Avatar: The Way of Water

 The first post I put in this blog was for Avatar in late 2009.  I had been toying with the idea for a couple of years and when I saw that film I had enough thoughts about James Cameron's long awaited film that I even named the blog after the thoughts.  After finishing the post I felt that my main feelings with the film were expressed and I never sat down to re-watch it.  

As the years went by I read stories about the Avatar sequels.  Initially two more films turned into four and the release dates kept getting pushed further back.  My response to the idea of four more Avatar films was initially disappointment because Cameron is one of the great directors and at age 68 I would rather see him explore other ideas than spend years making sequels to a film whose premise I did not feel could sustain four more stories. 

In the meantime while Cameron assembled writing teams for each film he also kept himself busy with other projects.  He visited the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean (going down nearly seven miles), created a terrific 3D version of Terminator  2 and hosted a series on AMC that examined sci-fi films and engaged in fascinating conversations with their different directors. 

In September 2022 Cameron wisely put the first Avatar back in theatres to reacquaint audiences with the world again.  I took my family (my wife was three days shy of delivering our first child when we first saw it in 2009 and he kicked all the way through the film) and happily got caught up in the world again.  I had forgotten the names of all the characters except Jake.  The kids got a kick of out seeing Letty from the Fast and The Furious films as a pilot.  The effects and the story still hold up well and the third act is an excellent display for Cameron's ability to conceive and direct exciting action set pieces. The end does tease a future adventure as the defeated Earth soldiers threaten to return.

Spoilers below

Avatar: The Way of Water takes that premise and for the first hour or so plays as a straight continuation of the original film until it changes its setting.  Cameron follows a similar template from Terminator 2 setting the main conflict again between returning humans and the Na'vi but changing a lot of the character dynamics.  In the first film Jake (in his avatar body), was a hero who did all the most dangerous things while wrestling between his duty and his growing love for Neytiri and the Na'vi.  In this film Jake is now a full Na'vi and a father of four and his priorities have changed to protecting his kids and has become a strict taskmaster who often does not listen much to his kids.  The focus is more on the kids who although they make mistakes, are often more right than their dad.  Cameron, ever self critical, based this characteristic on himself, as he has five children.  Cameron used a similar approach in Terminator 2, changing his hero from Sarah to John and one of John's big tasks in the film is to help reconnect Sarah to her humanity.

Cameron reunited most of the cast from the first film, including two who played characters who died.  Sigourney Weaver who played Grace, a human scientist who was killed by Colonel Quaritch, returns as an unexplained offspring of her avatar form named Kiri who has been adopted by Neytiri and Jake, whose existence is probably to keep Weaver in the film.  Cameron comes up with some distinctions for Kiri.  She is not a born warrior like her adopted family and has five fingers, which makes her a target for bullying and she has a nice moment where she connects with a vision of Grace.  

Stephen Lang returns as Colonel Quaritch in avatar form.  Cameron gives Quaritch a fantastic opening beat in which we see him true to form, attacking a couple of other soldiers.  Via a video that the new Quaritch watches Cameron explains that his memories we backed up right before the big battle in the first film.  The memories were then loaded into a "Recom" body which has an avatar body but in all other ways behaves like a human.  This plays well enough in the course of the film as the animosity between Quaritch and Jake fuels the conflict and there is a memorable moment in which Quaritch finds his own skeleton (and witnesses footage from his death) but it makes little to no sense.  Quaritch had no expectation of not surviving the battle and was he so indispensable to the Marines that they would have gone to so much trouble to revive him?  It is about as authentic as Palpatine's return in The Rise of Skywalker.  In the end the director wanted to bring back his big villain and contrived a way to do so.  Cameron commits to the idea, for better or worse, by creating a team of Recombatants which are similar avatars from other dead soldiers.  

The film spans a much bigger timespan than the first film but uses a structure similar to Cameron's True Lies.  In that film we meet Harry Tasker and see him in a couple of big sequences to see how cool he is in action and the second focuses on his messy domestic life before it all comes together in a big third act.  This film for the first hour jumps forward about 16 years from the first film which is enough time for the kids to have developed into teenagers.  During this period the RDA returns and the Na'vi set up a resistance. The second takes the characters to the ocean setting where Jakes family tries to integrate with Metkayina clan who reluctantly give them shelter.  The third act sets both clans against the invading RDA forces in a huge battle on the ocean.

Cameron uses a clever tactic to avoid having the actors speak in Na'vi by using Jake's voiceover to explain that he has learned it well enough that it sounds like English and as he says it the Na'vi characters begin speaking English.  Cameron shows the RDA (Resources Development Administration) arriving by literally falling out of the sky much better armed than before and immediately start ruining the forest.  We learn the Earth is dying and the RDA this time has to make Pandora habitable for humanity, but like many careless humans, they are mistreating the land they wish to occupy.  After a year of fighting there is a suspenseful scene in which Jake and Neytiri have to fight Quaritch's soldiers to free their kids but Quaritch's son Spider remains captured.  

