Film Review: Avatar - The Way of Water

 Sexuality/Nudity Mature

Violence Acceptable
Vulgarity Acceptable

Anti-Catholic Philosophy Mature

There is a difficulty in reviewing this movie: the good parts are quite fantastic, but the bad parts are so pervasive.  Strangely, it perfectly balances the movie into a completely mediocre experience.

Avatar - The Way of Water takes place after the events of the original Avatar.  Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is the leader of the Na'vi, having completely forsaken his humanity.  He and his Na'vi wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) have settled into a solid family life.  They have two sons: the overly responsible Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) and the reckless Lo'ak (Britain Dalton).  They also have a young daughter, Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss).  On top of this they have an adopted Na'vi daughter named Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) who was appears to have been virginally conceived in the dormant avatar body of Dr. Grace Augustine from the first film.  Also as part of their group is Spider, a human who has spent his whole life on Pandora and lives like a Na'vi.

Troubles come when the humans return to Pandora.  This time, they are not only here for resources.  They intend to relocate the entire human population to Earth.  So Jake leads the Na'vi in a resistance.  Unfortunately, Jake has been targeted specifically by the humans.  Col. Quaritch (Stephan Lang), the dead main antagonist from the last film, downloaded his memory and personality into a file that was uploaded into a Na'vi avatar who now looks for revenge.  Realizing that his presence makes all the "people of the forest" a target, Jake decides to take his entire family and hide among the people of the water.  Here, his children struggle to find a place in this tribe while coming to explore the wonders of the Pandoran oceans, especially the super-smart mega-whales.  But Quaritch's pursuit eventually leads to a final epic showdown on the waves.

Let's start with the good: the movie is gorgeous.

Director James Cameron is a master visual storyteller.  His love for all things aquatic is evident in every frame in these oceans.  The 3D cinematography is beautiful, giving wonder and depth to this alien world.  And it isn't simply that Cameron uses pretty special effects.  He knows how to frame and pace an action sequence so that he gives real visceral thrills.

What is also very nice is that at its heart, this is the story of a family.  It reminded me of A Quiet Place in that the parents were doing everything within their power to both protect and prepare their kids regarding an existential threat.  There is something primal and universal in this.  This theme of parents and children also can be seen with the main antagonist.  To be honest, this was the most intriguing part of the film.  There is a perennial struggle of one generation against the next, but the question is always whether this will descend into enmity or if each can redeem the faults of the other.  There is something very Catholic in the way the movie focuses on the bonds of family, whether by blood or adoption.  

So given both of the positives, what could be the problem?

First of all, the movie is overly long and indulgent.  What I mean is this: James Cameron absolutely loves the world of Pandora... and he thinks that you should too.  At times it almost feels like he is shooting a promotional video for the Pandora Board of Tourism.  He never considers that to some (like me) Pandora is actually an inhospitable hellscape.  The Na'vi live under constant threat of wild beasts in the forests.  Fortunately for the Sully children, there is apparently only one shark on the entire planet.  In the movie's most exciting scene, Lo'ak is tricked by some of the local boys into hunting beyond the safety of the tribal reef.  He then encounters a man-eating Pandoran shark.  But after this encounter, we never see one again.  Throughout the movie, whenever the characters returned to this part of the ocean, I would lean over to my wife and say "But there are SHARKS in these waters."  Fortunately for the main characters, no other sharks ever appear again.

Another big problem is the ballooned cast of characters.  The only reason I can tell you the names of the Sully children is because I looked them up online.  Not only are their names difficult to keep track of, but there is not enough differentiation made in the design of the Na'vi.  It was only about halfway through the movie that even began to understand the differences between Neteyam and Lo'ak.  And this is a problem because we need to know their differences to understand the development of their stories.  Jake and Neytiri are barely in the middle of the film.  Really, the middle movie is about Lo'ak and Kiri.  The frustrating thing about Kiri is that everything points to her being a Messiah figure, but the characters are way too slow in figuring this out.  In a movie, the filmmakers should be one-step ahead of the audience and not vice-versa.  But because we have so many different characters (including the water Na'vi's Chief Tonowari (Cliff Curtis), his wife Ronal (Kate Winslet), their daughter Tsireya (Bailey Bass) and sons Aonung (Filip Geljo) and Rotxo (Duane Evans Jr.) along with human whaling team), the run time bloats beyond what is really sustainable.

On top of this, the characters do not grow nearly enough from where they are at the beginning of the film.  With two more sequels coming, you can tell how Cameron is spreading out the character arcs over the next few films.  That works well on a TV show, but it makes for a less satisfying experience in a self-contained movie.  So you have a character like Lo'ak who is so immature that his bad decisions throughout the film constantly put everyone in danger.  By the end, he has some growth, but he never matures enough to feel like the journey was satisfying.  Even returning characters like Neytiri have these dangling character issues that never get resolved.  MILD SPOILER: In her case, she actively threatens to murder an innocent human to get what she wants.  This is horrific and villainous and never gets mentioned or dealt with afterwards.

Then there is the problem of the plot: it makes no sense.

The humans want to colonize Pandora.  But there is a big problem: you can't breathe on Pandora!  You could say that humans could simply live inside, but then there would be no reason to leave Earth.  Why not move to Mars, which is MUCH closer.

Also, if the humans really wanted to take over Pandora, then the war would be over in a matter of days: they could carpet bomb the indigenous Na'vi homes with heavy ordinances from high orbit.  The Na'vi have no counter to that.  Since there is no sense from ANY of the humans that detente is preferred, then this option seems the most logical for the evil invaders.

The movie also spends a LOT of time on the evils of whaling, so much so that I was getting a strong Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home vibe.  The scene of the humans hunting the Pandoran whales is overly long and horrific.  It has its intended effect, but it is as indulgent as the rest of the film.  There was nothing subtle about it.  I was waiting for a big sign to flash "Whaling is bad!"  These whales are also super intelligent and can talk to the Na'vi (although it constantly reminded me of Dori talking "whale" in Finding Nemo). 

MILD SPOILER HERE:  The reason for the whaling is that the brains of the whales produce a substance that stops humans from aging.  This is an intersting idea that never gets fully explored.  But once you realize that everything revolves around these whales I thought: wouldn't it be much cheaper to capture some baby whales and then breed them back on Earth?  Then you wouldn't have to spend all that money and resources on interstellar travel to collect your Immortality Space Whale Juice?

Thematically, the focus on family mentioned above is good.  But there is a distinct hatred of humanity baked into this film.  Yes, there are some good humans, but they are so few and far between that they make little impact.  There are no nuances to the needs of the human race: we are just evil unless we completely shed our humanity as best as possible and join the Na'vi (who, I'm just saying, look like giant blue demons).  This misanthropy for our entire species was present in the first film, but it is everywhere in the second.  All things human seem bad, even medicine that is brought to help Kiri when she has a siezure.  It is only the homeopathic remedies of Ronal that have any effect.  This luddite perspective was also very off-putting.  The Na'vi are presented as being in harmony with nature in contrast to the humans.  But they are not.  They are also violent hunters who attack and kill species that they deem beneath them.

With all the work that was put into Avatar: The Way of Water, you would think that they would want something that would knock it out of the park.  Instead, all of the negatives of the movie dilute its goodness so that the whole thing feels like a watered-down copy of the first.