Event movies rule modern cinema’s box office roost. In fact, the average moviegoer is relatively unreliable unless they’re purchasing tickets to one of these event films, ie big budget blockbusters that are sequels in a long established series or continuities like the Marvel movies and the Top Gun: Mavericks of the world. These films are, by design, safe. By being sequels in long running franchises, audiences know beforehand what type of film they’re going to get. They have the expectation of having a good and fun time, something that audiences try to predict ahead of their trip to the movies. After all, attending the cinema is costly for a lot of American families (the upcharge on drinks, popcorn, and candy is absurd and almost beyond parody), everything is getting more expensive due to inflation (meaning that there’s less cash to go around), and the advent of streaming services allow viewers to tap into vast libraries of movies and tv shows from their living rooms, and with all these reasons combined, the average moviegoer has many justifications for their minimal trips to the cinema. The modern cinematic experience is prohibitively expensive, and given the ubiquity of streaming services, today’s moviegoer has fewer justifications to travel to a multiplex than ever before. Because why go to an expensive theater when you can just stream a film at home? Why go to the movies at all?
Unless, of course, the film in question is a big budget extravaganza from an established franchise and IP. A movie that is both a safe investment on the moviegier’s part and a form of popular entertainment that other people likely will see and discuss at the work place and amongst friends. In other words: an event movie.
Avatar: The Way Of Water is one such film. This recently released James Cameron directed science fiction movie is the sequel to the 2009 smash hit Avatar which was a cinematic adventure that conquered the box office and became one of the highest grossing films of all time. It was a movie that most people saw and have opinions about, meaning that it’s sequel that would likely achieve the same financial success and be of the same quality. Similar to a Marvel movie, Avatar: The Way Of Water is an event movie, and while James Cameron may scoff at the very notion of having his film be compared to Marvel’s output (he is one of the many auteur filmmakers who has criticized Marvel’s and Disney’s dominance over the theatrical business model in recent years), this doesn’t change the facts. Avatar: The Way Of Water has a lot of things in common with a Marvel Studios production. Even beyond it being a financially safe bet and a sequel to an established IP, Avatar: The Way Of Water mirrors other modern event movies by being a crowd pleasing theater going experience with a solid story (albeit one that’s too long) that is thoroughly enhanced by big budget spectacle. It features some absolutely stunning visuals and thoroughly enjoyable action even despite how its decent-but-not-great script prevents the film from being a wholly transformative artistic experience, making it the perfect embodiment of a modern event movie. Sure, Avatar: The Way Of Water is a great time at the theater (it’s visually one of the most beautiful movies I have ever seen and the big screen really amplifies the movie’s art style), but the film’s solid yet unspectacular narrative doesn’t reciprocate on that said visual majesty. Its story is supported by the exemplary visuals and world building rather than actually complimenting it.
This isn’t to say that the story itself is bad though. If anything, the plot and the character development are fine; it’s just not the actual reason as to why most people are going to watch this movie. Like don’t get me wrong, the movie has some interesting themes at work here, something that we can see when just describing Avatar: The Way Of Water’s story alone. Set on the picturesque sci-fi world of Pandora, the movie takes place roughly a decade and a half after the end the original film and follows Jake Sully (Sam Worthington): a former human soldier who turned his back on the human occupation of Pandora and sided with the Na’vi back in the first film. To recap that movie: the Na’vi are a race that are indigenous to the world of Pandora. As a species, they prioritize Pandora’s nature and peacefully commune with the world’s ecosystem which puts the race at odds with the RDA: a human occupation who prioritizes planet colonization, exploitation, and profiteering. Furthering humanity’s goal, the human military faction created Avatars which allowed human beings to control lab made Na’vi bodies that allow them to commune with other Na’vi and the world of Pandora itself. One of these Avatars was piloted by the aforementioned Jake Sully: a disabled military veteran who fell in love with the Na’vi Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), and by the end of the first movie, our conflicted protagonist Jake ultimately sided with the Na’vi and permanently transferred his consciousness into his Avatar. Thus becoming a Na’vi himself.
Avatar: The Way Of Water picks up about 15 years later. In that decade and a half, Sully became the chief of the Omaticaya clan and, alongside Neytiri, created a new family. The two had three biological kids in the perfect son Neteyam (Jamie Flatters), the troublemaking son Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), and the lovable young daughter Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss). They also adopted both Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) who was born from the inert Avatar once piloted by the now deceased Grace Augustine (also Sigourney Weaver) and Spider (Jake Champion): the human son of Colonel Miles Quaritch (the antagonist of the first Avatar), and for a stretch of time, Jake Sully and his family (whether biological or adopted) made Pandora their home. It was a peaceful time for them.
