In the 13 years since AVATAR grossed billions, won Oscars and became one of the biggest movies ever, I’ve never heard anybody say that they couldn’t wait for a sequel. Have you? I mean, despite its brand, James Cameron’s blue people utopian epic appears to have no real fanbase. Whenever I see it posted about on social media, the comments are usually negative; when my film buff friends in my feeds post pictures of their movie memorabilia, I never see any AVATAR stuff; and in all my conversations about movies in the dozen years, I’ve never heard any interest, or speculation about what would happen in a follow-up.
But here we are, after years of Cameron hammering away on unleashing a further franchise, with the second entry in the saga, AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER. But will it be an event movie with anything near the power of the first one’s release in December, 2009? Doubtfully, although I bet it’ll sill make major bank, because while it’s visually a stunning achievement with some of the most immersive cinematic 3D imagery I’ve ever experienced, it has one of the most un-immersive narratives I’ve ever experienced as well. In other words, ATWOW is a beautifully packaged big-ass bore.
Essentially, Cameron, co-writing with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver (who wrote the recent run of PLANET OF THE APES movies), has fashioned exactly the AVATAR sequel that one would expect beat-by-beat with Sam Worthington reprising his role as U.S.-marine-turned-tall-lanky-blue-alien Jake Sully, fighting to protect Pandora from another attack by who they call the “Sky People.”
Our blue lead, Worthington, and his wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) now with obnoxiously precocious – god, I hate when they hiss – kids (Jamie Flatters, Britain Dalton, Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), and a scruffy blonde human hang-around named Spider (Jack Champion), have to relocate after the evil clichéd Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), brings the RDA (the fictional Resources Development Administration) down on their Na’vi land to colonize and exploit the movie’s McGuffin (the Unobtanium for now!), a chemical that can halt aging (“it just stops it!” somebody says in an example of the screenplay’s sparkling banter).
The bulk of the film’s often unbearable middle third involves the blue fam assimilating with the aquatic green reef people that live on the Pandoran shores. That’s where we get a lot of pretentious talk about respecting the liquid life ‘n such. The closest to entertained, and maybe a little touched, I was during these strained sequences, came from a subplot involving the second-oldest son’s friendship with a whale-like sea creature, but even that was over-earnestly tinged with cringe.
The green people of the Metkayina tribe, are headed by Cliff Curtis as Tonowari, and an unrecognizable Kate Winslet (first time ever in motion capture!) as Ronal, who help bring some gravitas to the ham-fisted dialogue that clunks through the meticulously crafted set-pieces, but like everything else, are merely additional decoration.
Sigourney Weaver returns in a weird way as a different character – Jake and Neytiri’s pregnant teenage daughter, Kiri – which I don’t want to understand, and there are human cameos by Giovanni Ribisi, Edie Falco, and Brendan Cowell, but the most wasted performance has to by Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords) as a corrupted biologist who has one good line (“That’s why I drink”).
Way before the halfway mark through three hours and 15 minutes, AVATAR 2 loses its eye-popping power, and morphs into a slog that I couldn’t shake no matter what the spectacle-ambitious Cameron kept throwing at me. Amazing effects, and innovative state of the art designs just can’t disguise what a profoundly unengaging, and just plain uninteresting experience this long-gestating, little-enthused about sequel is.
ATWOW was the first film in ages that I had to wear 3D glasses for (at a damn Lie-MAX too), and I think I’m deciding now that I’m not gonna do the same for AVATARs 3, 4, and 5 (due in 2024, 2026, and 2028). Maybe I’ll feel different in a few years, but right now, I’m pretty done with all this expensive blue blather.
More later…
