Director James Cameron draws you down so deep and gently adrift in “Avatar: The Way of Water” that you don’t feel like you’re watching a movie as much as floating in one. He occasionally takes you to the bottom of an extraterrestrial sea, filmed in astonishing hyper-clarity in high-frame-rate 3D and teeming with all kinds of surreally unusual fish — all irregularly curved fins, ornamental tentacles, and other traces of an otherworldly, somewhat screwed-up evolutionary chronology.
You can imagine how much fun (and headaches) Cameron & his visual-effects gurus had creating this beautiful ocean-floor utopia.
You can also see an astronomical budget (reportedly north of $350 million) and also an astonishingly powerful digital arsenal at work, as well as an exhilarating sensation of buoyancy achieved by the director’s hours of deep-sea diving.
Much as you want Cameron to keep us down there — to give us the most costly and intricate underwater hangout movie ever produced — he can’t or won’t sustain all this dreamy Jacques-Cousteau-on-mushrooms enchantment for three-plus hours.
After all, he is James Cameron, and he has a stirringly old-fashioned narrative to tell, terrible speech to dispense, and a hell of an action movie to unleash, replete with burning shipwrecks, lethal arrows, and a whale-sized, tortoise-skinned creature known as a Tulkun. Overall, it’s fantastic to have him back (Cameron, that is, though the Tulkun is also welcome). He is one of the few Hollywood visionaries who truly deserves that overused moniker, and as such, he has more on his mind than simply pummeling the audience into submission.
Cameron wishes to transport you to another time and place, to entice you into a state of pure, unforced awe. And he does, with some aesthetic adjustments; the usage of a high frame rate (a sped-up 48 frames per second) seems to work better underwater than on dry land, where the excessively frictionless, motion-smoothed appearance can remind you of a Na’vi soap opera (“The Blue and the Beautiful,” definitely). But then he can fascinate you with something as musically simple — but meticulously computer-generated — as a nighttime view of his people reclining near the sea, their faces and bodies mirroring the digital phosphorescence below. Any hack can make things explode, but Cameron can make things sparkle.
Cameron returns you to that faraway moon named Pandora in this long-running, long-gestating sequel to his 2009 behemoth, “Avatar,” while much of the action takes place far from the original film’s spectacular floating mountains and luscious rainforests.
We saw Eden through the eyes of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a square-jawed, soft-hearted ex-Marine dispatched by his ruthless corporate superiors to infiltrate the Na’vi, a mighty race of blue-skinned, yellow-eyed, cat-tailed humanoids who lived in astounding oneness with all living things. Jake didn’t take long after being transplanted into his own genetically engineered Na’vi body, or avatar, to switch allegiances and turn against mankind, having fallen deeply in love with Pandora’s beauty as well as a Na’vi warrior princess, Neytiri (Zoe Saldaa).
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“Avatar” was an exciting cinematic experience as well as a groundbreaking showcase for performance-capture technology, allowing Cameron and his actors to provide his Na’vi avatars with incredibly realistic and lifelike gazes, movements, and physiognomies. The film also had thudding echoes of anti-imperialist westerns like “Dances With Wolves” and the well-remembered eco-conscious cartoon “FernGully: The Last Rainforest.” Cameron’s cutting-edge technophilia, on the other hand, has always been wedded to and supported by, an unashamed cornball classicism. And although “Avatar’s” hippy-dippy earnestness was simple to mock, it was equally tempting to fall to its multiplex transcendentalism, its universe of synthetically manufactured natural beauties. There was a rare studio film in which the inconsistencies seemed to enliven rather than detract from the story.
Those paradoxes are amplified in “Avatar: The Way of Water,” which thoroughly and discreetly immerses you in the Na’vi universe from start to finish. The degree of computer-generated artifice on exhibit in each landscape and seascape is startling, in ways that even the previous film, which alternated insistently between Jake’s human and Na’vi experiences, couldn’t match. Moreover, the stakes have grown, the emotions have intensified, and the brand-extension imperatives that often control sequels are blissfully absent.
That may appear odd, given that the “Avatar” franchise (at least three more films are planned), like other former Fox Studios products, now belongs to Disney, speaking of merciless corporate masters. But it’s no surprise that the filmmaker of “Aliens” and “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” two of the most memorable sequels in action-movie history, understands a thing or two about clever, broad brand development. Cameron also knows a thing or two about water, as seen by “The Abyss” and “Titanic,” which is where this newest sequel finds its sweet spot: Welcome to Pandora’s beach.
But first, there’s some exposition to go through. As in the previous film, Jake provides the type of grunting film noir-gumshoe voiceover that reminds you, in more amusing than frustrating ways, that quick exposition will never be one of Cameron’s strong strengths. (With Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, he co-wrote the script.) Jake has perfected his post-human way of life some years after losing his own avatar and being resurrected as a full-fledged Na’vi. He and Neytiri have four Na’vi children: two adolescent sons, Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) and Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), an 8-year-old daughter, Tuk (Trinity Bliss), and an adoptive adolescent daughter called Kiri.
