{"id":38310,"date":"2022-12-28T01:38:19","date_gmt":"2022-12-28T06:38:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=38310"},"modified":"2022-12-28T01:51:38","modified_gmt":"2022-12-28T06:51:38","slug":"avatar-the-way-of-water-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/28\/avatar-the-way-of-water-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>After the startling success of \u201cAvatar<\/a>\u201d James Cameron spent almost two decades crafting a sequel. It\u2019s a sequel that is\u2014well, it\u2019s basically \u201cAvatar\u201d all over again with his blue Thundercats. Except it has water<\/strong><\/em>. That might seem like I\u2019m undermining the movie but I\u2019m really not. Everything is essentially the same, save for more characters. Cameron injects the same clumsy themes about war, capitalism, racism, the fragility of the environment, and the oh-so-noble savage; except now he\u2019s able to introduce his love for the ocean too.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The paper thin premise sees heroes Jake Sully and Ney’tiri forming a family on Pandora, and doing everything to stay together and find bliss. However, they must leave their home when it\u2019s invaded, and explore the underwater regions of Pandora alongside water born Navi\u2019s. When an ancient threat resurfaces, Jake must fight a difficult war against the humans. \u201cAvatar\u201d if anything, at least progresses its characters now with hero Jake Sully and his wife Ney\u2019tiri building a family and learning to appreciate life. But the characters\u2019 bliss is short lived as they\u2019re once again invaded by the humans, including an old nemesis in the form of Colonel Miles Quaritch. He\u2019s been revived, and is back for this follow up.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s seeking revenge on Jake, but now he\u2019s an Avatar. An Evil Avatar. Get it? Irony! Cameron re-introduces the themes of colonization making it even less subtle than ever. He introduces a pair of humans that are dead set on hunting animals on Pandora for sport and financial gain. Hell, even the \u201cSky people\u2019s\u201d ships even look like boats with massive sails. The narrative of the overlong, overwrought \u201cAvatar\u201d is still a chore to endure, but at least it has a beautiful, stunning, breathtaking wrapper. It\u2019s shiny, and glimmery, and Cameron invests a lot in to expanding this universe, giving us everything from original monsters, and sea beasts, right down to flora and fauna.<\/p>\n

I do love how vivid the ecosystem and world of Pandora is, and I admire how everything right up to the native language is meant to be solely for this universe. You can definitely see the cultural and mystic influences in every crevice.\u00a0 Once you get down to the meat and potatoes, though, the characters are all fairly dull, and I was never very invested in the welfare of the Sully tribe, at all. One consolation is that there\u2019s less of the bore Jake Sully this time around, as Cameron centers on his offspring. The focus on assimilated human Spider, who is forced to turn against the Navi, is often engaging and sad.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s surprising how Cameron could create something with such broad appeal but is also so niche. Everything beyond the special effects is so cold and listless in \u201cThe Way of Water.\u201d It\u2019s a movie that won\u2019t lend well to re-watches outside of the movie theater as it\u2019s a great spectacle that fails to give audiences a reason to re-visit it for actually substantial reasons like interesting characters or relatable conflicts.<\/p>\n

I hope James Cameron does something better or more engaging with these creations in the third film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After the startling success of \u201cAvatar\u201d James Cameron spent almost two decades crafting a sequel. It\u2019s a sequel that is\u2014well, it\u2019s basically \u201cAvatar\u201d all over again with his blue Thundercats. Except it has water. That might seem like I\u2019m undermining the movie but I\u2019m really not. Everything is essentially the same, save for more characters. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[58,71,327,349,526,874,906,922,1173],"class_list":["post-38310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-action","tag-adventure","tag-epic","tag-fantasy","tag-james-cameron","tag-romance","tag-science-fiction","tag-sequel","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38310"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38314,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38310\/revisions\/38314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}