Avatar: The Way of Water

James Cameron once again shows Hollywood who is the king of blockbuster movies. Despite its three-hour running time, Avatar 2 is entertaining from beginning to end, with breathtaking audiovisual and personal stories of old and new heroes at the ideal pace. Pandora is perhaps even more beautiful than last time, the newcomers are likeable, and Cameron keeps the pace from start to finish without a single flinch. And after thirteen years, he shows that he's still a long way ahead of most Hollywood filmmakers. (12/14/2022)

Avatar: The Way of Water has the screenwriting of a mediocre television series that’s not in any hurry to get anywhere. Not only can the story again be summed up in a single short sentence, but it’s the same as the last time and it looks like the next one won’t be any different. The unnatural movement of the blue lizards on dry land hasn’t changed since the “pilot”, so the first half of the film comes across like a video-game demo. Transitioning to the world under water is thus a tremendous upgrade. The lizards swim much more elegantly than they walk and jump, and James Cameron breathes extraordinary life into the fictional undersea plants and animals. It is beautiful and enchanting.  Luc Besson will be pleased. The human characters are also given space on the water, thus giving the digital artifice a more physical sense of drive. All of those submarines, mecha crabs and wicked scenes of “whale” hunting are uber cool, reminiscent of the action treats in Waterworld. Overall, however, the Avatar phenomenon becomes rather more of an amusement-park attraction (with the promise of a VR future) than a cinematic work in the true sense of the word. It’s kind of like Cameron’s version of a Marvel flick, but with poor character development, which is a bit of a shame. (12/14/2022)

Less water, man, less water! I’m still a big fan of the first Avatar, which worked like a euphoric trip through another world thanks to its simple narrative structure involving a hero/outsider savior of the noble savages. The second one is essentially a drawn-out and shaky soap opera about a family run by a militant father who moves to a new ’hood and can’t get used to it. Let’s leave aside that Cameron paid significantly less attention to dramatic motivations than he did to the last fish below the surface. The whole film thus seems irrational and the dialogue, which was never Avatar’s strength, is even more ear-scratchingly pedantic. As an epic tech reel, however, the film is breathtaking and I truly, royally enjoyed the underwater National Geographic in HFR. There is something truly intoxicating in the smoothness and fluidity. Unfortunately, the film’s 192 minutes are emotionally stolen by a crippled humpback whale, which has the significant advantage that it doesn’t talk (and even its retrospective is not told smoothly). Yes, Cameron is a great craftsman and illusionist, but as a storyteller, he fails here significantly in my opinion. There is no development of the mythology to speak of, as everything is just a variation, the metaphor of nature as a loving entity is becoming more and more naïve and, honestly, I would like to spend less time waiting for the third one and the fire people after this aquatherapy. During the screening, I found it difficult to push away the thought that I would have preferred to enjoy some top-quality sci-fi, which Avatar decidedly isn’t! (01/02/2023)

I felt a bit as if I was watching the second episode of a series. The beginning feels somewhat rushed and hurried, and the human dimension disappears from the whole Water Journey, as all the important protagonists are already blue (and they call humans Ape). Everyone is family with everyone, and humans are a threat symbolized only by technology destroying Pandora's natural resources. Cameron keeps the pace and narrates with clarity, but the characters often behave illogically, which I rationalised by the fact that they are aliens and when they are not they are assholes. The digressions into nowhere stretch out the runtime, and while it's clear that is Kira script-armoured to support future episodes, it takes away from the main point, which is fooling around with the Pandora equivalent of Willy and diving and exploring the water world and stuff. Each Sully kid has a story to tell at the expense of Sully and Mrs. Sully. Ironically the most interesting character is the Colonel exploring new physical possibilities. There are some scenes that are breathtaking, like crushing one's own skull, the spearmen, even making friends with a whale, but overall it's terribly long and I see more naive nerds than cunning heroes in the leads. Let's hope they wise up and that it will be back to a full rating in the third one. P.S: Horner is very much missed, RIP. There’s no nice new musical theme, just a variation of the old one. (12/19/2022)

I like how every plot shift is tied to familial relationships (as family comprises the whole ecosystem of Pandora in this case), how the film works superbly with parallels (between the characters’ relationships and the past and present – the villain goes through the same initiation as Jake in the first film, but with a different result) and how divine the water and underwater CGI looks, and I’m not offended by the simple eco-friendly plot about finding a home and saving one’s family through a connection to an ancestral heritage, but Cameron is far too enamoured with his moon/planet and his singing whales, and he revels in both of these aspects far more than is necessary for the narrative. You can imagine the middle part of the film, which is followed by the comparatively interminable final act, as a sequel to My Octopus Teacher, with big fish instead of octopuses (which I don't mean as a compliment). Whereas the first Avatar flew by quickly and, due to its focus on building a fictional world and evoking fear for its fate, you weren’t bothered by the two-dimensional characters communicating through poorly written dialogue, here I felt every minute passing by, missing the mark emotionally by several nautical miles, because when the going gets tough, you will probably have trouble even remembering the name of the character whose life is at stake. At least the protagonist’s sons are similar to each other and interchangeable in terms of character. An unbearably long three hours. P.S. Some of the action scenes in 3D and 48fps look like cut scenes from a highly advanced video game (which is not a compliment either) and the non-action scenes are reminiscent of a soap opera. 60% (12/14/2022)