She’s played by Sigourney Weaver, a casting move that organically connects her to Dr. Grace Augustine, Weaver’s deceased scientist from the first film, beginning a mystery that will supposedly be solved later in the franchise.
Weaver’s casting also raises some strange, perhaps divisive issues regarding Kiri’s (for the time being) chaste friendship with a young human male and fellow foundling named Spider (Jack Champion), who likes to run naked with the Sully tribe. But, while their bond paints an uplifting picture of interspecies cooperation, Cameron doesn’t dwell on it for long.
Instead, he unleashes a dire threat, driving Jake and Neytiri from their Omaticayan forest home and sending them fleeing to the ocean, where they seek safety with the Metkayina, a society of Na’vi reef dwellers.
It’s a deft narrative move that not only refreshes the landscape (and how!) but also pushes Jake, Neytiri, and their family to adjust to a completely new way of life, setting up a second-act training regimen that allows Cameron to show off every square inch of his underwater paradise. (His longstanding cameraman, Russell Carpenter, and production designers Dylan Cole and Ben Procter are among his important collaborators.)
The Metkayina is a highly evolved clan of water dwellers, as evidenced by their aquamarine skin (in contrast to the Omaticayans’ cerulean tones), seashell-and-fishnet jewelry, and intricate tattoos reminiscent of Maori body art. They are led by the kind, welcoming Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and his less hospitable wife, Ronal (a glaring Kate Winslet). They also have abnormally thick, lengthy tails that are designed for underwater propulsion. Learning to explore the underwater environment just beyond their new beach-bum paradise will be a tremendous endeavor for Jake, Neytiri, and especially their children. It’ll also earn them some skepticism from the locals, including Tonowari and Ronal’s own adolescent children, in a plot that occasionally feels like a teen surfing movie crossed with “Swiss Family Robinson.”
Even for a filmmaker who is used to juxtaposing intimate human sagas with large-scale catastrophe, Cameron’s sensitivity and occasional sentimentality in this drama about family struggle and survival feels surprisingly personal. It can also feel a little rushed at three hours, but that feels more like an act of kindness than indulgence on Cameron’s behalf; his commitment to this family is genuine, and yours will be as well in time.
Audiences anticipating nonstop action may be startled to find themselves witnessing a meandering narrative of overprotective parents and rebellious kids, biracial/adoptive identity concerns, and casual bigotry, rather than the director’s usual gradual build.
They’ll also hear some gorgeous whales speak from those massive Tulkuns, who turn out to be entertaining conversationalists as well as strong combatants.
If you’re looking for action, stay tuned: much of it will be delivered by a snarling reincarnation of the first film’s ex-military villain, Col. Miles Quaritch, here reborn — and once more played by the ferocious Stephen Lang — as a Na’vi avatar implanted with a surviving packet of the colonel’s memories.
Quaritch 2.0, bigger, worse, and bluer than before, isn’t seeking for unobtainium, the foolishly, beautifully called mineral MacGuffin from the original film. All he truly desires is vengeance on Jake and his family. (It’s also personal for him.) His Na’vi metamorphosis leaves just a few human characters, some of whom are old friends (Joel David Moore, Dileep Rao), yet most of them are small, insignificant villains who wreak havoc on the Metkayina and their fragile environment, only to reap havoc in return. “Avatar: The Way of Water,” like its predecessor, is both an environmental warning tale and a wildly effective chance to root against our own species; by the third act, you’ll be shouting for human blood.
Cameron’s return to Pandora has been long planned, and nearly as long mocked. Over 13 years of fluctuating industry talk about prospective sequels, sequels to sequels, and endless revisions of plans, many have voiced frustration with the director’s ever-expanding aspirations and even questioned the first “Avatar’s” pop-cultural impact. It’s not the first time Cameron has been chastised in advance for an Olympic blunder, and if the trend continues, his biggest and most ambitious film will quiet most of his critics.
“Never underestimate James Cameron” has become something of a catchphrase in recent years when a miscalculation is vital. It’s part of the director’s hook, his wind-up showmanship, and his notion that going to the movies can be a religious, if not redemptive, experience. The more he suffers, the more he may delight us, and the more thoroughly film can be resurrected.
You don’t have to subscribe to that self-mythologizing to enjoy the gorgeous, uneven, transporting sprawl of “Avatar: The Way of Water,” even if only sporadically. It’s difficult not to be impressed and even encouraged by Cameron’s filmmaking conviction, the unfeigned sincerity with which he instructs a young Metkayina lady to gravely intone, “The course of water has no beginning and no end.” That may be read as a joke at the length of the film, but it also perfectly expresses Cameron’s sense of visual consistency. The immersive fluidity Cameron accomplishes here, like in the original “Avatar,” feels like an organic offshoot of his theory, a reminder that all life flows smoothly together.
It’s unclear where it will flow next, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious to find out. So goodbye, Pandora, and thank you for all the fish.
