Avatar: The Way of Water - A Review

I watched the first Avatar well over a decade ago. I remember enjoying the experience, but ultimately forgetting about it. I don’t think I appreciated James Cameron’s creation as much as the rest of the world did at the time.

As a writer, I envy Cameron’s ability to make successful movies. He has cracked the formula—one of the few who has yet to make a bad movie. I would watch his movies if only in an academic sense, to study every scene, shot, and piece of dialogue.

He’s that good.

Well, The Way of Water (WoW) has arrived. And it has generated a lot of buzz as the sequel to one of the most successful movies of all time. I didn’t see it immediately, not feeling the need to rush to the theaters when it came out. The reason, I think, is because of how the first one had so little impact on me that I didn’t feel the “call.”

What I wanted to do was rewatch the first one, because after fourteen years and having only watched it once, my memory was a little hazy. So I did.

So this is kind of two reviews smashed into one. I hope that’s okay with you.

**Here, there be spoilers.**

Avatar (2009)

Well, this is one of those landmark films in the same order of The Lord of the Rings and The Matrix. Movies like these don’t come along very often.

Everyone’s (probably) heard the story about how James Cameron watched LOTR: The Two Towers and realized that the technology had caught up with this idea that he had about some blue aliens. So he made Avatar, which went on to be the highest grossing movie of all time.

I had thought that Avengers: End Game had knocked it off its pedestal, but apparently not. According to Box Office Mojo, Avatar still holds the #1 spot with nearly $3 billion in lifetime gross worldwide. If you look at the list closely, you’ll notice that three of the top four highest grossing movies of all time were all written and directed by James Cameron.

Yeah. The man has definitely cracked the code.

Anyway, it’s been 14 years since Avatar released in theaters. What can I say about it that hasn’t been said before a million times?

On its own, I can’t say much. However, in the context of its sequel, I can say a little bit more.

Cameron knew what he was doing with this movie. He took Pocahontas, Dances With Wolves and brought them into outer space.

That’s it. That’s the movie.

The concept of the “avatar” in which our hero, Jake Sully, inhabits in order to survive on Pandora is really good. However, making Jake Sully a paraplegic is probably this movie’s greatest genius. In the wrong hands, this movie could have been a colossal flop. A lesser director might have, instead, given Jake a personality flaw only.

Wouldn’t that have been awful?

Jake’s disability is key to the beginning, middle, and ending of this movie. It gives him his initial motive to return in the avatar state, it provides conflict with the military, and ultimately leads him to choose to join the Na’vi in the end.

I like to see his disability as a metaphor for humanity. Humanity is disabled. The Na’vi are free. Need I explain more? Okay, I will. Not only is humanity disabled, it has crippled itself through warfare and destroying its own planet. Jake’s decision to abandon his original body the end is metaphorically and literally a decision to leave humanity behind for freedom.

It’s a pretty cool metaphor that Cameron has baked into Jake’s character arc, and therefore into the story structure.

The only problem I see with Avatar is that its plot is too familiar. The Creator has the same problem as it uses well-worn tropes from well-known movies and stories. Whereas The Creator isn’t as revolutionary with its visuals (it still dazzles, though), Avatar showed those well-worn tropes in a new way that we hadn’t seen before.

Good thing Cameron waited until the technology caught up to his idea.

Anyway, it annoys me that I have to say this, but Avatar (2009) is a great movie and worth seeing, even if it has a predictable plot.

Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)

I’m probably not the first one to say it, but I don’t think Avatar (2009) even needed a sequel. The movie was perfect as is. So the fact that James Cameron thought it necessary to film WoW is intriguing to say the least.

I mean, he seems like a smart guy. He makes great movies, but he’s never done something like this before. So why would he turn Avatar into a series?

It wouldn’t be because Disney bought Fox, would it? WOULD IT?

…

I can only imagine what went through Cameron’s mind when that deal went through. But maybe I’m not giving him the credit he deserves. Turns out, he had two sequels in mind as early as 2006 and a third sequel as early as 2012.

