Avatar 2: Water Finds Its Level

One step forward one step backward

Stray thoughts on Avatar 2.

Liked:

·      Seeing U.S. military hardware violently destroyed. Some level of Avatar’s success can surely be attributed to the thrill of being able see military hardware and materiel that (in-universe) costs tens of trillions of dollars blown up, smashed against rocks, ignited in flames, sunk into the sea, and otherwise totally wrecked.

·      Seeing U.S. military shitheads violently killed. As with above, the main battle scene towards the end of the movie sees the evil Avatar-marines and other human collaborators violently killed by gun, rocket, bomb, bow-and-arrow, drowned, dropped from height, decapitated, impaled, torn limb-from-limb, choked, and otherwise totally wrecked.

·      A thrilling whale hunting set-piece. My favorite set piece of the movie follows a questionably “scientific” team of humans hunt an alien whale using an armada of fascinating sci-fi boats and robots. The chase is thrilling because all of the boats and submersibles and helicopters and human-piloted-mechs are exactly the right level of futuristic to look advanced in an awesome way but also one’s mind can imagine the tech development that led to their construction. The whales fight back, Moby-Dick style, and are formidable foes.

·      A fascinating reflection on James Cameron’s career. After the larger battle between the human navy and Navi forces concludes, a smaller battle/chase between Jake Sully and Colonel Miles Quaritch ensues. The largest human ship has been sunk, and Jake begins searching for Miles in the wreckage. Over the course of 10 or 15 minutes, Cameron inserts homages to nearly every film he has made over the course of his career. First, Jake enters the ship in a dark metal hallway lit by a yellow emergency light, referencing “Aliens”. The ship’s hallways slowly fill with water, and the scene resembles the underwater research station from “The Abyss”. At one point, a large chain is hanging from a ceiling (and I believe is either used as a weapon or to escape), a la “Terminator 2”. Eventually, Jake makes it onto the upper deck of the sinking ship, whose huge broken and flaming hull clearly calls “Titanic” to mind. I am probably even missing particular helicopter battle shots which would reference “True Lies”. I enjoyed that these homages came within the same ~15 minute span, but would have hit harder if the movie was shorter in general.

·      Almost all of the underwater life. The most memorable or most successful element of Avatar 2 will almost certainly be the undersea life. The forests and cliffs of Pandora in the first Avatar were the most popular aspect of the movie, leading to the famous “post-Avatar depression”. The nature documentary-esque elements are even better in Avatar 2. If there were 15 or 20 unique plants and 10 unique animals in Avatar 1, there must be 100 unique underwater corals and reef plants and 50 different types of fish and aquatic animals. Whales are particularly adored by humans, and rightfully so, so I would expect Avatar 2’s alien whales to be the most popular, even if they’re frankly a little ugly (but still cool).

·      Edie Falco’s performance. It’s annoying she’s in the movie for like 15 minutes. She was more interesting than Colonel Miles Quaritch.

Neutral:

·      Sam Worthington and Stephen Lang’s performances. They do fine.

·      The quasi-coming of age arc for Jake Sully’s son Lo’ak. I was sort of annoyed by him at first, but during the last hour Lo’ak becomes a viable protagonist who I sort of care about. Maybe.

Disliked:

·      The length. This may be the longest movie ever made.

·      The first hour. The potentially fatal problem with this movie is the first hour. During the first hour we catch up with Jake Sully and his new family of four children (including and adopted Avatar child who is the immaculately conceived daughter of Sigourney Weaver’s scientist character). We see that the consciousness of Colonel Miles Quaritch and a squad of 10 other marines (styled as 2010s era Navy Seal style operators) have been uploaded into Avatar bodies. They make their way back to Pandora. Most briefly, we learn about the human retreat then return, and that they have already reconstructed a huge city complete with maglev train lines and thousands of ground forces. All of this proceeds at an absolutely GLACIAL pace. I left to go to the bathroom when the scene from the Avatar 2 preview after the Avatar 1 re-release came on the screen. I was STUNNED to learn that we were an hour in. The first hour needed to be condensed to 20 minutes at most and moved to the middle of the movie as a flashback, after we’ve been immersed into the movie in the water biome section.

·      The script, structurally. Along with all first-hour problems listed above, elements of the script felt rushed, which should be impossible for a movie 12 years in the making. Structurally, the movie follows almost the same narrative plot arc of the first movie, complete with a climax around connection with a ridable animal suited for the specific biome, and culminating in a huge human vs. Navi battle which concludes with a more mono e mono confrontation between Jake Sully and Colonel Quaritch.

·      The script, in terms of dialogue. The dialogue almost always felt very dated, but in a (sort of) new way? The two options for the huge budget event movies of the past 15 years have been either the Joss Whedon-era reddit banter or the grimdark Zack Snyder mugging and grumbling. Avatar 2 has neither, but instead a distinctly ‘90s sense of humor and ‘90s cliché “family” theme. The sense of humor is very corny and the four Navi children joke around with each other constantly saying “bro” and “cuz”, but in a way that does not feel contemporary at all.

·      Zoe Saldana’s performance and the characterization of Neytiri. James Cameron cannot be accused of being incapable of writing strong female action/adventure leads. In Avatar 1, Neytiri scream cries in grief at various deaths or destructions maybe four times. In Avatar 2 it happens probably 6 times. You should get MAYBE one per movie. Zoe Saldana has an unpleasant screen presence as Neytiri, but I can’t really blame her because she’s given next to nothing to do but be upset and try to argue against Jake Sully. Even their four children worship their father Jake and have very little interaction with their mother, barring one small scene between Neytiri and their youngest daughter.

·      The shallow characterization and portrayal of Navi tribal life. The most commonly cited criticism of Avatar 1 was usually that the movie was “ripping off” or at least rehashing “Pocohantas” or “Dances with Wolves”. In large part I would say that was true less because of the structure of the movie but because of the shallow depiction of the Navi as basic Native American people stand-ins who make generic references to their connection to the land and the sacredness of the forest and their harmony with nature. None of these are inherently bad but the tribal life and ceremony seemed to lack a real interest in the way of life of peoples who live lives totally (and literally) alien to Westerners, and chose to depict them living in basic camps, hunting and gathering, and at best performing a unique ritual of manhood in forming a bond with the dangerous flying dragon thing. Avatar 2 repeats this issue but this time with a Navi tribe intended to be Polynesian peoples, rather than broad indigenous Eastern Woodland Native Americans. The Polynesian Navi wear basic shell jewelry, pilot outrigger canoes (even though they can easily swim very rapidly and for hours underwater), decorate their bodies with tattoos, perform Haka-like dances (even sticking their tongues out), and have New Zealand/Maori accents. Outside these clear visual markers, Cameron shows frustrating little curiosity about their way of life and how it might differ from human life (let alone Forest Navi life). Jake Sully introduces himself and his family as on-the-run fish-out-of-water who are new to this new tribe, but aside from learning how to swim, how to speak Navi sign language, and how to bond with aquatic animals instead of forest animals. They are able to slot into the Aquatic Navi lifestyle within a day or two. One extremely brief shot stood out to me in particular—an Aquatic Navi casts a net with a unique spiral technique that I had seen before in some kind of anthropological documentary about life in the Pacific. Cameron had 12 years to live in New Zealand, research, and write this script. The lack of interest in exploring the difference in life style stands out, a shallow kiddie pool worth of interest next to the ocean’s deep splendor of marine life he gives us.