Avatar: The Way Of Water (2022)
SHOULD I SEE IT?
YES
A spectacle in every way.
One of the biggest movie moments of the last decade, Avatar: The Way of Water is a sequel some 13 years in the making, with potential to change movies forever.
Those who love James Cameron’s vision for moviemaking will find 192 minutes to swoon over, praise, and defend.
NO
A hollow shell. Gorgeous, impressive to look at with nothing inside.
James Cameron’s scripts are not always strong, but this is woefully thin and repetitive.
Honestly, only a personal choice to not see it will keep people from this. This is as review-proof a movie as we may have ever seen.
OUR REVIEW
James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water is something of a reckoning for the movie industry. As a hyperbolic sentiment grows around the supposed “critic/audience divide,” Cameron’s long-awaited sequel to 2009’s Avatar is about as review-proof a movie as you will ever see. Critics essentially are irrelevant in the anticipation and conversation around the movie. And before you roll your eyes and think to yourself, ‘here’s another critic whining about perceived irrelevancy,’ let me mention that it is okay for movies to be bigger than a groupthink of analysis or criticism. I, and others I know in this work, are truly not threatened by that reality.
As people bash critics online more and more and make claims like there’s no real skill in being a movie reviewer, or even create reasons why we shouldn’t exist anymore, I also have to acknowledge that Cameron perhaps would agree with that on some level. He recognizes that his audience is not swayed by pre-release pull quotes and reviews popping up on Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic, television or banner ads. He is about the spectacle, about waiting until technology can catch up to his vast, expansive vision of what movies can and should become. A positive or negative review along the way is a grain of sand in the corner of his world.
And that’s okay as well.
In some ways, that makes the fact that Avatar: The Way of Water is an underwhelming and exhausting misfire easier to discuss. Cameron isn’t going to care. Nor will you, to be honest. You likely have bought one or two rounds of tickets to see it, so unpacking the messiness of the film and the scattershot, repetitive, boring story elements won’t truly matter. Chances are, if I am fortunate to have you click on this review, you likely saw our star rating, made a judgment on what this review will be like, and probably aren’t even reading this far. If you are, thank you. I certainly appreciate you staying with me and hearing what I have to say.
So, since it is just you and I talking right now: I hope you admire The Way of Water. I hope it stirs up all the excitement and fills you with the sense of awe Cameron has painstakingly tried to create. I hope you are immersed into Pandora’s world. I hope you feel a warmth with some of the shots Cameron orchestrates with cinematographer Russell Carpenter; shots which are, at times, gorgeous to take in. I hope the nostalgia you likely feel passes down to a generation of younger viewers who may not have had this kind of cinematic event in their lifetimes. I hope you truly enjoy it.
I wish I could be there in those moments with you.
While all of those things can also be true in my experience watching The Way of Water, I also have to mention that the movie never found any emotional resonance or meaning with me. And if we’re being honest with ourselves, many people are going to willfully ignore problems with The Way Of Water they would otherwise call out with any other film. I guess because the colors are pretty and the action is busy.
In reality, Cameron’s film is hollow to a bottomless degree, full of ideas and subplots and diversions that occupy time and seldom get resolved in a meaningful way. Stilted dialogue lines up alongside melodrama that feels perfunctory in concept, an afterthought in execution. It is as if Cameron built this incredible, immersive world and figured the rest would sort itself out. Or, perhaps, he placed his bets on believing audiences would be so enamored with what he created, people just wouldn’t care that there is no real substance within its bloated 192-minute running time.
A decade or so after the events of Avatar, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) has built a life in Pandora with wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and their four children - teenage boys Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) and Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), daughter Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss) and adopted daughter Kiri (Sigourney Weaver). In their travels, and as members of the Na’vi people, they have formed a connection to the Metkayina tribe, building an alliance to fight the threat of “Sky People,” the human beings who have developed avatar personas to infiltrate Pandora in the hopes of colonizing it as a new home for the human race.
Jake is targeted by Quaritch (Stephen Lang), the reincarnated avatar of the military leader killed in the 2009 film. His son, Spider (Jack Champion) is an adopted son to Jake and Neytiri, as he was born as a human being on Pandora and they look after him. Despite all of that, Quaritch feels betrayed by Sully’s absorption into his new life as a Na’vi and concocts a revenge scheme to draw Sully’s kids away from his parents. He plans to kidnap them as a trap to assassinate their father. And so, with all the machinations and world-building and $350 million dollars spent on Cameron’s vision, he has written nothing more than a two-paragraph premise about one dude wanting revenge against another dude.
That premise leads to meandering diversions like a hackneyed conflict between the Na’vi and the Metkayina and rebellious teenagers defying their parents. Loyalties are tested. We get scenes where Cameron waxes poetic about topics like poaching, protecting the climate and the exploration of nature vs. nurture. And of course, we have lots of battle scenes, fights, PG-13 violence, and kids and animals in peril.
A number of my peers were recently discussing Todd Field’s TÁR, a movie I, and other critics in my region and across the country, feel is one of the best movies of 2022. We talked about how the character-driven drama was marketed well, put in a lot of theaters and made a scant $5.5 million in domestic box office. TÁR, along with Martin McDonagh’s remarkable dark comedy, The Banshees of Inisherin, are two legitimate Oscar contenders that have wildly underperformed at the box office recently. We increasingly live in a world where if (and when) these films start winning awards at the expense of say an Avatar or Top Gun: Maverick, or any other massive populist hit, those smaller films only get demonized as some latest example that critics hate mainstream films and hold disdain for what audiences “really want to see.”
It’s important to mention this because Avatar: The Way of Water could further divide the two camps, when truly both camps want the same thing. We all want to be entertained by movies with engaging storytelling, good performances from the actors in the cast, and technical elements that can create memories and moments we can share with friends, family, and neighbors.
The Way of Water is full of visual wonder and incredible, groundbreaking innovation. At times, even if the frame rate and 3D visuals are jarring or make you temporarily queasy (as some have reported), you get the sense that visual effects in movies will look antiquated after watching what Cameron and his team have created. This is what everyone will praise when discussing the movie. The feeling of being in a 3 hour, 12 minute amusement park ride or video game - that is what will bring people back time and again to escape into Cameron’s Pandora, which feels even more real and tangible than it did in 2009.
And for some that’s plenty. And that’s great. But I would also ask folks to consider that we deserve more than this. We all love a brand new car. Those moments when you first get in and take in that new car smell, feeling comfortable and safe as it drives smooth and flawlessly - kind of makes you feel like you’ve won for that moment in your life.
But almost immediately let’s envision that the dashboard functions glitch occasionally. Or a light on the console has gone out. Or maybe the car is slow to accelerate to your satisfaction. Maybe you realize the seat doesn’t adjust quite to your liking.
Avatar: The Way of Water is an incredible structure. When you settle in and start poking around though, the façade falls away, gaffes quickly emerge, and all the visual effects in the world cannot truly erase the underwhelming realities Cameron has placed on screen.
CAST & CREW
Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Kate Winslet, Cliff Curtis, Jamie Flatters, Britain Dalton, Trinity Jo-Li Bliss, Jack Champion, Edie Falco, Brendan Cowell, Jemaine Clement, Bailey Bass, Filip Geljo, Giovanni Ribisi, Dileep Rao
Director: James Cameron
Written by: James Cameron, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver (screenplay); James Cameron, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Josh Friedman, Shane Salerno (story)
Release Date: December 16, 2022
Walt Disney Studios