Movie Review: 'Avatar The Way of Water' is Just Not For Me

Avatar The way of Water (2022)

Directed by James Cameron

Written by James Cameron, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver

Starring Sam Worthington, Stephen Lang, Sigourney Weaver, Kate Winslet, Zoe Saldana

Release Date December 16th, 2022

Published December 19th, 2022

It's not that Avatar The Way of Water is a bad movie, far from it, this is an incredibly accomplished movie. I just don't care. I can't get emotionally invested in the Avatar franchise. James Cameron's obsession with replacing human actors with CG creations leaves me cold. Without a human face to connect to, I'm left adrift amid the spectacle of Avatar The Way of Water. I can appreciate the technical accomplishment but I can't enjoy Avatar The Way of Water the way I have enjoyed so many more worthy, thoughtful. human movies such as Aftersun or Everything Everywhere All at Once, or even Women Talking, a movie that is more poignant than enjoyable but you get what I am saying.

Where Avatar is a massive technical achievement, it's not a great movie. It's a machine tooled product and no matter how well made that product is, it's inert, it is as compelling as a really great looking appliance. I appreciate the beauty of a streamlined refrigerator with a neat LED readout and connection to my smartphone, but it's not something I am going to think about much beyond my purchase of it. Eventually, it recedes into the scenery, leaving no lasting memory. That's Avatar the Way of Water in a nutshell.

Avatar The Way of Water is set nearly two decades after the first film. The story finds the Sully family, headed up by former human turned Na'vi leader, Jake Sully, thriving in their forest home until the 'sky people' return. The sky people have come back to Pandora not to retrieve more 'unobtainium' but rather to conquer Pandora and make it the new Earth. That's the background story anyway, the main story involves reviving the late Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), by placing his memories into a Na'vi Avatar and sending him to kill the biggest threat to humanity's plan, Jake Sully.

Thinking that he can protect the Na'vi best by leaving, Jake packs up his family, including his wife, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), sons, Netayam (Jamie Flatters) and Lo'ak (Britain Dalton), and daughter Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss). Also joining the Sully's will be their adopted daughter, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), the miracle child of the late Dr. Grace Augustine (Also Sigourney Weaver). The fewer questions asked about Kiri's origin story, the better, I'm pretty sure not even James Cameron could explain it.

The Sully's run off to live with the water dwelling people of Pandora, led by Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and his wife, Ronal (Kate Winslet). Here, the Sully's will learn to swim and to live off of the bounty of the ocean. They will be treated as outcasts while slowly earning their place in the tribe and blah, blah, blah. There is nothing new here, every inch of this portion of the movie is a trope from other fish out of water movies about new people in new situations.

The only innovation comes in the introduction of a group of super-intelligent whales. I loved the whales. They were beautiful and one of them has the best overall arc of any character in the movie. The whales are considered family to the water people of Avatar and the movie does well to underscore the connection between the space whales and the water based aliens. There are names for all of these species but I didn't retain them. As I said earlier, I can't care enough to care about such details in this movie. But, that doesn't mean these details weren't good. The space whales rule.

There are plenty of good things about Avatar The Way of Water but dialogue is not one of those things. Avatar The Way of Water features some of the most insipid, vapid, and dimwitted dialogue in any movie this year. As an example, the pseudo-word 'Bro' is used more in this movie than in your average college frat house. Why Cameron thought having his big blue aliens talk like your average High School Football player after suffering a minor head injury is truly baffling. It's one of the biggest reasons why I can't begin to care about Avatar The Way of Water.

The final act of Avatar The Way of Water threatens to become genuinely rousing until more of that vapid dialogue arrives and my eyes rolled to the back of my head. Saccharine platitudes about how 'our family is our fortress' and other such piffle made it impossible for me to care about anything in the movie. That's a shame because some of the action in the final act is pretty good. James Cameron is a very good technical director, he stages his CGI nonsense very well. He can do things with his CG characters that cannot be done with human actors and that helps in creating some dynamic action. I never cared about any of it, but it was visually dazzling. I guess.

Look, if you enjoyed Avatar The Way of Water, I am not here to tell you you are wrong or your opinion is invalid. I just don't feel the same way about it. I saw someone compare Avatar to Star Wars and that's valid in that both are massive spectacles. I prefer Star Wars in part because of nostalgia but also because among the spectacle there are human characters who I identified with and felt an emotional connection to. The dialogue they spout is nearly as silly as that of Avatar but is improved by being delivered by real actors who invest the vapid dialogue with a hint of charm that is lacking desperately in Avatar The Way of Water. That doesn't make the comparison invalid nor does it make Star Wars a better movie. It's just a preference I have versus your preference for Avatar. That's cool. Do you.

I'm going to go watch The Empire Strikes Back, you enjoy your Avatar The Way of Water. We can both go on with our lives.

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