“I finally saw Avatar, and I thought it lived up to the hype!” -Carl Lorthner, circa 2010
Avatar and Avatar 2: The Way of the Water will never make the AFI Top 100, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t enjoy it, so here is my first goofy review about a movie I will probably only ever see one time.
Avatar 2: The Way of the Water is quite the spectacle. After about three years of a global pandemic, I was fearful going to the movies was going to be a thing of the past. I’m still a bit weary of the future of the industry, but maybe the theater experience will be preserved if not for the small indie film, maybe for the big tentpole action film that has to be seen in IMAX 3D with a crowd of people hooping and hollering. That experience is clearly not going away.
What is so funny to me about the Avatar franchise is the plot of the movie TRULY does not matter. This film exists to put you in another world and enjoy the experience. I’ve seen a lot of movies both at home and in theaters, and sometimes the big blue aliens have to be on the biggest screen you can find.
The plot of Avatar 2: The Way of the Water is secondary to the experience of the world. In the TLDR format, Jake Sully and his family of Na’vi are being hunted down by the Avatar reincarnation of Colonel Miles Quaritch who is hellbent on capturing him. Sully and his family leave the forests and their tribe to find an aquatic tribe that is REMARKABLY similar in cultures of indigenous Polynesians. The family does their best to immerse themselves in the new culture as our antagonist tries to track them down.
I honestly cannot tell you what the final hour of the movie is about other than “big ass fight scene.” I will not give any spoilers (probably not even capable of it), but I am sure there will be sequels that will take us to the next group of indigenous people with cultures remarkably similar to ones we have on Earth (fingers crossed for a Mayan virgin killing subplot).
Maybe I’m being a bit overcritical on my film criticism blog, but I will say the imagery is captivating. The lulls in the plot are more than compensated by the visceral imagery of the world James Cameron has built. At times, it is breathtaking and transportive. I was skeptical going in about the appetite viewers would have for another Avatar movie some 12 years after the original… Apparently that appetite is to the tune of over $2billion, so what do I know?
If you have time, go see in theaters. It’s the only way to see it. If you can divorce the cultural appropriation aspect of the film franchise from your brain for a little over 3 hours, it’s truly an immersive experience that I do not think you can replicate at home (without the use of performance enhancing drugs). This movie is not going to win Best Picture at the Oscars, but it has as good of a chance on all the technical Oscars (cinematography, visual effects, sound, etc.) as anything I’ve seen in a long long time.
7.5/10
-Andrew
192 minutes
Only Available in Theaters
Very Unnecessary Film Reviews 