{"id":53890,"date":"2022-12-17T13:06:56","date_gmt":"2022-12-17T11:06:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=53890"},"modified":"2022-12-17T13:06:56","modified_gmt":"2022-12-17T11:06:56","slug":"avatar-the-way-of-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=53890","title":{"rendered":"Avatar: The Way of Water"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Jake Sully in Avatar: The Way of Water\/Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The art and technology of Avatar: The Way of Water<\/em> are mesmerizing, James Cameron and his creative team take the viewer on a dazzling, fantastically detailed, visual trip. It\u2019s an amazing cinematic experience that invites the viewer to let go of everything else \u2013 including the expectation of a dramatic narrative with intriguing plot and subtle characterization \u2013 and immerse in the wonder of its world.<\/p>\n

In the long-awaited sequel, a long and leisurely exposition finds Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) living happily as a hybrid human-Na\u2019vi on Pandora, with his Na\u2019vi love Neytiri (Zoe Salda\u00f1a). They are raising a family of four, which includes the responsible eldest son Netyem (Jamie Flatters), the trying hard to equal his older brother and less obedient younger son Lo\u2019ak (Britain Dalton) and the cute youngest daughter Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss). But their most intriguing child, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), is adopted. The daughter of Dr. Grace Augustine, Kiri was born after her mother\u2019s death, and the identity of her father is a mystery. The family structure is very traditionally mainstream, perhaps inevitably so. When Neytiri tells Jake, the former Marine turned Na\u2019vi (I guess once a Marine, always a Marine), that he\u2019s being too hard on the boys, he says \u201cI\u2019m their father, it\u2019s my job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kiri\u2019s portrayal by Sigourney Weaver is a wonderful feat of performance capture, imbuing the character with Weaver\u2019s warmth and tensile strength. Kiri\u2019s mysterious background, sensitivity, empathy, and other qualities revealed in this film made me wish Cameron had chosen to follow her narrative arc rather than seduce the viewer with open-ended questions to be answered in the next film. It\u2019s not tantalizing, it\u2019s merely annoying, primarily because the narrative arc that the film does follow is all too familiar.<\/p>\n

The peaceful ecosystem of Pandora is disrupted once more by the \u201csky people\u201d (humans) who would destroy entire populations in the name of their own survival. Human technology has advanced, and they are now able to create Na\u2019vi avatars for people who have died, and they install the memories of Quaritch (Stephen Lang) into an avatar, who is charged with hunting down Jake Sully.<\/p>\n

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Ronal of the Metkayina – Avatar: The Way of Water\/Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Seeking to escape the sky people and not wanting to endanger their forest-dwelling clan, Jake and his family depart, seeking refuge with the sea dwellers, the Metkayina clan. As magical as Pandora\u2019s forests are \u2013 those floating islands of green and rock are surreal bliss \u2013 the ocean scenes in this film are so brilliantly and imaginatively rendered that I could watch them for hours, even if there were no plot at all.<\/p>\n

But there is a plot, and much of it is predictable \u2013 did Jake really think that he couldn\u2019t be found among the Metkayina? There\u2019s father-son motif that runs through the film via different characters, yet utterly lacks nuance or individuality. Themes of accepting difference and the meeting and clash of different cultures\/species were more interesting to me, especially in the feisty character of Ronal (Kate Winslet) a leader of the Metkayina clan, and her interactions with the Sully crew, and the adventures of less-valued-son Lo\u2019ak.<\/p>\n

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Lo’ak and friend – Avatar: The Way of Water\/Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Did I find aspects of the narrative predictable, clich\u00e9d, and frustrating in its insistence on holding back the best story for the next Avatar film \u2013 oh, yes. Does that matter? Not so much. Ultimately, the story here matters less to me than the spectacle, and for much of the 3 hours and 12 minutes of Avatar: The Way of Water<\/em>, I was entranced.<\/p>\n

Avatar: The Way of Water<\/em><\/p>\n

USA\/2022\/190 minutes<\/p>\n

Director: James Cameron; Screenplay: James Cameron, Rick Jaffe, Amanda Silver; Cinematography: Russell Carpenter; Editors: David Brenner, James Cameron, John Refoua, Stephen E. Rivkin; Music: Simon Franglen; Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Salda\u00f1a; Stephen Lang, Britain Dalton, Giovanni Ribsi, Kate Winslet, Edie Falco, Sigourney Weaver, Jack Champion<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The art and technology of Avatar: The Way of Water are mesmerizing, James Cameron and his creative team take the viewer on a dazzling, fantastically detailed, visual trip. It\u2019s an amazing cinematic experience that invites the viewer to let go of everything else \u2013 including the expectation of a dramatic narrative with intriguing plot and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":53892,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[254,243,96,253,252],"class_list":["post-53890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film","tag-3d","tag-fantasy","tag-film","tag-performance-capture","tag-sci-fi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/53892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}