Pretty to look at but shallow deep, Avatar: The Way of Water advances the cinema experience to new heights, yet an atrocious script and strong anti-human bias results in an environmental revenge propaganda piece that is more jarring than engrossing.
Avatar: The Way of Water begins with human turned Navi, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his native Navi wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) living a life of domestic bliss on Pandora with their children Neteyam (Jamie Flatters), Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), and Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss). Also among their brood is Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), the Navi daughter of Dr. Grace Augustine (also Sigourney Weaver.)
When humans return to Pandora with a mission to terraform and colonize the planet, Sully and his family exile themselves to the reef tribes of Pandora to start a new life. Giving chase is Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephan Lang), the once deceased military commander now resurrected in the form of a Na’vi and hellbent on getting revenge.
There is no denying the visual marvel that is Avatar: The Way of Water. Director James Cameron’s dedication to creating an immersive cinema experience through new filmmaking technologies in visual effects and motion capture performance should be applauded. Yet after a 13-year-absence in which the Marvel Cinematic Universe took blockbuster filmmaking to new heights, and the Planet of the Apes series took motion capture performance to a whole new level, Avatar: The Way of Water generates a ripple rather than a splash in the current cinema landscape.
Cameron’s investment as a worldbuilder has severely diminished his ability as a storyteller. Despite employing five writers to work on Avatar: The Way of Water, Cameron cannot buy his way out of delivering a film plagued with poor dialogue, bland characters, and a nauseating “save the environment” message.
Where the first Avatar had a negative eye towards mankind with its Dances with Wolves inspired love story set on an exotic world, Avatar: The Way of Water goes full Extinction Rebellion in its portrayal of mankind as not only as the destructor of its own world, but the ravager of another.
The films human characters are portrayed as cruel, violent, and stubborn (which, coincidentally is how many describe Cameron’s behaviour when on set). Cameron’s representation of the marine characters in the film, led once again by the always formidable Stephan Lang, is almost comical in their cavalier brutality. An extended sequence, in which Quaritch leads a group of scientists on a hunt of Pandora’s whale species, feels more like a PDA from Sea Shepherd.
The result is something of a bizarro alien invasion movie. With Avatar: The Way of Water it is clear the threat is us. Where the Na’vi are shown as an almost perfect species that are in perfect sync with their environment, the human species - who are essentially refugees fleeing their dying planet – are pure agents of destruction.
It wasn’t always this way with Cameron. His two Terminator movies, in which time travelling future warriors protect present day mankind from a robot uprising, was not only filled with high stakes and engrossing storytelling, but presented humanity as worth saving. Somewhere between the Earth and the sea, Cameron had lost hope in mankind.
