The Dark Herald Recommends: Avatar – The Way of Water
My opening line was supposed to be, “It was the best of Cameron. It was the worst of Cameron.” But the Critical Drinker beat me to that too!!!
I have talked to people who loved it and I really wasn’t one of them.
It has it plusses. No question. Men weren’t stupid for a start. A lot of this film was about strong fathers and the importance of the family unit. It’s nice to see that in American filmmaking. Instead of Beverly Hills latch-key kids making movies that tell the world how shitty their Dads were (we already knew that from the way you turned out). This seems to be the only thing modern American moviemakers know about.
But Cameron made a movie about the importance of motherhood (Aliens) back when motherhood was seriously out of fashion with Boomer *women. Now he’s made one about strong fathers protecting their families.
Now that is very worthwhile, and I won’t take that away from James Cameron. In the Way of Water, Jake is a good, strong father determined to protect his family no matter the cost to himself. Fatherhood is very positively portrayed in this film.
These days you have to go to foreign films to see that.
But even the people who like it, admit that it has Cameron’s usual problems. The dialog is terrible. The characters are cardboard cutouts. And characters’ answers to problems don’t make a lot of sense or at least there was usually a smarter, (if less visually impressive) way to do something. At the end of the day, a James Cameron story is usually a Boomer’s version of good versus evil. And when a Boomer puts troops in a jungle, the Vietnam tropes begin.
The evil humans land in an act of environmental genocide. Several thousand square meters of rainforest are destroyed when their gigantic, flaming death ship lands. It was supposed to be horrifying but it was so over the top I laughed.
Basically, the human race is irretrievably evil. It knows all about the mistakes of the past and it wants to repeat them as sadistically as possible on an alien world.
You remember how Unobtainium was the MacGuffin in the last movie. Well, forget all about it now because it’s Whale Brain Juice that the evil monkey boys can’t live without this time. The satanic Terrans are whaling on Pandora. You see Earth is dying. From something. That isn’t really gone into. Probably environmental something. Who cares? Ask any Boomer, they all know the world will end once they are all dead.
You may have been surprised to find out that Colonel Quartich (no I’m not going to bother to spell it right) is back for the sequel given how dead he was at the end of the last movie, it’s kind of a surprise. But he recorded his memories right before going into battle and now his mind has been downloaded into his own Navii avatar. This does serve to eliminate the physical disadvantage in fighting Jake hand-to-hand.
However, I seem to recall that in the last movie you needed your old body to stay alive. But Jake was cured of that need by magic (quite literally, the natives held a magic ritual that permanently transferred him into his avatar). Whereas the Earth science magic required the human body to remain alive for science reasons.
Now the humans can do that without any need for the OG body.
Meaning, the human race is now immortal. And Cameron was too busy with his heavy-handed eco-message to notice that.
There is an interesting bit of conflict. Jake adopts Quartich’s orphan son, although his wife clearly dislikes the boy because she hates all humans. Don’t worry, this isn’t racism because it’s no different from a Native American woman-hating all white men. You know what the rules are and you are the racist for noticing. When “Spider” is captured, Quartich estabishs a relationship with his now teenage son.
Some people are saying (and I believe them) that even though they were painfully aware of the film’s drawbacks, they were entertained the entire time.
Cool.
I wasn’t one of them. The first act was fine, it worked as a setup. The middle was a godawful, hour-and-a-half swamp that has to be trudged through to be believed. Many an author calls the middle “The Muddle” and for good reason. But the muddle of this movie is absolutely bloated and self-indulgent. There is no reason for it to go on anywhere near as long as it does. It is in no way narratively or even artistically necessary or defendable. I’ve enjoyed most of James Cameron’s movies, if not all of them. In my opinion, Titanic is his best film and is a genuine classic, while The Abyss was his first self-indulgent failure. Regradless, I honestly don’t think his opinion of himself as the greatest Hollywood auteur since Orson Welles is justified.
Additionally, I can’t get past the anti-Marine Corps, anti-capitalist messages. Although that is undoubtedly why it got a release in China. This is Hollywood Boomer Mercedes Marxist hippie babble no different from when Bonnie and Clyde was dumped on an unsuspecting world. And the pregnant Navii warriors were just absurd.
The visuals are spectacular because Cameron always delivers on those. The effects are as meticulous as you would expect from a man who started his career in the special effects department. The battle scenes meet his usual high standards. And if that’s all you are looking for it won’t disappoint. If you loved the first Avatar movie, you’ll get even more of what you wanted. And I will grant that Avatar Quartich went from two-dimensional to 2.5.
This is why my rating is probably higher than you would expect given my personal reservations. If you want to see this thing because you liked the first one, then Avatar: The Way of Water is absolutely for you.
The Dark Herald Recommends with (reluctant) Confidence.
*Seriously, look at how many Gen-Xers were aborted, it works out to about 1/3 of us being murdered in the womb. That’s how tough we had to be just to get born, no wonder Zoomers are terrified of us.
