If you like detail-crafted films, James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water has a lot of itand the film almost does catch up with the scenes.
As long as you knew in the first Avatar movie, the Navi, the native people of the planet Pandora, took a car off the planet, except for a few tiger’s lingering torsos who chose to stay behind. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), whose consciousness was permanently transferred into his avatar, is living happily with Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and his four children. He’s the main player in the forest, despite being not indigenous himself, a blatant white savior trope that carries over from the first film.
The families’ peaceful existence falls apart when the human return. The Earth cannot dwell in habit, and humankind plans to own Pandora and make it their new home. Their arrival gleefully destroyed vast swaths of forest (how does Earth become unhabitable?) and then slaughtered animals with intelligent mutus in their brains to harvest the ambergris-like substance.
Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), whose memories were restored after a long day of human life with the help of his old friend, as a permanent recombinant. When Quaritch comes for the family of Jakes, they flee their home and live with the Metkayina clan, which has evolved to live partly on the ocean. The Metkayinas are often challenged to learn it to the trick of being able to fit in.
You may have heard that movie is three hours long, and that doesn’t really justify its length. The story manages to feel thin and cluttered, but the plot does not make a lot of sense. Why does Jake think that hopping over to another village will protect him? Why is Miles so surprised that he’s laying waste to Pandora for help? Wait, why is Miles so foolish for hunting him again? Doesn’t she have any planet to destroy?
But there are more and more options in the sequel. The most interesting story is that of Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), who was born in the first movie by the teenage daughter of Dr. Grace Augustine. Kiri has ecstatic religious experiences and struggles to understand and connect with the Earth superconsciousness adored by the Navi goddess. The story hints that there may be something sinister at the heart of her connection, and that is to watch her journey.
Saldana is a very good character, as a name from Neytiri, enfusing the character with enough emotion and complex complexity, you wouldn’t be able to watch an alien that was a CG created alien. It’s what Neytiri rages and mourns for the loss of life and the destruction ravaging her home.
The story gives a lot of shine: it analyzes boundaries and how it blurs and shifts. The kid in the Jake and Neytiris is taunted for his extra fingers that hinder their human, and mean ancestry. Spider (Jack Champion), a young boy grown up on Pandora, struggles to decide where he belongs. The more time Miles spends in his avatar, the more time he takes to take care of Navi and get engaged.
For the visuals that have been getting so buzzyep, they’re amazing. As well as suffering from the sheer size and nature of a human population, we could not agree to the odour of natural phenomena. You, if you like Omatikayas forest or Metkayinas reef, then do you care for the vanishing Amazon Rainforest and the Australian Great Barrier Reef? If not, why don’t you have to?
The story that this movie teaches about the environmental consequences of our planet. While you wait for the third Avatar film to go out, consider listening to the real Indigenous people who are the front and center of these battles happening here on Earth.
(with picture: 20th Century Studios)