AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER

Stars: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Stephen Lang, Britain Dalton, Sigourney Weaver, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Edie Falco, Jemaine Clement, Giovanni Rabisi, Kate Winslet and Brendan Cowell.
Writers: James Cameron, Rick Jaffe and Amanda Silver.
Director: James Cameron.

Rating: ★ ★ ★

 Screened Wednesday, December 15 at Event Cinemas George Street, Sydney, on VMax 1 screen at High Frame Rate projection in Dolby Atmos.

Avatar: The Way of Water has splashed down amidst a wave of pre-promotion that has zeroed in on the dazzling eye-candy offered by its watery alien landscape; a marketing blitz imploring us to deep dive into an azure wonderland, its spectacular grandeur subliminally promising to satiate the wanderlust that has brewed within us all over the pandemic years. Top Gun: Maverick soared to box office glory on jet plane joy rides beyond the clouds; James Cameron’s long-in-production sequel hints at a similarly pure escapism, this time underwater.

And the visual splendour that Cameron’s obsession with all things aquatic promises is delivered upon. His photo-realistic rendering of the forest home of the Na’vi and then the coastal realm of the Metkayina, as well as the glistening hi-tech hardware of the ‘Sky People’ (aka, the human colonists), is all-encompassing and often remarkably beautiful. The island of At’wa Attu, the idyllic tropical wonderland to which Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), now a human/Na’vi half-breed, and his wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña; pictured, above) flee with their four children, is like a Planet Maldives. The unified world of the sea creatures and the indigenous clan is a One Planet wet dream, an exaltation of the denizens of the deep and the bond they share with the Maori-like community, led by Tonowari (Cliff Curtis), Ronal (Kate Winslet; pictured, below) and their own teenage children.

But the stultifying 192 minute running time demands that Cameron and co-writers Rick Jaffe and Amanda Silver put meat on their CGI bones, and it is in the narrative structure and dialogue that the first of four planned sequels doesn’t hold water. The arc that propels the story centres on the previously-perished Col. Quaritch (Stephen Lang), resurrected and re-engineered as a Marine/Na’vi hybrid, who is offered a second shot at Sully (now, essentially a deserter/traitor in military terms) and Neytiri, who killed his human form over a decade ago. Quaritch makes his way to At’wa Attu in typically ruthless style, utilising the Sully kids and the native population as leverage whenever he can. The inevitable confrontation between Sully and Quaritch plays out over a final 50-odd minute third act that is pure Cameron in its scale and staging.

Quaritch and his Marine unit offer up the kind of alpha-human action movie ‘bad guy beats’ that Cameron and his imitators mastered and discarded as tropeish decades ago. Similarly, Sully and his ‘Family is our Fortress’ schtick is one-dimensional to the point of distraction, robbing Worthington and especially Saldaña of the emotional engagement they established in the first film, both with each other and the audience.

The groaningly uninteresting second act, in which the Sully kids - teenage wannabe-warriors Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) and Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), daughter Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss) and adopted daughter, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) - struggle to be accepted by their tribal peers, devolves into sequence after sequence of rite-of-passage underwater adventures, with blossoming teen romance and beautiful dangers around every coral reef; it’s The Blue Lagoon-meets-any number of already-forgotten YA stories that have come and gone since this film went into production, melded with a travelogue-like fetishistic self-admiration for the colours and wildlife it conjures.

The most troubling take-away from Avatar: The Way of Water is that of James Cameron exhibiting self-referential indulgences. While his creative energies have been ignited by the thrill of crafting groundbreaking interplanetary wonders, Cameron rehashes the Marine unit dynamic and weaponry hardware of Aliens; the teen-hero exploits of Terminator 2 Judgement Day; the luminescent underwater wonders of The Abyss; and, the water-will-have-its-way inevitability of Titanic. Factor in the often overly reliant inspiration it draws from its predecessor, and one can’t help feeling that the team of contributors who have helped visualise the Avatar universe have spent too many workshop hours under the tutelage of their boss. 

I’ve ultimately fallen on the side of positivity and rated Avatar: The Way of Water based on its status as a visual effects groundbreaker. Viewed in the crystal clear ultra-high-definition 3D afforded those lucky enough to see it in a high frame rate presentation, the film is a visually transcendent work, as close as mainstream cinema has come to a virtual-reality feature (despite the failings of The Hobbit as a HFR experiment, I’m now sold on the tech). If only James Cameron had loosened his technician’s labcoat and rediscovered the joys of storytelling with the same crisply etched clarity of his images.