Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)
Directed by James Cameron
Avatar: The Way of Water is the sequel to Avatar (2009). A decade after the events of the first movie, we meet Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his mate Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) raising a family with four children. Their familial bliss, however, is interrupted by the arrival of the avatar clone of Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang), the main villain of the first film. His mission: Pacify the indigenous population of Pandora to make it a new home for humanity and, personally, avenge his death by taking out Sully and his family.
Cameron builds on his critique of colonialism and American exceptionalism with an environmental and anti-imperialist message, the humans being so vile that it’s fun to watch them die in the final battle. The message is incredibly clunky and on the nose, but some things don’t require subtlety (I guess). All of the things the movie shows us happened in real life to many indigenous tribes and their environment, the level of cruelty is not overstated, so the cathartic moment of the movie is seeing the colonists not succeed for once.
Lang has a lot of fun playing the villain and the Sully family has good chemistry. Simon Franglen’s soundtrack is appropriately epic, as are the reused pieces from late James Horner. However, the main character and what does all the heavy lifting are the visuals. The creature designs are creative and colorful, the environments, both forest and water islands, are beautiful, rich and teeming with life and the character designs are expressive and believably real. The visual style is a character of its own and deserves all the praise it gets and we have to thank the insanely talented team from WētāFX for that.
Like its predecessor, Avatar: The Way of Water is a mediocre movie in an amazing technicolor dream coat. The ideas are not original, but executed with such vehemence that it’s hard to stay mad at their shallowness for long. The visuals are amazing and the characters likable enough. All in all, a solid blockbuster.