In some way James Cameron’s special-effects-loaded sequel to his 2009 blue alien blockbuster serves indeed as apt metaphor for the destruction of mother nature about which the patronising plot pretends to care much more than the conservative concepts of family and fatherhood at its core (or its assumptive approach to cultural appropriation and assimilation or its disturbing vision of colonialism as necessary tool of socio-cultural advancement or its condescending view on pacifism and championing of bellicism as a sign of higher morality or its sickly-sweet reframing of spirituality as sign of intellectual superiority or …). It’s looming above you for so long you start believing it will never hit you.
But then – boom! – it’s there and more disastrous than ever imagined. Given the extended production period and bombastic budget, one would at least expect impressive visuals. But as if in an unconscious throwback to the first film technical advancement again just can’t overcome the sheer awkwardness of the unimaginative idyll and cringy kitsch of Pandora’s world. This goes even more for the motion capture draining any trace of emotional truthfulness off characters that were never more than stereotypical shells. The cast is wasted on empty embodiments of cinematically consolidated sets of values and politicised principles the thinly covered reactionism of which seems suddenly irrelevant – if not acceptable – because they’re blue.
- OT: Avatar: The Way of Water
- Director: James Cameron
- Screenplay: James Cameron, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver
- Country: USA
- Year: 2022
- Running Time: 193 min.
- Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Kate Winslet, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Edie Falco, Brendan Cowell, Jemaine Clement, Jamie Flatters, Britain Dalton, Trinity Jo-Li Bliss, James Lin, Bailey Bass
- Release date: 14.12.2022
- Image © Walt Disney