The second act slows the pace down as the particularly the kids from both clans mix badly and play nasty pranks on each other.  One of the most interesting touches is the Metkayina are a little lighter skinned with a tone closer to the water.  The cinematography by Russel Carpenter really distinguishes itself in this section as the camera moves from above to below water providing clear images of both in a way rarely shown in films.  Usually water sequences are usually either completely above or below the water.  Since they are on the ocean, in which Lo'ak, one of Jake's kids, is stranded in a scary sequence but saved by a Tulkun named Payakan which is Pandora's version of a whale.  The scene in which Lo'ak wakes up on the whale to discover it has a hook in it is heartbreaking.  Cameron, who is known for his environmental activism, could be accused of engaging in a campaign to save the whales as it can be risky creatively to pursue causes onscreen (see Superman IV) but he manages to humanize them.  A subsequent sequence in which the whalers hunt and kill another Tulkan (which Quaritch orders to force the Metkayina who see the Tulkan as a spirit animal, to give up Jake, who he knows is hiding in the area) is impressively produced and horrifying.  The human scientists who engage in the hunt are wisely portrayed as professional (and give some interesting insight on the Tulkan) but disconnected from the inhumanity of it.   

Cameron even gives Payakan a backstory in which he was expelled from tribe for attacking whalers who killed his mother.  This could seem hokey but Payakan is presented as sensitive and his protective instincts come in handy during the third act.  

The most memorable of the Meykayina clan is Ronal, played by an unrecognizable Kate Winslet.  Winslet had famously declared she would never work again for Cameron after some of his demands on the Titanic set but I am happy they made amends as she makes Ronal a counterpoint to Neytiri, a fierce female wife of a chief who is really the one who runs the tribe.  

The logic of Quaritch's quest for Jake is questionable.  Jake was leading the insurgency against the RDA until they went into hiding to protect his family.  With Jake out of the way why is Quaritch wasting all the RDA resources to hunt for him instead of focusing on colonizing the planet?  Does Quaritch really want revenge that badly that he is willing to risk the entire mission?  Quaritch is ruthless but he's also sensible.  If Jake had stayed behind and sent his family to the ocean (and continued occasionally engaging with Quaritch) this conflict might have made more sense.  

Quaritch has some interesting scenes with Spider who despite being human knows much more about the Na'vi than Quaritch who actually has their body.  Quaritch actually draws from Jake's modus operandi "A father protects" when he interrupts Spider's interrogation and learns more about his son, though Spider's capture is what propels Jake to leave the area since Spider knows their hideout.  Jack Champion plays Spider who is made to look like a young Tarzan.  

The third act shows that time has dulled none of Cameron's abilities for action filmmaking.  There is a terrific face off across the water before the fighting starts and the battle itself distinguishes itself from the first film's due to the different setting.  My only gripe is that Cameron uses the same device (Quaritch has again captured the kids) as in the first act which is repetitive though this time one of the kids, Neyteyam, is actually killed in the subsequent fighting.  Cameron often kills off protagonists in his films as the price for success but I was surprised he went this far, although Neyteyam has been presented as a good fighter.  It also leads to a strong moment where Jake and Neytiri, who have been at odds throughout the film (possibly channeling Cameron's own past marital difficulties-he has been married five times-though remains friendly with his exes) tells Neytiri that he needs her to fight to save their other kids.  Soldana really digs into portraying Neytiri's maternal ferocity but goes a step too far when she threatens Spider's life when Quaritch does the same to Kiri. This does set up the moment in which Spider saves the drowning Quaritch after Jake defeats him in a brutal knife fight that feels more immediate than their hardware focused face off in the first film.  The finale of the climax puts all the key characters back into a sinking ship which feels a little reminiscent of Titanic.  

The score is by Simon Franglen who worked as an arranger on the first Avatar under James Horner who sadly was killed in a air crash in 2015.  Franglen builds on Horner's themes but overall I found the score less memorable than the first Avatar.  

I questioned why Cameron kept Quaritch alive other than to have Spider save him in a sign of his understandable mixed loyalties.  I feel the character has been played out and Cameron will need a new villain for one or two of the remaining three films.  I also wonder what the next environment will be.  Cameron is using Pandora in part to encourage people to take better care of the earth.  The first film was in the forest and the second was in the ocean (as was Cameron's film The Abyss).  I wonder where the next one will be set and what new clans we will meet.  

This was a fun trip back to Pandora and I look forward to seeing what Cameron decides to show us next.  ****