20th Century Studios
It’s been a long 13 years since we last visited the world of Pandora — and part of that delay was due to the global pandemic — and now I’m sure many people are asking themselves was the wait worth it? Do I want to spend more than three hours watching a movie in a theater? The answer to both of those questions is a resounding yes. I can honestly say I don’t remember a lot about the first movie, but I know that aside from the technical aspects I thought it was just … okay. Avatar: The Way of Water is an improvement over the original even if Cameron does tend to indulge himself quite a bit (the running time could have easily been trimmed to at least two-and-a-half hours), but it’s still gripping enough that, if you portion your beverage sips out appropriately, you won’t have to make a run for the facilities late in the movie.
Avatar: The Way of Water picks up ten-ish years after the first film, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is full Na’vi now, with his mate Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) and several children including Kiri (Sigourney Weaver playing a pre-teen character born from the comatose human character she played in the first film) and human Spider (Jack Champion), the baby left behind at the end of the first film (babies can’t make the jump from Pandora to Earth) who also happens to be the son of the late Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang). Their lives are idyllic but they are also always on the alert for the ‘Sky People’, aka humans, who may return to continue the rape of their land. And sure enough they do return but this time it’s personal — Quaritch (Stephen Lang), whom Sully killed in the first film, has been cloned and reborn as a Na’vi but with Quaritch’s memories, and with his troop of other humans-turned-Na’vi he’s on a mission to exact revenge on Sully for taking his life. When it becomes clear that the faux Na’vi are only there to hunt Sully and his family, they must leave their tree people and seek sancutary with the water people … many of whom don’t take kindly to the outsiders who don’t know their ways and can’t even swim underwater with their ridiculously short tails. The leader of the tribe, Tonowari (Cliff Curtis), allows the newcomers to stay, but his pregnant mate Ronal (Kate Winslet) and their kids are less accommodating, with the kids pretty much bullying the Sully kids which puts one in a particularly life threatening situation in the middle of the sea. But they learn to swim and bond with the water creatures and then … Quaritch and his people track them down, bringing a war to Sully’s new tribe that no one wanted.
To say that the visuals of Avatar: The Way of Water are stunning is simply an understatement. Words really can’t adequately describe what Cameron has achieved through the advancement of motion capture and CGI technology over the past decade, not to mention the use of 3D, and I applaud Cameron for giving us real 3D, not a conversion, and using it to its full advantage to bring depth to the image and having objects move far beyond the edge of the screen (arrows, embers of fire, aquatic creatures). It truly is an immersive experience and perhaps will reignite the passion for 3D television. As far as the CGI, again words can’t adequately describe the minute details that have been produced, from the environments to the pores and hairs and freckles on the skin of the characters. I did find myself thinking right at the beginning that it just looked like a total CGI movie, but as it went along and there was a mix of human and Na’vi characters I began to buy into the concept that the Na’vi and everything around them were real. It truly is an amazing visual experience, and if you have the opportunity to experience the film in a Dolby Cinema I highly recommend it. If I have one technical complaint, it’s Cameron’s insistence on using High Frame Rate, not for the entire film but selectively throughout. The visual of the film-like quality that suddenly switches to a high definition soap opera is jarring, making the movie suddenly look like a CGI videogame. Even worse for people like myself who have a sensitivity to video motion, the scenes could cause some physical discomfort. Peter Jackson used the format for the first The Hobbit movie and the results were not welcome by anyone. The choice to mix traditional 24 fps with 48 fps was not a good one and it actually cheapens the movie. So here is my plea to filmmakers — stick with what we’re used to. We all turn off the Motion Smoothing on our HDTVs to get rid of that ‘soap opera’ effect and we don’t want to see it on the big screen either. Just stop with the HFR.
The cast all do fantastic jobs even though you’d be hard-pressed to know who any of them are aside from Worthington and Saldaña, familiar from the first movie, and Weaver who’s hybrid character has the very recognizable face of the actress, even if she’s blue and significantly de-aged. You can clearly see that Kiri is Sigourney Weaver. I had no idea who Kate Winslet was playing while watching the movie, but I assumed she was the pregnant mate of the chief of the water people tribe. I think it helps you get more into the movie when you actually don’t recognize the voices or sit there distracted trying to place the familiar sounding voice. I am looking forward to all of the behind-the-scenes stuff to see how Cameron and the cast pulled all of this off. As for the film’s villain, Lang snarls through most of his role, barking orders to his troops, a singular focus for him to kill Jake. Lang does what Lang does best. And if you’re wondering, Quaritch and his troops do have an actual mission to retrieve some electronic data from a craft that was downed in the first film, but that has become secondary to his vendetta. And Jack Champion as Spider is also terrific as the lone human among the Na’vi. He’s never really met his father and, of course, everyone assumes he’s dead so the look on Spider’s face when he realizes the ‘avatar’ Quaritch is his dad shows his shock. He also portrays the hurt very well when Quaritch tells him he’s not his father, they share nothing but some memories, and that makes things complicated for Spider moving on. He actually has one of the bigger character arcs in the film and Champion pulls it off very well.
As for the film’s story, yes it is a bit bloated and sometimes you just get the feeling that Cameron was indulging himself to show off what all of his new toys could do. A lot of the underwater stuff looks beautiful but doesn’t really further the plot and could have been cut down. Even the long lead-up to the ‘sky people’ return could have been trimmed. But that last 30 minutes or so of the movie really kicks into gear as a war breaks out and then Sully and his family must fight alone so as not to endanger their new tribe. The action in that last act is spectacular (and really immersive with the 3D and rumbling Dobly Cinema seats) … only diminished a bit by the HFR shots which are jarringly cut in. It’s like film shot-HFR shot-film shot-HFR shot … rinse and repeat. By the end, you do need to sit and catch your breath. You can also see where Cameron has cribbed from himself, particularly using his previous experience on everything from Terminator 2 and
Avatar: The Way of Water is long, and it may test you patience and willpower to sit that long, but seeing it under the proper conditions that Cameron wants — and this could all play out entirely differently in a standard flat presentation — will be a rewarding cinematic experience.
Avatar: The Way of Water has a run time of 3 hours 12 minutes, and is rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence and intense action, partial nudity and some strong language.
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