ReelBob: ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ ★½
By Bob Bloom
“Avatar: The Way of Water” sinks under its own narcissism.
James Cameron’s long-anticipated sequel is fundamentally a self-congratulatory excuse for the filmmaker to show off his technical prowess.
At more than three hours, the movie is an endurance test of expository dialogue, one-dimensional characters and a dearth of action sequences.
Plus, with its continual change of frame rate and overuse of CGI, it feels very artificial as if you were transported into the middle of an Xbox or PlayStation experience.
“The Way of Water” makes Cameron’s “Titanic,” a movie most people who follow me know I detest, look absolutely professional.
Cameron crams his production with big ideas about environmental and ecological harmony, family, responsibility, colonialism and imperialism, but comes up short in his delivery on these themes.
The movie returns to Pandora more than a decade after the events of the 2009 original, in which humans attempted to colonize the planet to mine the valuable mineral of unobtanium.
Jake Sully, now one of the Na’vi, and his mate, Neytiri, daughter of the previous clan chief, are enjoying a peaceful life with their five children. From the outset, with five offspring, you know two things: one or two will get the short shrift and one is probably going to die.
The Resources Development Administration, after being defeated by the Na’vi, was sent off world. But now they have returned, and with them have come resurrected Recombinants, including Sully’s former commander, Col. Miles Quaritch, who is obsessed with capturing and killing not only Sully, but his entire family.
To save the Na’vi, Sully and his extended family flee. The family includes their adopted teenage daughter, Kiri, the daughter of Dr. Grace Augustine, who sided with the Na’vi and died during the conflict, and the teenage Miles “Spider” Socorro, born on the Pandora human base, who was later taken in by Jake and Neytiri.
They all eventually take refuge with the reef people clan of Metkayina where, after some early misunderstandings, they are accepted.
As you would expect, the evil Recombinants begin to hunt for Sully, leaving death and destruction in their wake.
The movie offers a few loose threads. For example, we know Kiri is Augustine’s daughter, but we know nothing of her father. It also turns out that “Spider” is the son that Quaritch never knew he had — which doesn’t keep him from bullying the teen.
You can probably figure out the rest, but, trust me, it’s not worth it.
Watching “Avatar: The Way of Water” is 192 minutes of my life that I will never get back. The movie is such a disappointment, especially when you consider the number of people involved in writing the screenplay.
You’d think that, along the way, one of them would have raised some red flags about the lack of characterization, the formulaic approach and the overall weakness of the script.
Nope. Cameron and his cronies just expect us to marvel at his technological acumen and forget that filmmakers are supposed to entertain audiences, not expend energy to impress them with their moviemaking expertise.
I am a founding member of the Indiana Film Journalists Association. I review movies, 4K UHD, Blu-rays and DVDs for ReelBob (ReelBob.com), The Film Yap and other print and online publications. I can be reached by email at bobbloomjc@gmail.com. You also can follow me on Twitter @ReelBobBloom and on Facebook at ReelBob.com or the Indiana Film Journalists Association. My movie reviews also can be found at Rotten Tomatoes: www.rottentomatoes.com.
AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER
1½ stars out of 4
(PG-13), intense action, strong violence, language, partial nudity