Avatar: The Way of Water

A sequel to 2009’s Avatar, Avatar: The Way of Water follows Sam Worthington’s Jake Sully as he and his family take up residence alongside an entirely new assortment of Na’vi characters – with problems ensuing after Jake’s nemesis (Stephen Lang’s Quaritch) arrives on the scene bent on revenge. Filmmaker James Cameron, working from a screenplay written with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, delivers a methodically-paced and wildly overlong thriller that gets off to a less-than-promising start, as Cameron essentially launches directly into the complex narrative with little in the way of an entry point for the viewer. (It’s clear, ultimately, that the entire first act could and should have been condensed into a 10 minute prologue.) The picture’s arms-length atmosphere is subsequently (and seriously) compounded by a middling midsection that emphasizes the protagonists’ tedious efforts at acclimatizing to their new surroundings, with Cameron’s decision to stress encounters and digressions of a seriously hackneyed and underwhelming nature, including one character’s ongoing confrontations with generic bullies, resulting in a hit-and-miss vibe that’s increasingly more miss than hit. And although the admittedly eye-popping special effects are indeed an ongoing highlight, Avatar: The Way of Water‘s inability to offer up a single figure worth wholeheartedly caring about, to the extent that a major death towards the end provokes nothing less than an apathetic shrug, ensures that the action-packed climax is hardly as engrossing as Cameron has undoubtedly intended – which, it goes without saying, confirms the picture’s place as a thoroughly needless followup that easily stands as Cameron’s least effective endeavor to date.

*1/2 out of ****