldest and most eager to prove that he is every bit a warrior as his father, and Kiri, a sort of alien update to the dreamy pixie girl who's always drawing in her notebook. All of them have their own character beats, all of them are brought to life vividly by their respective performers. (I almost wish it had been kept a secret that Kiri was played by Sigourney Weaver, who would have been pushing seventy at the time, just so I could see whether I or anyone would have picked up on it naturally.)

"Spider" the human child who plays alongside Jake and Neytiri's kids, also bears mentioning here since he poses some of the most interesting questions served by the sequel. The in-universe backstory is that after being orphaned during the battle of the last film, Spider has grown up on Pandora and he feels special kinship with the Na'vi people, especially the Sully family. His story is fascinating but underserved. He may get his dues in the coming installments, but in this film you just want him on screen more. Count that as a strength or a shortcoming. Your choice.

Believe it or not, even at nearly 200 minutes, the movie would have benefited much from an even longer runtime. Cameron obviously has a sprawling story he wants to tell, in this film specifically and those it sets up, and he wants to get to the good stuff a little too quickly. (I mean, I guess he has been holding out for over a decade ...) Certain scenes can feel squashed together with little breathing room or preamble. It's more a question of tempo rather than losing out on specific narrative information, and the issue becomes less noticeable as the story advances, culminating in a satisfying five-course third act.

And I guess that's the worst I can say about this film. You want more of it. You want more racing on the reptile dolphins. You want more Jake-Neytiri family meetings. You just know there's more story to tell.

If James Cameron hadn't earned the right to tell that story with the first film, he certainly has now.

--The Professor

Comments

REVIEW: HOPPERS

In the 1950s under the threat of nuclear warfare, Hollywood premiered such exercises as The Day the Earth Stood Still or War of the Worlds where an alien power would pass judgment on humankind, holding its fate in its hands. Here in the 2020s under the shadow of such threats as climate change, Hollywood sends to be our judge ... beavers. Let me back up ... Daniel Chong's new film from Pixar Animation, Hoppers , sees Mabel (Piper Curda), a college student whose self-appointed mission is to preserve the glade where she used to find sanctuary with her now deceased grandmother. Her biggest opponent is hometown boy and beloved mayor, Jerry (Jon Hamm), who has designs to plow over the glade in order to open his new freeway--estimated to save travelers four whole minutes of commuting. Mabel gets her golden opportunity when she uncovers secret technology pioneered by her professor which allows a human to rem...

The Pleasantville Lie

Lynn Hunt, American Historical Association, University of California 2002, is best known for her 2007 work Inventing Human Rights , a cornerstone for academic work on the history of human interaction. This landmark work tracked the developing concept of human empathy across European history, especially the function that art and literature played in allowing humans to recognize the interiority and dignity of other humans who were different from them. But in 2002, she shared in the May Issue of Perspectives on History her observations in “presentism,” and the uphill battle of even getting students to engage with history at all, Gladiator (2000) “Presentism, at its worst, encourages a kind of moral complacency and self-congratulation. Interpreting the past in terms of present concerns usually leads us to find ourselves morally superior; the Greeks had slavery, even David Hume was a racist, and European women endorsed imperial ventures. Our forebears constantly fail to measure up to our ...

An Earnest Defense of Passengers

I've heard a lot of back and forth over what the purpose of film is and what we should ask from it. Film as a social amenity kind of has a dual purpose. It's supposed to give the population common ground and find things that people of varying backgrounds and beliefs can unify around. On the other hand, film also creates this detached simulated reality through which we can explore complex and even testing ideas about the contradictions in human existence. In theory, a film can fulfill both functions, but movies exist in a turbulent landscape. It's very rare for a film to try to walk both lanes, and it's even rarer for a film to be embraced upon entry for attempting to do so. Let me explain by describing the premise of one of my favorite movies, Morten Tyldum's 2016 film, Passengers . A key piece of this film ’s plot revolves around the main character, Jim Preston, a passenger onboard a spaceship, who premat...

The Night of the Hunter: Redefining "Childlike Innocence"

I n the early 1960s, American professor and psychologist, Lawrence Kohlberg developed what is now considered to be a fundamental cornerstone of understanding humans and morality. He introduced a model by which human beings start out determining what is right and wrong based on which course of action elicits the least punishment. Successful movement through this model sees a person gradually becoming motivated by principles , not simple reward or punishment, and Kohlberg anticipated that a person did not achieve this stage until adulthood, if ever. How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) This is interesting because t he media likes to cast children as vessels of uncompromised goodness that adults could only ever hope to emulate. T heir purity forms the bedrock of much of American conversation. Because the future hinges upon their innocence, efforts to preserve their unblemished state can go to any length. You can justify any number of actions as long as you are doing i...

