James Cameron's Avatar The Way Of Water has been out for a few weeks now and after watching
the film multiple times, both in Dolby and IMAX, I think it's a visual masterpiece that
effectively tells a more emotional story than the original, and does so through it's groundbreaking
visual style and cinematic immersion.
While the plot treads familiar ground and the
script misses in certain moments, I couldn't help but feel consistantly immersed in the
landscapes and central storyline of Cameron's new movie, which in my opinion, is something
that the flmmaker always manages to pull off.
In this video, I'm going to be listing the reasons why I loved Avatar 2 and why its visual
storytelling elevates everything on display.
This video essay will contain spoilers, so if you
do happen to be someone who hasn't seen the film yet, then I would recommend watching
this video after you've seen it.
Before I get into it though, if you want to keep up to date on
any of my content surrounding Avatar The Way Of Water, then don't forget to support this
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But without further a do, lets dive into my video essay discussing why Avatar 2 is a visual
masterpiece.
Now for me, Avatar 2 is in no way shape or form, a perfect film.
The writing of dialogue was shabby, the plot was similar in parts to the original movie
and their were elements of the film that could have been fleshed out a bit
more rather than just be hinted at.
The introduction of jake and Neytiri's children, both biological and adopted, brought with
it questions, like with those surrounding Kiri's origin
and who her father is.
Then there were factions and elements introduced like the Bridgehead base that we only saw
a few scenes at, the humans reasoning for uping the ante in their return
and a new material that apparently stops human aging.
These things once touched on more could dramatically elevate the longevity of this
story and what ultimately the war between the Navi and the humans on Pandora leads too.
But the point of The Way Of Water is that yes, while we want more answers to questions
posed and more devopment surrounding these new characters,
James Cameron has successfully immersed us in this world once again.
And he's done so through a greater emotional storytelling structure.
We care about the characters and the central conflicts within each of them because we spend
the elongated runtime learning of their family related and individual struggles.
And this is captured through a believable, heightened
and detailed capturing of their every performance.
We feel Loak's issues of not being recognised and his perception of being an outsider, just
in the 30 minutes we get with him in the Metkayina oceans and with their people.
We feel that in simailar way with Kiri, when it comes to her partial bullying and the inner
struggles over her growing connection to Eywa, her powers
and knowing who she really is.
We feel the conflict within Spider as he finally gets to spend time with a version of his dad,
who he eventually does rescue from the water in the final final
eventful moments.
And then we feel the trauma with Jake and Neytiri as they struggle to keep their children
safe, face the inner battle between keeping them safe or running into
battle to try and protect them and then the pain afterwards when they lose a biological
son.
It's very emotional points of interest that Cameron
knows how to focus on in a universal way, and then by combining that with cutting edge
digital technology that believably transport you into the images you watch, he achieves
this on a huge scale.
It's cinematic immersion, and this is something that in my opinion only a few blockbusters
films have been able to achieve this year.
There was Matt Reeves The Batman, which using it's
filmmaking in the LED volume, puts us in a new version of Gotham and establishes a well
paced detective noir story within the grimiest of boundaries.
Then there was Top Gun Maverick, which put us right in the cockpits of the
characters and made us realistically feel the weight of a much more important mission
with emotional stakes.
And then there was Avatar The Way Of Water, which made us feel like Pandora
was an authentic location, with every ounce of detail captured in the performances and
around them too.
Many blockbusters today use digital effects in what I describe as flat, with little
depth or detail in the frames we witness.
You can see that a performer has literally stood in front of a green screen because of
the limited time the VFX artists get to compose
the images in a believable way.
This doesnt help when you are working on say a cinematic universe where you must produce
4 plus movies a year and countless tv shows too, all using a similar
palette from a filmmaking perspective.
It's hard to see a visual identity from project to project, even while some of them take place
on different worlds with different stories and
at times, different tones too.
However, with Avatar The Way Of Water and it's upcoming sequels, James Cameron spent
13 years, not just making it look as good as the original but surpassing
that film and advancing the hyper realistic digital graphics.
Almost all of the scenes were shot digitally with performance capture that
enabled the shots to look as close to reality as possible.
