Review of the IMAX film ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ (2022)

This film is the sequel of the film Avatar (2009), happening at the fictitious moon Pandora.

SPOILER ALERT. Revelations are told about Avatar: during the film Avatar Grace Augustine and Miles Quaritch die, Neytiri does not, and Jake Sully gets his mind permanently moved to his avatar. At the end, humans are forced to leave the planet, save for a selected few. That’s it.

In years following the events shown at the film Avatar, not necessarily the thirteen years passed between films, Jake Sully, now one of the Na’vi, starts a family with Neytiri. Their hybrid, five-fingered descendants are teenage boys Neteyam and Lo’ak and little girl Tuktirey, joined by the adopted teenage Kiri, born from the avatar of doctor Grace Augustine after her death. The four youngsters are frequently joined by Miles ‘Spider’ Socorro, the teenage son of deceased Miles Quaritch.

At the beginning of the film, people from Earth come back to Pandora in great numbers. Too strong to be challenged in battle, they set a new base and start new operations. Instead of continuing the search for room-temperature superconductor Unobtanium, they hunt Tulkun, whale-like creatures that contain Amrita, a priceless substance that stops ageing. It seems that every Avatar film is to justify the human presence on Pandora with a different reason, as some kind of running joke.

Humans also launch Project Phoenix: it turns out that human memories can be stored, and memories from colonel Miles Quaritch and some of his subordinates are transferred to new avatars. Jake Sully now has equals to fight as they enter Na’vi territory. After a first encounter with them, Jake realizes that Avatar Quaritch is all set to hunt him and his family, so he chooses to avoid conflict, leave the Omatikaya clan and flee to an archipelago where they can find shelter amongst the Metkayina Clan. The main part of the film is about the Sully family adapting themselves to this different environment and people, with the teenagers going through first-time experiences.

Same as the original film, this one has an obvious ecological message. Human are portrayed as wasters of resources who respect nothing in their way to money. Well, that’s not inaccurate. As opposed to that, the Na’vi are portrayed as living in tribes, in balance with nature. This is what got the original Avatar to be called by many ‘Dancing with wolves in space’.

No matter how alien they are and how different they look, the Na’vi are recognizably human, even archetypical. Tribes, customs, rites of passage: Pandora is just a new set for the oldest story. Not much original, but certainly done in an appealing way. There is something contradictory in the Metkayina though: sometimes pacifists, sometimes warriors – it seems that by the time the writers made up their mind, the film was already done.

Cameron’s storytelling goes in the usual way. In spite of the science-fiction premise, his attention to detail makes the film believable and his realism allows for credible, brilliant action sequences. As for his direction of actors, it continues not to be good, but with a distinction: performances of human characters are not well directed, but performances of Na’vi characters, not only voiced by actors but also played with movement-capture suits and helmets so the computer-generated characters reflect the actor’s performance, are really good. As for dialogues, typically for a Cameron film, they are straight to the point rather than subtle, but the good job of the writers achieves to make them both simple and effective.

The film is visually brilliant, mixing real image and computer-generated graphics in a carefully crafted, although not seamless, mix. The surface of the sea has a realistic appearance with both computer-generated and real images. The 3D is a conversion done without actual 3D filming, which makes sense since most things on the screen are computer-generated, and the result is nevertheless brilliant and worthwhile to watch. As for the IMAX version, it looks astonishing: one of the IMAX films with the most detailed, spectacular images so far, and worthwhile to watch. The music from Simon Franglen is adequate and good, although not brilliant.

Time for the acting. Weak performances from Brendan Cowell, Jack Champion and Trinity Jo-Li Bliss. Good performances from Sam Worthington, Stephen Lang, Kate Winslet, Sigourney Weaver, Jemaine Clement, Jamie Flatters and Filip Geljo. Brilliant performances from Zoe Saldaña, Cliff Curtis and Britain Dalton.

All in all, an excellent science-fiction/action film, 4 out of 5. It comes close to be a masterpiece, with the script being the main shortcoming – too many déja vus, too many times when the situation is reverted to a previous state so the spectator feels that the story is repeating, beginning with the return of the humans at the beginning of the film, and ending with the many back-and-forths in the final scene that seems to never end.

Title:	Avatar: The Way of Water
Genre:	Science-fiction
Year:	2022
Nationality:	United States
Colour:	Colour
Director:	James Cameron
Writer:	James Cameron, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Josh Friedman, Shane Salerno
Cast:	Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Kate Winslet, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Edie Falco, Brendan Cowell, Jemaine Clement, Jamie Flatters, Britain Dalton, Trinity Jo-Li Bliss, Jack Champion, Bailey Bass, Filip Geljo, Duane Evans Jr., Giovanni Ribisi, Dileep Rao, Matt Gerald, Robert Okumu, Jennifer Stafford, Keston John, Kevin Dorman, Alicia Vela-Bailey, Sean Anthony Moran, Andrew Arrabito, Johnny Alexander, Kim Do, Victor Lopez, Maria Walker, Phil Brown, Jocelyn Christian, Joel Tobeck, Moana Ete, Phil Peleton, Jamie Landau, Jim Moore, Benjamin Hoetjes, Nikita Tu-Bryant, Anthony Ahern, Shane Rangi, Rick Lucas, Tanya Drewery, Ava Diakhaby, Isaac Te Rina, Eric Farmer, Philip Mtambo, Daniel Lough, Cruz Moir, Alex Lucas, Scarlett Fernandez, Chloe Coleman, Jeremy Irwin, Devereau Chumrau
Producer:	James Cameron, Jon Landau
Executive producer:	Richard Baneham, Peter M. Tobyansen, David Valdes
Production designer:	Dylan Cole, Ben Procter
Cinematographer:	Russell Carpenter
Film editor:	David Brenner, James Cameron, John Refoua, Stephen E. Rivkin
Casting:	Margery Simkin
Art Director:	Robert Bavin, Alister Baxter, Simon Bright, Andrew Chan, Steve Christensen, Sarah Delucchi, Steven Light-Orr, Andy McLaren, Ben Milsom, Rudie Schaefer, Sam Storey, Ken Turner
Set Decorator:	Vanessa Cole
Costume Designer:	Bob Buck, Deborah L. Scott
Music:	Simon Franglen, James Horner
Running time:	192 minutes
Language:	English, Na’vi