My take on 'Avatar: The Way of Water'

Saw 'Avatar:  The Way of Water" last night.

Before I get into my thoughts on the movie, let me preface by saying that the show I was about to watch was being compromised by 20 minutes of relentless COMMERCIALS.  Drug commercials, car commercials, tech commercials... with ATWOW being in excess of three hours long, sitting through this many commercials was making us pissed off.  It put a lot of us in a mood that was not exactly favorable before the movie even got to start.  This was the longest, most painful length of time we had to wait before the movie started.  Once the film began to roll, after waiting over 20 minutes, we now had over three hours still to come.  This shit is insane and needs to stop.  We pay enough money as it is for two tickets in 3D to have to be subject to relentless commercials.  I'd be a bit better about it if I knew the commercials helped lower the ticket prices, but that'll never, ever be the case.

SO... that being said, ATWOW started, and it's back to Pandora ten years later, and Jake Sully and Neytiri now have a family.  I don't want to give too much away, but the first length of the film is primarily on the familiar grounds of the planet we saw in the first instalment.  A familiar villain rears his new, ugly head, as he and his amassed army begin the hunt for Jake, in what appears to be more or less a revenge tale.  There is another plot device involving hunting a whale-type species which have fluids deep in their bodies that actually halt human ageing, making just a test tube of the stuff ridiculously valuable not unlike the unobtanium mineral that was so sought after in the first movie.  The military are painted as being a vile, greedy, cocky bunch that, not unlike in the first film, kind of mirrors the Persian Gulf wars era in our recent history.  Earth, they explain, is nearly finished as a habitable planet because we basically ransacked the place since the industrial revolution.  

Jake is now older, mature and tougher ten years on in the saga.  Neytiri is his stalwart wife, and their family continues on in the ways of the Omatikaya, until inevitably the "sky people" (humans) show up and once again ravage the land as Jake is being hunted for his sins against humanity.  This section of the film is engaging and fun to look at, but has an air of deja vu and been-there-done-that - but, is necessary to prime the viewer for what comes later.  The clan wind up relocating themselves to another section of the planet, where the indigenous clan there is more privy to the waters and oceanic life it inhabits.  They've even actually evolved physically to deal with their surroundings.  This is where the film really leaves the ground - or sinks, in this case, but in the best way possible.  I've never seen visuals this astounding since the last Avatar flim, but this even exceeds what we saw then.  In true Cameron form, the story wrenches at the heart at times, getting you attached to characters and leaving you wondering ultimately whether or not all of them will survive to the end of the story.  For the vast majority of what you see, the CGI is virtually indistinguishable from the practical.  And not once did I feel like I was watching some kind of animation.

The quibbles with the show I have are minor - I found the score to be lacking in the absence of James Horner, who composed the music for the original film, but died a few years ago.  So Cameron hired who was essentially Horner's understudy, Simon Franglen, to fill in.  And 'fill in' is kind of all he really did.  The music doesn't ruin the film for sure, but neither does it stand out the way James Horner used to make it.  It's altogether forgivable, though, because Horner is a pretty high bar to clear.  Another bit of a problem I had was the action... as great as it is to watch, it kind of follows the Marvel credo of cramming perhaps too much into the screen, leaving whatever important things there are to see kind of lost in the mix, or detracted from.  But it's hard to fault Cameron for wanting to give the audience their money's worth, and he sure as hell does in this movie.  It's just that some of the things here don't resonate the way you'd hope because of the excess busy-ness.  One last gripe is the Na'vi people - I found them sometimes hard to distinguish, and confusing to connect names and bios to.  Still, by the end of the film, you feel like you've made at least some connection with the characters, and with how absolutely gorgeous this film looks, you'll want to go back again to re-watch what you liked, and wind up seeing what you missed the first time in the process.  I should add, too, the marine life, in particular the whale species, steals the show.

All in all, it's good to see Cameron back in the saddle again building more spectacle like no other filmmaker can quite do.  I look forward to more Avatar chapters in the near years ahead.