Superior sequel a spectacle like no other
Avatar: The Way of Water (M, 192 mins) Directed by James Cameron Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★★★1⁄2
It has been 13 years between drinks in this promised series. Which, by any standards, is a long time to wait for a sequel. And yet, those 13 years might just be Avatar: The Way of Water’s greatest ally. Sequels to blockbusters – especially ones as outrageously blockbustering as Avatar – are notoriously problematic.
At best, they are not much more than remakes of the original. And, at worst, they are demented loads of old wallop, rushed out to cash in, without any of the care and passion that went into making the first instalment work.
But by waiting 13 years, James Cameron really does have a new story to tell us, new characters to work with – and a whole box of new film-making wizardry to unpack, out there in Miramar and beyond.
The Way of Water puts us back on Pandora in the years after the ‘‘Sky People’’ – that’s, err, us – have been mostly kicked off the planet and sent back to Earth.
At home, Sully and Neytiri (Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldañ a) have been making busy with those glowy tails, and have teenagers of their own, plus a mysterious daughter they have adopted.
A new invasion of, y’know, us, threatens, complete with an ingeniously resurrected Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) and our hero family are forced to go on the run to protect the Na’vi society who have taken them in.
And as the trailer and the title have told you, that leads straight to another – green-hued – Na’vi nation, who are to the ocean what the original blue-toned Na’vi were to the forest. Cliff Curtis and Kate Winslet are the leaders of the clan that the Sully family must seek refuge with.
What works here, works incredibly well. The script is approximately a billion times better than the original.
The story is fuller, the characters are better rounded, the Pasifika influence on the look and kaupapa of this new Na’vi world is worn lightly and well – and the dialogue, occasionally at least, sounds like something that someone might actually say in real life.
Meanwhile, Cameron’s great and well-documented love of our oceans and sealife finds a terrific expression in the design and execution of the last two-thirds of the film, which are set almost entirely on – or beneath – the sea.
The spirituality of Avatar might sound like something you would find on a poster in a house bus, but the ecology and biodiversity of Pandora has always been beautifully realised and thought through.
Even if I occasionally tired of the storytelling in The Way of Water, I could have stared at the screen – drinking in the design and craft of the film – for days.
It has always been a tension in the Avatar universe, that it should promote such an anti-technology vision of paradise, but be brought to life by such a massive flex of computing power and raw capitalism.
If Cameron’s final argument is that it takes a utopia to create a dystopia – and vice-versa – and that the two can only exist to keep each other in balance, then I’m absolutely onboard to hear him make it.
With two instalments in 13 years, having any sort of opinion about Avatar as a series is pointless. But I think I enjoyed The Way of Water a lot more than the first film.
Whether it really is betterwritten and even more skilfully brought to the screen – or whether I’ve just become less of a cynical brat in the intervening years – is hard to say. Possibly, it’s a bit of both.
I do know that at the end of 2019, I tried the Avatar: Flight of Passage ride at Disney World in Florida and that was the most affecting and moving artificially-induced experience I ever hope to have.
So maybe I was just feeling better disposed towards Cameron’s universe already.
Avatar: The Way of Water is a collection of ideas and influences.
The first third nods so clearly at Michael Mann’s The Last of The Mohicans that Cameron includes a brief shot and a line of dialogue to acknowledge the debt.
By the final act, Cameron is drawing ideas and imagery from everything from Apocalypse Now to his own Titanic.
But this is a film that can stand alone.
On a really, really big screen, well-rested and in a cheerful frame of mind, you might even think it is one of the most spectacular and impressive examples of filmmaking you have seen in your life.
Avatar: The Way of Water is now screening in cinemas nationwide.