Avatar: The Way of Water

Let’s start this review with the three big elephants in the room.

1. Avatar was fairly criticised for its white saviour dialogue. While I’m not the best one to judge all the ins and outs of that trope (I’m a lousy saviour but I’m certain white), it certainly feels like they tried to both correct that and address it to some extent. People are boycotting ATWOW for the sins of the past, which is up to them, but it doesn’t seem like this film deserves to bd boycotted on its own merits.
2. The wait for “the technology to be good enough.” There is a lot of water and a lot of CGI and water in CGI has been janky for a long time but that has improved recently - more computing power and tied to that better CGI around animating water have come along in the last five years or so. Here we have the Reef Na'vi and their marine animals that they interact with in the way the Forest Na'vi of the original interacted with the “dragons” and land animals of the forest. Of course that means both underwater and out of water shots and, even harder, transitions between them. Honestly, there were moments I was definitely conscious I was watching CGI in the sense of “these aren’t real, someone imagined these animals” but I never thought “that water looks weird” or “I don’t believe that transition from water to air or air to water.” I don’t know enough to say that Cameron had to wait this long (although I maintain a peripheral interest in CGI to know there have been recent breakthroughs to say he’s not talking total BS) but I’ll assume he knows what he’s talking about, and what we got really did look good.
   1. As a sort of 2.1 the CGI around the Na’vi in particular, which is layered on top of motion/performance capture works nicely. Of course this is hardly new technology (Avatar, a lot of Andy Serkis’ work for example) but in these numbers and underwater it seems new. Has anyone done this sort of motion/performance capture underwater before? I don’t think so but I don’t have exhaustive knowledge of the field. All the cast learnt how to free dive for the film and it really shows. They clearly are just moving around in water for extended periods and that CGI on top of real performances is as much of a delight here as it was for Gollum, Smaug and so on over the decades.
3. The 3D. I remember watching the original and it was a “wow!” moment in cinema history, like watching The Matrix and bullet time. What came after that in 3D cinema frittered away that initial impact. This film didn’t have that hit but it possibly did something even better. It felt natural and comfortable to watch - and this film lasts almost 3.25 hours! In the previous iteration of 3D if you didn’t look where the film wanted you to, if you looked at the corners, at the person in the background, it got blurry and painful. This film doesn’t have that. It doesn’t feel huge at the time but it makes it feel easy to watch and maybe that’s a bigger thing in the long run? I know in the previous round of 3D I’d often opt for the 2D version for comfort, while this is only one sample it’s a really long film so it might be the real launch of 3D cinema as a viable thing?

Having dealt with all of that, let’s move on to the actual film. At 192 minutes this is a beast of a movie. However, it really doesn’t feel that way. Reflecting on it as I’m writing this I can think of places I could edit it down a bit but watching it? I never felt bored, there were no scenes or sections where I was sitting there thinking “bored now” during the film. There’s a good balance of big, set piece action scenes, family/personal stories and exploring new bits of Pandora. None of the storylines we see through the action scenes or the family scenes are really new, although a few are leant new life by the ways they interact with Eywa and the Pandoran flora and fauna. Even those that are not changed in this way do not feel tired or hackneyed - we have a storyteller who really knows what they’re doing and makes the stories that we’ve seen, read or even told ourselves feel vibrant and alive.

There’s a background story that is interesting but basically ignored in light of let’s see more of Pandora, let’s have an epic revenge fight. For a film released just before Christmas, I’ve seen pantomime villains with more detailed and more rounded character but I’m really being critical on reflection here. Just like with a pantomime villain, at the time I didn’t care that aspiring to two dimensional was beyond him. I remembered I was in the cinema and didn’t boo and hiss every time he appeared but I had just as much fun as if I had!

Do I need to watch this again? I will when it comes to TV in some shape or form. It’s beautiful and it is satisfying. But with adverts, trailers and all its a four hour commitment at the cinema and while I am sure it’s worth it once, I’m not sure it’s worth it more than once.

Bechdel Test: Pass. We have multiple named female characters and they talk about all sorts of things.

Ko Test: Null. Most of the characters are blue. Does that make them WOC or not I wonder?

Russo Test: Fail. As is all too common in blockbusters everyone is so straight it hurts.