So it probably wasn’t Disney’s fault, but you can bet they were eager for him to get started. Maybe he was only waiting for the right budget? We may never know…

Avatar: The Way of Water is a story about what it means to be a family and, in the case of Jake Sully, what it means to be a father, a parent, when danger threatens your loved ones. Do you run away and hide? Or do you stand and fight?

In talking about WoW, there’s very little in the way of criticism that I have with this movie. That’s right, this is another one of Cameron’s greats. It is, however not as good as the first movie for one glaring reason: the middle is a bit bogged down with nowhere-itis.

A lot of Act 2 in this movie is about the Sully clan learning the “way of water.” There is a ton of breathtaking visuals in these sequences where the story doesn’t progress. Cameron is showing off, as usual. The water looks mindblowingly fantastic, but a lot of the plot felt like setup for something in the third movie—something we won’t see for some time.

Photo by 20th Century Studios

For example, the mystery of Kiri’s origin is deepened but never resolved—even though it’s easy enough to guess. I think Kiri is the reincarnation of Sigourney Weaver’s character, Grace. Because, you see, Grace entered Eywa in the last movie and Kiri came out. It doesn’t seem like that much of a mystery to me.

One thing I didn’t particularly enjoy about Act 2 was the bullying. I mean, I feel bad for Lo’ak, but I’ve seen this kind of sequence before in other movies and it seems like a cheap trick to get the ball (plot) rolling again. And that’s exactly what it does. I wonder what could have replaced that sequence?

I was, however, very interested in Spider’s character. Most of the movie, he is a fairly reactive character, but when he does act—he becomes the most important character in the scene. His conflict with Neytiri isn’t resolved in this movie, but it does produce some interesting results—namely the saving of Quaritch’s life at the end.

Talk about a twist ending I didn’t see coming.

Photo by 20th Century Studios

Speaking of reactive, another aspect that supports my theory that this movie is setup for a larger conflict is the fact that, up until now, Jake Sully has mostly been a reactive protagonist. Not passive, just reactive. Things keep happening to him and his family, and in both movies, he mostly just reacts to them.

This isn’t a bad thing, except that when you look at the movie by itself and without the context of any other movie, it becomes incomplete. The first Avatar had a good beginning, middle, and end. It was a complete movie without the need for a sequel. WoW needs sequels to finish everything it started.

There is a sense of progression at the end of WoW when Jake realizes that he can’t run (react) anymore. Here, Cameron recreates the iconic last shot from the first Avatar movie: his eyes are “opened” a second time, and now he understands what he needs to do: fight back against the—

Psychopathic Murdering Human Race

I have to bring this up. The one major thing that bugs me about these movies and others like it.

Sure, there are some good humans, but they’re almost always impotent—and by impotent, I mean lacking power to defend themselves. The good humans are quirky scientists who have never held a gun in their lives. Now, I may be the only one with this opinion, but I have a bit more faith in humanity than the average human.

That might make me naïve. I’m willing to accept that.

Photo by 20th Century Studios

But let’s look at the other side. The human military force seems to be full of psychopathic murderers who would kill a child without a second’s thought.

I mean, seriously? Like, what about Pandora attracts only murderous psychopaths? What kind of training do you have to go through that makes you okay with killing children?

There’s an argument for desperation. The humans have destroyed their world, so Pandora is their last chance. They won’t let anyone or anything get in their way for the survival of their species…

But wasn’t it really all about the “unobtanium” in the first place? Isn’t that what they wanted? The second movie tried to change that. Maybe I missed it, but unobtanium was never mentioned once that I can remember.

The bad guys are villains because they are evil for evil’s sake. Cartoonishly evil—which isn’t necessarily a bad thing in general. Sometimes we need a good villain to hate. I would just appreciate a little nuance now and again. Some realism.

Conclusion

In both movies, I enjoyed the visuals, the endings, and even the return of Stephen Lang’s Colonel Quaritch (which I absolutely did not see coming). We can nitpick these movies (and we do), but in the end, I haven’t made a story that was worth $2.7 billion. Yet.

Cameron has worked hard for the success he now enjoys, and it’s well-deserved. WoW is the next chapter in this saga and it sets us up for another fight with the psychopathic murdering humans. I hope Cameron can bring something new to the table, and that we don’t get Avatar-fatigue…

Knock on wood.