Avatar 2 Review :- The Return of James Cameron
Avatar 2 Review – The Way of Water : A thunderously unimpressive damp squib of a Comeback. Astonishing! Enthralling! Exciting! Immersive! The three-and-a-half-hour Wet Smurfahontas stodgeathon that is James Cameron’s Avatar : The Way of Water cannot be rationally described in any of these terms. This long-anticipated (or dreaded?) sequel to one of the highest grossing movies of all time builds on the mighty flaws of its predecessor, delivering a patience-testing fantasy dirge that is longer, uglier, and (amazingly) even more clumsily scripted than its predecessor, blending trite characterization with sub-Roger Dean 1970s album-cover designs and thunderously underwhelming action sequences. the water.
After the completely forgettable shenanigans of 2009’s Avatar, we pick up several years later. After shedding his human skin to inhabit his alien avatar, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) has blended in on the faraway world Pandora and is raising a family with Neytiri (Zoe Saldaa) (see previous film). The forest-loving Sullys are compelled to evacuate to far-off archipelagos where the water-tribes live when the Earth’s “sky people” arrive searching for a fight, among other things. They have to give up their tree-hugging ways and learn the customs of the reef people, who have thicker tails and are a little more turquoise, in order to survive here. Really.
The Metkayina tribe is led by Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and his partner Ronal (Kate Winslet), whose children don’t get along with the Sully family. As a result, there is a lot of teen movie-style intramural fighting and the inevitable boring bromance bonding that follows. Our blue heroes will pick up new skills along the way, including riding amphibious skimwings (think of How to Train Your Dragon as retold by the Star Trek and Stingray writers), speaking the language of the seas in all its wondrous wetness, and befriending a wounded, whale-like creature (imagine Free Willy in outer space). who will play a crucial role in the movie’s handling of its emotional baggage.
There are times that are supposed to be exhilaratingly thrilling. The characters on film exclaim “Woohoo!” in the same way that young Anakin exclaimed “Yippee!” in Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace, making these easy to spot. Sadly, there are more parallels to be seen with George Lucas’ unsuccessful space opera prequels. The inhabitants of Pandora, like Jar Jar Binks, seem to have been created by an inebriated sixth-grader while listening to Tales From Topographic Oceans, with their wide-eyed Middle-Earth awe and cod FernGully-style fairytale heroism.
Another annoying character is a feral human child who James Cameron apparently thinks is a thematic descendant of Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli. However, his intrusive presence only served to remind me how much I preferred the lush settings of Andy Serkis’ Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle and Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book.
Of course, the happy watery wibbling (“Woohoo!”) cannot last, and the sky people come calling, leading to a hyperbolic action showdown that connects the first act of The Poseidon Adventure (a watery world turned upside down) with the third act of Aliens (against-the-clock sprog hunt through exploding/collapsing metal structures), the second half of Titanic (breath holding and personal conflict-solving combined!
The only thing the 3D format immerses us in is the harsh realities of the Chinese theatrical market, where spectacular stereoscopy still reigns supreme. 3D is a moribund format that has risen and fallen like the tide numerous times throughout the history of cinema. Let’s face it: 3D hasn’t really “enhanced” anyone’s viewing experience, with only a few of significant outliers (Creature From the Black Lagoon in the 1950s, Flesh for Frankenstein in the 1970s, and Gravity in the twenty-first century).
Cameron simply cannot afford to leave a ploy for which he has become the principal gong hitter, standard bearer, and bookkeeper when the financial stakes are this high (The Way of Water allegedly has to take roughly $2 billion, or £1.6 billion), to wash its face.
It’s hard to ignore how much Cameron enjoys the human hardware sequences, which have a rough physicality that contrasts sharply with the floaty computer-game visuals of the rest of the movie. Underneath it all is the same honkingly bland anti-imperial/anti-colonial/eco-friendly metaphor that gave the first Avatar the illusion of gravitas. It remains to be seen whether things will get better in the sequels (two more are currently in production).