Avatar: The Way of Water – Film Review
After 13 years, James Cameron has finally brought us the sequel to 2009’s Avatar, which is still the highest-grossing movie of all time. But is Avatar: The Way of Water worth the wait?
This sequel is set more than a decade after the original, which ended with human Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) permanently becoming one of the Na’vi, the indigenous people on the moon Pandora. He and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) now have four children and have formed an insurgent group to attack humans trying to colonise their world. When Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) starts hunting for Jake, the family decide the best way to save their tribe is to leave the forest and relocate to a reef community.
Avatar: The Way of Water is the most technically astounding film I have ever seen. Calling it visually stunning doesn’t quite do it justice – it is beautiful, awe-inspiring, magical, and spectacular – I think you get the idea! It is an astonishing CGI achievement and the ingenious world-building blew my mind. Cameron pushed the technical boundaries with the first one and he did so again here. He experiments with a higher frame rate, meaning some scenes run quicker than the standard 24 frames per second. The 48fps made the film look like a video game at times and it takes a while to get used to.
But there isn’t much substance under the flawless surface. There is hardly any story development or character depth, which is surprising considering the movie is 3 hours 12 minutes long. Admittedly, the film didn’t feel quite that long and I was never bored, but the runtime is excessive and unnecessary, especially considering how thin the story is. The film also isn’t very well written, and I was often perplexed hearing their half-human/half Na’vi son Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) say modern words like “bro”, “cuz” and “sick”. Where would he have learned those?!
That being said, the children are actually where the heart of the film lies. My particular favourite was Jake and Neytiri’s youngest child, the adorable Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), and their adopted teenage Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), who is the only character I felt any interest in. Saldana and Kate Winslet (as new character Ronal) are wasted in this film – I hope they get more to do in the next one – and Lang is a frustratingly 2D antagonist. We get it, you hate Jake Sully!
Avatar: The Way of Water is the most spectacular and visually beautiful film I have ever seen and one that deserves the big screen experience. However, you would think after 13 years they would have come up with a better story.
In cinemas from Friday 16th December and on Disney+ from 7th June
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