“The Way of water has no beginning and no end.”
I did not see the original Avatar in theaters. I saw it for the first time about two months ago on Disney Plus and it didn’t leave much of an impact on me in a positive or negative sense. It looked nicer than I expected it to given its age, but I don’t have much else to say about it. So when I went to see the sequel in theaters a few weeks later, I didn’t have a lot of expectations. But it blew me away.
When talking about Avatar: The Way of Water, the most obvious thing to praise is its visuals. And for good reason. Trying to portray a world other than Earth can be difficult because well, you can’t film there so it has to be all fake. And it’s easy for this to create a disconnect in the audience, as they realize that what they’re watching isn’t real (looking at you MCU). But James Cameron manages to perfectly sell the world of Pandora as not just real, but as genuinely magical. Some people have criticized it but in my opinion the segment of the movie that is possibly the strongest is a long stretch in the middle that serves predominately to showcase the characters interacting with the aquatic environment and wildlife because it’s absolutely captivating to witness. I’m not going to pretend to understand all the tech that went into making this and what exactly makes it different from other movies, but whatever it is I could feel it.
But the visuals can’t be the only thing a movie has going for it. And thankfully they’re definitely not in this case. “Main character from the original movie has kids now and also the original villain is back” is a fairly cliched setup for a sequel, but the way it’s pulled off in Way of Water might be one of the best ways possible within the confines of blockbuster storytelling. Jake Sully being unable to stop himself from becoming a stereotypical suburban father despite immersing himself in the culture of a completely different planet provides some of the funniest moments of the whole movie while also hinting at actual moving observations on culture and race. The children themselves are all also great, each serving their own distinct role in the story but absolutely believable as a tight-knight group of siblings.
The story also touches on several larger scale concepts, especially in regards to the villainous characters from Earth trying once again to invade the planet. I’m stealing a line from a friend for a second, but the portrayal of the “mundanity of genocide” is excellent. Several characters ranging from background nobodies to named ones operate in a “just doing my job” mentality, that despite the fact that the cargo they’re loading or the ship they’re steering is being used to try to eradicate a group of people, they’re not the ones truly responsible.
At the end of the day, I just have to face the facts. As much as I love a good artsy independent movie (of which this series will be mostly made up of), I am not immune to overly sentimental blockbuster movies when they are done well. And Avatar: The Way of Water is that brand of storytelling done well and then some. If I told high school me that I’d be genuinely excited about the future of the Avatar franchise they’d laugh right in my face. But here we are.