Film Review - Avatar: The Way of Water
Images courtesy of 20th Century Studios.
13 years after the first Avatar and an era of all-time box office domination, James Cameron's baby has emerged from the bathysphere once again in the long-delayed sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water. Taking place a little over a decade later, we once again follow Jake Sully and Neytiri along with their new family of 4 children whose names you probably won't remember, including adoptive child, Kiri, played by Sigourney Weaver, and a human boy, left behind on Pandora. When Earth's human forces return to launch a second attack, Jake and Neytiri seek refuge with the Metkayina people, a Na'vi race adapted to living amongst the reefs.
While the story and characters are again kind of middling, with the uncanny element of the definitely-not-teenaged Weaver playing a teenage character not really helping matters, the worldbuilding is even stronger this time round, and advances in technology make The Way of Water feel even more immersive and impressive than its predecessor. I've been joking all year that I don't even care if the movie is good, as long as it gives us some gorgeous screensavers, I'll be happy - and while the first 40 minutes or so did have me wondering whether the movie was actually good, thankfully upon its dive into the coastal reefs of Pandora, those concerns were quelled. The aquatic vistas are gorgeous and stunning, to the point where you can almost see the concept art behind certain shots. It's jaw-dropping to see a modern blockbuster so consistently breathtaking, and whilst I tried to gather cohesive and critical thoughts, even on a 2nd watch my honest reaction was largely just “holy sh*t”; my lizard brain activated as I witnessed Cameron putting the special back in special effects.
Yet, one minor caveat is that the high frame rate 48fps sequences are somewhat jarring to get used to, though for at least two thirds of the film's 193-minute runtime, they’re a welcome addition and add to the fluidity of the abyssopelagic visual storytelling. I would consider myself more attuned to high frame rate films than most, having spent a fair amount of time running films through a program that would use AI interpolation to run them at whatever framerate I desired (don't worry, I've seen the error of my ways, although I stand by that they greatly improved the Transformers films), and despite that, the choice to have only certain scenes rendered in HFR does occasionally make the jump in smoothness a bit jarring, for the mostpart seeming entirely random. If the film instead chose to reserve the 48fps jump for when we reach the ocean bound bulk of the film, it would've made much more sense - although who am I to tell James Cameron how to make a movie. I can see the approach here possibly being an attempt to warm audiences up to the technology so that they can appreciate when it does really work, but next time round, I hope Cameron commits to HFR, because going from 48 back to 24 often looked like the projector was having performance issues - not exactly ideal for the premium pricing associated with IMAX tickets.
Often feeling like a beat-for-beat retread of the first film but wet, and marred by some clunky performances & scriptwork (Spider, the aforementioned human boy, feels far too much like your typical edgy teen, not helped by how much it looks like he wandered onto set straight from the herbal elixirs stall at a doof), it’s a significant milestone that the much anticipated sequel works at all. While detractors of the first film will likely not be persuaded by Avatar 2: Aquatic Boogaloo's flashy 3D gimmicks, those on the fence or otherwise still in love with the first film (don't worry fellow Pandoraheads, Oel ngati kameie - I see you) will be pleasantly surprised to hear that not only was The Way of Water worth the wait, but it also surpasses the heights of the first film - offering both a tantalising peek at what’s to come, and an exhilarating piece of good, old-fashioned sci-fi blockbuster spectacle to boot.
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Avatar: The Way of Water is screening in cinemas from Thursday 15th December. For tickets and more info, click here.