Weekend Watch: Avatar: The Way Of Water

James Cameron's blue period continues

Image Credit: 20th Century Studios

Welcome to the latest edition of Weekend Watch, in which I recommend (or occasionally warn against) movies or TV shows I’ve been checking out. This week, James Cameron invites us back to Pandora. Follow James on Twitter: @jamwhite

If I were a betting man – and I’m not all that much, mostly Ghostbusters or James Bond-themed slot machines – I would never bet against James Cameron. He’s been counted out more than once, and still managed to make some of the most respected, beloved and, in a couple of cases, successful films in the world.

So even as the wags and the jokers claim that 2009’s Avatar had little lasting cultural impact and that no one cares about the sequel, which has taken 13 years to arrive, it’s best not to pre-judge anything he does.

The story picks up more than a decade after the first film and kicks off with an expositional montage catching us up with what Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) have been doing since we last saw them in the first movie on the moon known as Pandora. They’ve been busy since Jake fell for Neytiri, began living life as an “Avatar” version of her native people and helped them see off the human interlopers who were strip-mining the world.

Our central pair has had a family, blended between their own hybrid teenage boys and young girl and a teen girl they adopted who was mysteriously birthed by the late Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver, who thanks to performance capture, plays the teen here). There’s also Spider (Jack Champion), a human kid left behind by his species’ retreat who was raised by the Na’vi-friendly scientists who stayed on Pandora but spends most of his time with Jake’s brood.

When the human forces return to Pandora and threaten the family’s forest-dwelling tribe, Jake and Neytiri take the kids and flee to sanctuary with the Metkayina clan, a water tribe led by Cliff Curtis’ Tonowari and Kate Winslet’s Ronal. It’s a naturally awkward fit at first, Jake and co. needing to adapt to the skills needed in water, which leads to drama between the two tribes, particularly the young ‘uns.

But that takes second position to the threat from Stephen Lang’s Colonel Miles Quaritch – who, despite dying in the first movie, is back as a “recombinant” (a dead human’s memories implanted into an Avatar), who is burning with a desire for revenge against Jake.

The stage is set, then, for another epic confrontation, though Cameron here chooses to keep things more intimate. Instead of waves of Na’vi dealing with masses of human troops and tech, it’s a smaller-scale conflict on two fronts: Quaritch’s grudge and the Avatar version of whalers, who are harvesting a precious raw material from sea creatures that the water tribe consider special.

Given his love of oceans (and deep diving), it’s hardly surprising that it would have seeped into his storytelling over time. Witness The Abyss or his sea-set documentaries. The Way Of Water dives deeply into the idea, presenting the waters of Pandora as a bioluminescent cornucopia of flora and fauna. Like the first film, the vistas and creatures are the movie’s big selling point, and the characters have also evolved, seeming ever more real. There are moments here that make seeing the film on the biggest screen possible a must.

Unfortunately, while the visuals remain some of the best in the business, the flaws of the first film are also magnified here. If Avatar followed a heroic narrative like it was keeping to a blueprint, the sequel expands out to bratty family dynamics and the cheesiest dialogue this side of a Ritz cracker ad.

Even having set up a writers’ room to figure out the sequels (The Way Of Water is also credited to Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver), the script lags far behind the design and effects in the innovation stakes. You can certainly argue that Cameron is going for archetypal stories (and he still focuses on character, even if the narrative here is disappointingly bland). Still, while it’s enough of a foundation to support the astounding imagery, there are too many eye-rolling cliches to ignore completely.

Whether you dash out to see this in cinemas mostly depends on your feelings towards the first movie. But the spectacle alone is worth seeing. Event movies rarely come this big, but don’t expect everything to match that scale.

Avatar: The Way Of Water is in US and UK cinemas now.