Nerdly » ‘Avatar: The Way of Water (3D)’ Review

13th Dec2022

‘Avatar: The Way of Water (3D)’ Review

by Matthew Turner

Stars: Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Giovanni Ribisi, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Kate Winslet, Cliff Curtis, Brian Dalton, Jemaine Clement, Edie Falco | Written by James Cameron, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver | Directed by James Cameron

Director James Cameron returns to planet Pandora for Avatar: The Way of Water, the long-awaited follow-up to his 2009 smash hit Avatar. Boasting state-of-the-art special effects, the film is the first in a series of four planned sequels, though whether any of them will achieve the same level of record-breaking box office success as the original remains to be seen.

The film picks up more than a decade after the events of the original film, with Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) happily married and raising their four children in the forests of Pandora, according to the nature-loving ways of the Na’vi. However, when a clone of former adversary Col Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) adopts the avatar technology and leads a squad of crack soldiers in pursuit of Jake and his family, they are forced to flee, taking refuge with the ocean-dwelling reef people, known as the Matkayina.

Tensions quickly rise as the Meykayina are forced to harbour Jake and his family, with youngest son Lo’ak (Brian Dalton) becoming something of an outcast, given that he’s particularly prone to getting into aquatic scrapes of some sort. But when Quaritch and his soldiers discover Jake’s whereabouts, the two tribes will have to put aside their differences and fight together in order to defeat the “sky people”.

As with the original film, the special effects in Avatar: The Way of Water are undeniably impressive, from the motion capture work to the stunning world-building and 3D environments. Once again, Cameron frequently shoots scenes so that the audience is peering through something at the action, highlighting the 3D effects.

However, it’s fair to say that the effects aren’t quite as jaw-dropping this time round, at least in terms of their novelty – they constitute significant improvement rather than innovation. As a result, the overall experience isn’t quite as thrillingly immersive as it was in 2009, in part because it lacks the novelty factor.

That said, there are a number of spectacular set-piece sequences. One in particular involves Lo’ak bonding with a similarly outcast whale-like creature (shades of Free Willy), and an underwater swim that’s shot from an angle that makes it look like he is flying just above the air, reaching out to “touch” it, the way you would reach down to touch the water if you were on the surface.

Similarly, some serious thought has gone into how the Na’vi fight, adding visceral thrills to the multiple battle sequences. For example, the airborne spear-chucking moments are extremely satisfying, and will have you speculating on why the sky people didn’t install better shatter-proof windscreens.

More amusingly, one key set-piece towards the end of the film involves the sinking of an enormous boat (or similar), proving that try as he might, Cameron just can’t let go of Titanic. He even has characters frantically swimming through corridors as water blocks all the exits.

Story-wise, they could easily have called the film Avatar: This Time, They’re Bringing Their Kids. In general, the focus on the younger characters just about works, though it might have been a mistake not to give any of them a romantic interest. The script gets halfway there in two separate cases, but doesn’t follow through, suggesting that Cameron wanted to leave something for the sequels.

In fact, that’s a frequent problem, as various important-seeming characters (such as Edie Falco’s General or Jemaine Clement’s scientist) just disappear from the story altogether, indicating that they’ll presumably have more to do next time round. There are lots of plot elements that are just left dangling too – at one point a scientist extracts an expensive liquid from a sea-creature that’s worth billions of Earth Dollars, but it’s never mentioned again. Still, at least no-one says the word “unobtanium” this time round.

The first film drew some criticism for its excessive running time and the sequel doubles down on that element, clocking in at a whopping, and frankly unjustifiable 192 minutes. As a result, the film takes a good hour and a half to really get going, but it kicks into gear around the halfway mark, round about the point where Lo’ak is bonding with the whale-like creature, and the pacing significantly improves from then onwards.

The other key issue is that the film lacks strong emotion, with the key moments not hitting quite as hard as they should. Part of that is down to there being too many similar-looking characters, to the point where you often find yourself thinking, ‘Is that x or y?’ during a scene.

In short, Avatar: The Way of Water offers some thrilling action sequences and some stunning special effects work, and it has at least toned down some of the more embarrassing tree-hugging elements of the original film, partly because there are fewer trees to hug. However, on a story level, the film barely manages to offer a compelling reason for its own existence, let alone that of Avatars 3, 4 and 5.