But sadly, this serenity didn’t last. The humans and the RDA regrouped and struck back with a vengeance with a new wave of human troops and mechanized creations landing on Pandora and restarting the colonization process anew with prejudice. The RDA’s top priority is to eliminate the Na’vi resistance, particularly Jake Sully. In fact, the RDA has a special plan to combat Jake and his guerrilla warfare prowess. See, the RDA created Avatar clones of deceased RDA soldiers who perished during the final confrontation back in the first movie, including Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), and make no mistake, they’re there to take care of business quickly, and upon learning of this new threat, Jake realizes that he is putting the tribe and his family in danger. Just by participating in the rebellion and being a public figurehead, he is placing his family and people in harm’s way, and from there, Jake takes his family and flees to a faraway Na’vi water tribe where his family must try and fit in with a new people and environment all while the new blue version of Colonel Miles Quaritch is in a relentless pursuit.
The story is decent enough. In fact, there are lots of interesting themes worth exploring here, most notably the idea of belonging. See, almost every major character is an outcast in some form or another. The Sully’s are foreign oddities now that they are living amongst a water tribe; the family are also denigrated for having “demon blood” (ie some genetic commonality with humans), Lo’ak feels like an inadequate son and sibling compared to his perfect older brother Neteyam, Kiri sometimes doesn’t feel like she is part of the family due to how she is adopted, and Spider is very conflicted. Despite how he views himself as Na’vi, Spider is still a human and one whose loyalties begin to conflict now that the cloned Na’vi version of his father renters his life (a man with his own existential crisis), and between all of these characters, Avatar: The Way Of Water has some intriguing thematic and character development real estate that it can work with. The movie places these characters in social and moral positions to where they question what they personally stand for and if their actions match their physical goals. There’s just a lot to commend here.
But unfortunately, Avatar: The Way Of Water’s otherwise interesting character and thematic angles feel stretched. After all, the movie sits at a very lengthy 3 hours and 12 minutes, and sadly, the film’s plot, script, and pacing do not justify the full weight of that massive runtime. While the movie has a lot of good character development and other interesting themes like colonization (though there are criticisms about how the Avatar franchise dips too far into being a “white savior” narrative), there is still just not enough narrative meat to carry this film for 3 plus hours, something that really negatively affects the films third act. By the film’s climax, the character payoffs and narrative twists have a diminished affect due to how the story is stretched thin in order to fit this runtime. The pacing is thrown into disarray in favor of length, and due to this, many of the third act’s big reveals and developments don’t hit as hard as they otherwise could have. Like if the script was tighter and didn’t take it’s sweet ass time to get to a delectable narrative payoff, Avatar: The Way Of Water might have scored a direct hit on the audiences’ emotional complex, but as it stands, the movie’s narrative and pacing jogs rather than gallops. Its narrative is good enough but falls short of greatness.
Avatar: The Way Of Water’s visuals pick up the slack. The movie is a wonderful return trip to the jaw-droppingly gorgeous world of Pandora that was present in the first Avatar. The colors of the forests and water pop, the camera movement is crisp, the usage of 3D pulls the viewer into the film’s world rather than push them away, and the creatures and the human mechs are very well designed. Like in the prior movie, the visuals are very appealing to the eye, yet it also must be said that Avatar: The Way Of Water is not just a greatest hits rehash of the first film’s groundbreaking visual art style. If anything, Avatar: The Way Of Water differentiates itself by focusing on its titular water element, the movie was right to do this. The deep blue of the ocean and the movement of the water is mesmerizing. The water has its own unique physics and characteristics that allow the film’s underwater sequences to both visually look and viscerally feel completely different from anything in the first movie which is a good thing considering that James Cameron and the production company spent a fortune to develop motion capture technology that can work underwater, something that caused the project to be delayed numerous times and become one of the most expensive movies ever made due to having a production budget ranging from $350-$460 million. There was a lot on the line here. In terms of time and money, Avatar: The Way Of Water was a truly costly project, yet given how this is one of the most beautiful movies I have ever seen, it was time and money well spent. The effort paid dividends that were visually apparent on screen.
Admittedly, some aspects of the visual aesthetic take some getting used to. In fact, the high frame rate is really jarring at first. Like the character movements appear so unnaturally fast that they hearken back to early Xbox 360 era cutscenes (but with higher visual fidelity), but then again, this is due to how 24 frames per second is the cinema standard whereas Avatar: The Way Of Water runs at 48 FPS. It just takes a bit of time to acclimate to it, but once the viewer does, they are treated to some true visual splendor. A feast for the eyes and the ultimate reason as to why Avatar: The Way Of Water is worth seeing. While the movie’s story follows Avatar tradition by being merely solid, it’s the art style and the visuals that make it a must watch movie experience. It’s what everyone will be talking about once they exit the theater because truly Avatar: The Way Of Water‘s visual artistry is what makes it an event movie.
