'The Way of Water' lives up to 'Avatar' legacy

Make sure you're rested with an empty bladder

Kirk Boxleitner | Dec 22, 20220

Courtesy photo count

Reef people Ronal (Kate Winslet) and Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) are among the new aquatic Na'vi whom moviegoers will meet in James Cameron's "Avatar: The Way of Water."

How does James Cameron expect this franchise to sustain three more films?

When I saw Cameron's first "Avatar" film in 2009, my reaction was similar to most reviewers and moviegoers.

Its immersive, richly realized visuals absolutely blew me away, but its story and characters felt like a ham-fisted mashup of "Dances With Wolves" and

"FernGully: The Last Rainforest."

The plotlines and relationship dynamics of "Avatar: The Way of Water" are more complicated and populous than the original film, but that doesn't actually make them more complex or nuanced.

Former human Marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), who fully integrated with his avatar at the end of the first film, is now raising an intersectionally blended family with his Na'vi wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), with young adult children who are both human and Na'vi, and include their own biological offspring and the surviving orphans of two characters who died in the first film.

But when humanity returns to the planet Pandora, because Earth is dying, Sully's family must abandon their arboreal tribe, and hide from being hunted by the humans, by seeking anonymity among an aquatic tribe of Na'vi.

Because the consciousness of Sully's dead mentor-turned-enemy, Marine Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), has been downloaded into his own Na'vi avatar, all the better to track down and exact revenge against the Sullys, especially when Quaritch captures his own now-teenaged human son, nicknamed "Spider" (Jack Champion), so that the feral junior Quaritch can teach his father the ways of the Na'vi people.

Oh, and one of Sully's sons bonds with a sentient whale, who's been outcast by his species for what they consider to be an unjustified murder when he retaliated against human whalers for killing his mother, just in case enough else wasn't already happening.

Cameron is earnest but entirely unsubtle in conveying his messages about the strength of mothers, the emotional bonds of family regardless of whether they share the same blood, the necessity of environmental stewardship, and the respect that's owed to the inherent sanctity and interconnectedness of all forms of life.

None of these are bad moral themes, and contrary to those who complain about popular entertainment going "woke," I'm not opposed to a bit of preaching in my popcorn blockbusters, since I cheered on the crew of the Enterprise when they rescued humpback whales from extinction in "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home."

Except even the Enterprise crew knew when to deploy some much-needed levity, whereas the closest that the "Avatar" films have to Han Solo, deflating the operating pomposity of the "Star Wars" films, is Stephen Lang as the villainous Quaritch, who remains the best character in the "Avatar" franchise, and steals every scene he's in with his rueful, hardened sarcasm.

Cameron desperately wants us to take the "Avatar" saga super-seriously, and such undisguised need is self-sabotaging.

When the alien whale's songs were translated into English via subtitles, it provoked several bursts of disbelieving, ill-timed laughter in the theater where I saw the film.

Having covered this film's dramatic weaknesses, let me transition to its technical strengths.

Everything that Cameron knows how to do well visually is on display here, from the fetishization of futuristic military hardware and pyrotechnic action sequences of his two "Terminator" films and "Aliens," to the staggering scale, disastrous spectacles and primal drowning terrors of "The Abyss" and "Titanic."

However underwritten their characters might be, Cameron draws out solid performances from quality actors, then enhances them with motion-capture computer-generated imagery.

I already expected an impeccable performance from Sigourney Weaver, but she delivered in ways I wasn't even anticipating by playing both Dr. Grace Augustine and Grace's teenage Na'vi daughter Kiri, and the sophistication of this film's motion-capture CGI enabled her to inhabit both roles credibly.

Cameron's motion-capture technology not only manages to bridge the gap of the Uncanny Valley, by lending entirely CGI characters almost viscerally tangible senses of substance and weight, but it also magnifies the natural idiosyncrasies of the actors' body movements and facial expressions, in ways that no computer program could manufacture from whole cloth on its own.

For Worthington, a strictly mediocre actor at best in live-action, the motion-capture zeroes in on his micro-expressions enough to improve his performance, uncovering attempts at sentiment that might have been missed otherwise.

For the rest of the cast, which includes proven acting talents like Kate Winslet and Cliff Curtis, the motion-capture turns their facial reactions into microcosms of emotion all their own.

And while filmmakers ranging from Steven Spielberg on "Jaws" to Kevin Costner on "Waterworld" have learned (the hard way) the folly of trying to shoot water on film, Cameron demonstrates an unparalleled deftness in not only shooting undersea vistas with multiple moving parts, but also capturing the detailed, dappled, shimmering interplay of sunlight with ocean depths.

The CGI character design likewise shows this film's commitment to in-depth world-building, as the aquatic Na'vi's bodies are depicted as having evolved to suit the seas, much like how their land-dwelling kin adapted to inhabit towering forests.

The aquatic Na'vi's skin tones are more aquamarine green than cool blue, with their tails and forearms grown thicker and flatter, to serve as flippers in the water, as they practice a form of sign language that allows them to communicate underwater.

If you're OK with turning off your brain and treating this film like a virtual-reality roller-coaster ride, it's worth paying the extra money to see it in IMAX and 3-D, but make sure you arrive well-rested and with an empty bladder, because this film lasts way too long, and I found myself fighting not to nod off during key scenes in the middle of its running time.

Turning to reader feedback, I recently received an email calling for me to focus more on streaming media, because a number of you rural residents live distantly enough from movie theaters that you're more likely to see films on TV or online than by going to a big screen.

While I still plan to catch certain films on the big screen, especially if it can generate more foot-traffic for local movie theater owners, I will take this request into account, but I would still encourage other readers to contact me about what they want to see in this space.