Review of ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ — a Stunning but Superficial Spectacle

A Totally Reel Movie Review

Rate It Out of Eight

5.5/8

I went in to Avatar: The Way of Water with low expectations. After all, the first one can be summed up as a Pochontas story with blue people, though without the catchy music of Disney’s 1995 movie. After 13 years, Avatar is suddenly relevant again, competing with other nostalgia cash cows of recent years like Spider-Man No Way Home, Top Gun: Maverick, Jurassic World, and Lightyear.

All that said, I actually liked Avatar: The Way of Water. The underwater sequences were incredible and I could’ve watched an entire (normal length) movie of the Sully family swimming and adapting to the new world. Sequels expand on existing universes and bring in new characters — which this movie does, passing the bare minimum bar. The underwater world of Pandora is ethereal and makes global warming an even sadder reality. However, that’s about where the positive ends.

If we take out the flashy CGI, we’re left with a subpar, predictable story that reads like a patchwork of generic fantasy/sci-fi movies. The characters were also flat and underdeveloped, which is impressive considering this movie is almost 3.5 hours. If either the story or the characters were even marginally better written, it would’ve elevated the movie so much more.

Style Over Substance

Like the first Avatar movie, James Cameron prioritized flashy CGI and ground-breaking technology over depth of characters. The plot of this sequel is essentially the same as the first — Quaritch vs. Jake Sully and throw in some thinly veiled anti-imperialist/anti-capitalist critiques. The fact that the writers literally revived the dead antagonist instead of writing a new one is peak laziness.

I have nothing against tried-and-true formulaic plots. It’s not necessary to deviate from existing tropes in the genre to make a great movie. The “alien species/colonizer/invader” plot has made for successful franchises like Alien and Dune. But I do have a problem with writers recycling the same plot from the original movie and adding nothing new. Jake’s kids could have been erased from the movie and nothing much would change since Quaritch is solely focused on getting revenge on Jake.

Sequels get a bad rap because there’s a lot they need to do. They need to:

• Do some heavy world building
• Introduce new characters and/or develop existing one
• Move the overall plot of the franchise forward by upping the stakes
• And leave on an open-ended note to set up the rest of the movies.

More often than not they fail — all of the Disney straight to DVD sequels of the 1990s/early 2000s, Jurassic Park, Scream 2, etc. the list goes on. An example of a sequel done right is Shrek 2 — I’ve always liked it so much more than the original. I won’t go into the details, but this guy explains it so much better than I ever can. Point is, sequels often lose the charm that made the original so much fun, though surprisingly that is not the case here.

Avatar: The Way of Water is a decent sequel. It does a lot of world building, which for me was the strength of the movie. It did introduce new characters but none of them were particularly fleshed out, nor were either Jake, Neytiri, or Quaritch any more fleshed out than where we left them at the end of the original. Arguably Neytiri has even more reason to hate Quaritch and I can see a potential Neytiri vs. Quaritch plot point in the future (such as when he notices her distinct arrows). This movie does move the plot of the franchise forward by introducing the Metkayina clan and changing the setting/community of the rest of the movies. And of course, the movie leaves an open possibility that all but ensures the plot will be recycled for a third consecutive movie. At this point, I won’t be surprised if Quaritch becomes a literal cat with nine lives and goes on to star in nine Avatar movies.

Complex Characters or Cardboard Cutouts?

This movie could have redeemed itself from the unoriginal plot if it actually developed interesting characters. I love character-driven movies and I love when an ensemble cast is put to good use (e.g. Knives Out). James Cameron has such advanced performance capture technology and a talented cast. The younger cast members playing the Sully kids impressed me and did the best they could with what they had. The only two new characters who I thought were developed well were Lo’ak, the younger son of Jake and Neytiri, and Kiri, the Avatar daughter of Sigourney Weaver’s Grace. However, the movie did not develop the existing characters in any meaningful way.

The weakest part of the movie story wise is Quaritch. This is nothing against Stephen Lang’s performance, but the fact that this new incarnation of Quaritch brings nothing new. He could have been replaced by a cardboard cutout wielding a gun and the movie would have been no different (and much cheaper to produce). He is driven solely by his desire for revenge on Jake, which is a powerful motive. In the first movie, he was obsessed with mining the natural resources of Pandora yet in this one, he didn’t care at all about the vial of anti-aging liquid extracted from the whale-like tulkun. Maybe this tunnel vision isn’t that inconsistent with his character in the first movie; but it’s been 13 years, I’m not rewatching a 3 hour long movie.

Revenge movies work when the characters are complex, which unfortunately for the movie, is not the case here. Quaritch’s avatar himself admits he’s nothing more than a shell with the memories of Quaritch, but he is not the actual man. He spends maybe a total of 15 minutes on screen with his son, most of the time disgusting Spider with his brutality. Memento and Kill Bill are examples of movies with nuanced main characters. As an antagonist, Quaritch felt paper-thin and had as much depth as any Marvel phase 4 antagonist (with the exception of the one in Black Panther 2).

Even Neteyam’s death didn’t feel satisfying and the emotional aftermath didn’t feel earned. The movie focused on Lo’ak so much more than Neteyam and the only real impression of Neteyam is that he’s the dutiful, perfect eldest son (which we perceive through Lo’ak’s perspective). If anything, the character I’m most curious to see going forward is Spider. He also didn’t get a lot of screen time and he’s still so young and has so much growing up to do (physically, emotionally, mentally). However, there are a lot of hints that he might become a future antagonist or at least an anti-hero in the next three films.

A Marvel Movie with Actually Good CGI

In a nutshell, this movie felt like the typical overly-long Marvel movie that have been coming out since Avengers: Endgame. Take away the VFX and we’re left with a bare bones story that’s been inflated to fill up as much time as possible. I’ve been harsh in this review, but I do want to emphasize that I loved the underwater sequences and the Metkayina clan. The world of Pandora is phenomenal and I love the ride at Disney World, which has also helped me appreciate the original movie more. The CGI truly carries the entire movie. So much of it was just the Sully family learning to adapt and bonding with tulkun, which were my favorite parts of the movie. Plus, the movie does touch on themes of colonization, immigration, and physical discrimination. Overall it’s a much more stronger movie than the first.

It’s just a shame that the writing is so mediocre when the special effects are next level. If James Cameron had invested even marginally more of the $250 million budget to better scripts, the movie would easily be one of my top movies of the year.

As usual, some notable Letterboxd reviews