‘Avatar: The Way of Water’: How James Cameron scales up the spectacle

Avatar: The Way of Water arrives 13 full years after James Cameron first introduced us to the fictional planet of Pandora in Avatar (2009). At the time, the intricate 3D technological achievements and the jaw-dropping worldbuilding signified, in many ways, a grammar for the future of the Hollywood sci-fi spectacle.

In the long-gestating Avatar 2, Cameron looks to expand the boundaries of his own vision by blending a striking visual quality (it helps that the filmmaker has a slew of advanced digital toolkits in his weaponry this time around) with trademark old-fashioned storytelling.

The transcendental power of filmmaking

The result is an immersive big-screen experience that feels nothing short of awe-inspiring. One thing is clear: Cameron doesn’t see Avatar 2 as just a film (more sequels are reportedly in the pipeline). In this post-Marvel, post-streaming era of disinterest, what Cameron is really demanding is the audience’s unwavering, uncompromised attention. In return, he goes out of his way to make us believe in the transcendental power of movie-making.

Even for a director who’s historically been at ease with sequels, it takes Cameron a fair bit of time before he finds his footing in Avatar 2. Exhausting and exhilarating in equal measure, the film runs for over three hours and sees Cameron move away from the sweeping views of Pandora’s forests and train his gaze to the bottom of the sea. We catch up with Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), the former marine who left his human form in the 2009 film to team up with his Na’vi partner Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and protect the land and its people.

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Now, a N’avi leader, Sully and Netiri have three kids: sons Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) and Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) and daughter Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss). The two are also guardians of their adopted daughter Kiri (Siigourney Weaver), whose mother is Dr Grace Augustine from the previous installment. T

The action in Avatar 2 starts when the Sully family bliss is ruptured with the arrival of the Na’vi version of Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stepehen Lang), who has his eyes set on exacting revenge from Jake for the death of his human form and colonise the planet by brute force. The emotional thread running through the film — beyond the big-screen action and spectacle — is the simplest question movies have asked us time and again: Does protecting your family come first or standing up to evil?

Laying the ground for future sequels

There’s not much to the film in terms of plot development although the screenplay is stacked to the brim with characters, incidents and misdirection. That seems expected given that five people are credited for the story and screenplay. Even more expected is the film’s narrative themes devolving into standard Cameron corniness, rendering the plot suitably bland. The filmmaker reaches for the most relatable emotions of love, family, friendship and loyalty so much so that the anti-establishment, anti-colonialism, and anti-military shades of the narrative ring hollow.

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The clunky dialogue, in particular, sticks out like a sore thumb and it seems as if the decade-long gap has done little to improve the filmmaker’s ear for dialogue. As a result, the film’s opening stretches and its climactic sequence ends up coming across as dissatisfying. By which I don’t mean to say that Cameron can’t pull off bombastic family sequences or melodramatic family drama (the lack of urgency though is hard to neglect). It’s just that these sequences have a “seen-before” filter to them, lacking the kind of imagination that Cameron insists we expect of him. After a point, the plot switches from being predictable to being soulless, given that large swathes of it are concerned only with exposition and table-setting for future sequels.

 Suffused with feeling

What you make of Avatar: The Way of Water depends largely on whether you’re inclined to give Cameron — the visionary filmmaker — the benefit of doubt. In that, the film proves that there are some things that Cameron gets right, he does so with faultless precision. The middle section of the film, for instance, is worth the price of admission alone. The sequel is teeming with sequences whose exquisite beauty will make your eyes pop. The filmmaker outdoes himself when it comes to setting vivid scenery: we are often submerged underwater, coming face-to-face with surreal creatures, fishes with oddly shaped fins and extravagant tentacles.

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In a way, the sense of amazement on the faces of the Sully family as they discover this alien paradise ends up mirroring our own. Of course it helps that the film’s astronomical budget and usage of high-frame-rate (sped-up 48 frames per second) ensures that the images are stunning in their hyper-realism. And it’s complemented by the kind of poetic, roving camerawork (by Russell Carpenter) that submits itself to the forces of the sea. (On dry land though, the high-frame-rate is at once off-putting, with a tendency to come in the way of the film).

While watching the film, I kept wishing that Cameron spent more time underwater. Sure it’s hard to sustain tension with breathtaking images for over three hours but then again, the film doesn’t exactly boast a sense of urgency anyway. I say that because, Avatar 2 doesn’t have to try hard to make you believe in its spectacle when it remains intimate and quiet. For, the sequel might struggle to conjure emotion, but it remains suffused with feeling. In these moments, it feels as if we’re floating in the movie while being gently submerged in it. It’s all too much and all too wonderful.