REVIEW: Star Wars - The Mandalorian and Grogu

I haven't historically considered myself a "Star Wars" kid. And to be clear, I take no pride in saying that or anything. I respect the property and what it's given to pop culture. But I do feel like it's worth mentioning in this review that I didn't really go into Jon Favreu's The Mandalorian and Grogu thinking I had much of what I'd call nostalgia for this movie to exploit. And yet watching this movie, I found myself hearkening back to the things about Star Wars that caught my attention as a kid. For me, that was the gladiator-style match in "Attack of the Clones." This film offers quite a few roller-coasters along those lines. And as far as the creature designs go for the monsters in these arenas, they were quite good. I wasn't trying too hard to anticipate which were computer-generated and which were puppeted, but the aesthetics of both the Jim Henson era and the Spielberg era sat very well here in this vessel....

My Best Friend's Wedding: Deconstructing the Deconstructive Rom-Com

Well, Wicked is doing laps around the box office, so it looks as though the Hollywood musical is saved, at least for a season, so I guess we’ll turn our attention to another neglected genre. As with something like the musical, the rom-com is one of those genres that the rising generation will always want to interrogate, to catch it on its lie. The whole thing seems to float on fabrication and promising that of which we can always be skeptical—the happy ending. This is also why they’re easy to make fun of and are made to feel second-tier after “realer” films which aren’t building a fantasy. You know? Movies like Die Hard … We could choose any number of rom-coms, but the one that I feel like diving into today is 1997’s underrated My Best Friend’s Wedding . I’m selecting it for a number of reasons. Among these is my own personal fondness for the film, and also the fact that it boasts a paltry 6.3 on IMDb despite its ...

All The Ways Sunset Boulevard Has Aged Gracefully

So, stop me if you’ve heard this before: Hollywood has a dark side. Particularly in the wake of something like #MeToo or the double strikes of 2023, you can really get a sense for just how famishing, even degrading, it can be trying to make a living in Hollywood. But of course, it all goes back much further than those. One of my very first essays for this blog, for example, was a catalogue of all the ways Hollywood ravaged Judy Garland . Yet for all its mess, we cannot take our eyes off of Hollywood, or the people who build it. Stardom in particular becomes a popular focal point—what is it really like being on the other side of all that spotlighting? And Hollywood has naturally supplied the market with all sorts of imaginings for this as well. Thus, each generation gets its own version of A Star is Born. John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara in The Quiet Man (1952) Ty Burr wrote in his landmark work, Gods Like Us , “...

Silver Linings Playbook: What are Happy Endings For Anyway?

Legendary film critic Roger Ebert gave the following words in July of 2005 at the dedication of his plaque outside the Chicago Theatre: Nights of Cabiria (1957) “For me, movies are like a machine that generates empathy. If it’s a great movie, it lets you understand a little bit more about what it’s like to be a different gender, a different race, a different age, a different economic class, a different nationality, a different profession, different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us. And that, to me, is the most noble thing that good movies can do and it’s a reason to encourage them and to support them and to go to them.” Ebert had been reviewing films for coming on forty years when he gave that assessment. I haven’t been doing it for a tenth as long. I don’t know if I’ve really earned the right to pontificate in this same manner. But film ...

The Great Movie Conquest of 2022 - Febuary

Welcome back, one and all, to my latest attempt to justify being enslaved to a million different streaming services. My efforts to watch one new movie a day all year haven't worn me out yet, but we're not even past the first quarter yet. My first film of the month brought me to Baz Lurhmann's Australia , and it reminded me what a beautifully mysterious animal the feature film is. My writer's brain identified a small handful of technical issues with the film's plotting, but the emotional current of the film took me to a place that was epic, even spiritual. I don't know. When a film cuts straight to the core of your psyche, do setup and payoff even matter anymore? I think this film is fated for repeated viewings over the years as I untangle my response to this film. One of my favorite films of all time is Billy Wilder's The Apartment with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine. You'd think, then, that learning that the t...

REVIEW: The Super Mario Galaxy Movie

The fanboy renaissance manages to reach even higher heights with the new "Super Mario Galaxy Movie." The easter eggs and cameos are back with a vengeance, and in much richer resolution than we'd have thought possible even five years ago. It's for this kind of thing that the movie will be called "wish fulfillment" for video game nerds, but I personally felt fed as an animation enthusiast. To see such caricatured designs playing on such a vivid, textured playground is a rarity. It's only when you see the bricks of a giant, fairy-tale castle splintering and disintegrating that you feel like this world has weight, consequences, and there is something about that which feels strangely validating. And as with the last movie, as with the Mario universe as a whole, the animated world's command over its own landscape lets you swim between all sorts of exotic and eclectic locales and genres at leisure. Every single cast member...

Films and Feelings

Search This Blog