He and his team went to such an extent that they would develop new cameras just to capture
real performances underwater, something you couldn't do previously without
making the facial expressions look heavily rendered or touched upon in post.
On this film, the actors had to further learn to hold their
breaths underwater for longer periods of time, so that they could capture certain scenes
well, and those same actors would have to fully read their scripts for avatar 2, 3,
4 and 5, so that they would really understand the characters
they were portraying and the arcs they would eventually go on.
Add on the work that WETA did with vfx, advancing the computer imagery,
and the 3D High frame rate technology, that brings that added hyper sense to the underwater
experience, both for the audience and for the characters that enter this new part of
Pandora, and the result is simply breathtaking.
As a whole, the result is cinematic immersion in digital filmmaking at the highest level
it can current be at.
A film that while lacking in other areas, is able to put you in the location
onscreen, in a way that older blockbusters did so well in different ways too.
The Way Of Water may not be a strive forward that's as big as the
first Avatar was when it comes to VFX, but considering how high the bar was set there,
the fact that we are even talking about the noticable advancement with it the sequel,
just shows what an accomplishment it was.
What made The Way of Water an even more fascinating cinema experience was the focus on the expanding
the world of Pandora, showing that over the next films, this world can be bigger and
richer while holding an evolving storyline.
Once Jake Sully and his family reach the shore of the Metkayina’s reef people, the audience
is immersed in a new corner of Pandora with new
aquatic animals brought to life in touching and familiar ways too.
In particular, the Tulkuns and the most known of them, Payakan, are those that aren't just
there to wow you in the sense that these creatures look massive, but
they are more intelligent and therefore used to build a much more emotional connection
between the Na'vi and the underwater life.
The scenes between Payakan and Loak slowly build out
to put you firmly on the side of these whale like creatures that have suffered at the hands
of the humans.
And knowing that this isn't the end for them when it comes to their importance
with Amrita and human aging, means that we have the beginning of a well mapped out world
and storylines in the years to come.
Not just that, but from an aesthetic side of things, Cameron
and cinematographer Russel Carpenter, ground the water sequences by having realistic reflections,
illuminations, and a stunning use of light and
flare.
There's a clear difference between the way water is captured in this film vs other recent
blockbusters that use water, and it's all the better here, because they actually filmed
in water tanks with the performers.
It helps to put the viewer in these environments with the characters and create a sense of
believability, on a level that Cameron and only few other
filmmakers can do consistently well in the science fiction genre.
The visual effects were elevated under water, on the ground and in the air, showing that
Pandora is the kind of world that from film to film, can take us to enven
more new locations and make us believe that this an organic real world place.
And at the same time, elevate our attraction through an
emotional connection to the creatures there and the bonds between them and the Navi.
Speaking of the emotional connection that Cameron puts firmly at the front of the Way
of Water's story, I think this is what really elevated this sequel from just being another
good to look at instalment.
And to me it promises that down the line, when we do get the more interesting answers
surrounding the questions we have, that it'll be tackled with care and a sense of
authenticity.
In particular, the third act of Avatar 2, is one of the most thrilling final acts I've
seen in a movie this year.
Top Gun Maverick gave me a similar feeling earlier in the
year, bringing together it's characters and final mission to produce something nailbittingly
tense and action packed in a way blockbusters mainly used to be.
Avatar The Way Of Water follows that, essentially giving us a huge,
yet meaningful one hour long action scene, pitting the technological power of the RDA
against the unbreakable spirit of the Na’vi.
While a lot of people are saying that this final battle
is bigger than what we saw in the original, I'd argue that it's actually smaller, but
appears bigger, due to the epic sense of cranked emotional stakes that Cameron captures.
In this fight, we've essentially got just a small batch of humans with Quaritch and
his recombinant marines, fighting the Navi, rather than the
combined weight of all their forces, like in the original.
This time it's a personal fight, one where the Navi are trying to defend their land and
creatures, but one where Quaritch is on a path of revenge based on the memories he
does have.
There's not just a big fight and one side wins, there's emotional payoff with the eventual
loss that the Sully family now has to overcome.
The death of their son Neteyam, sends Neytiri into a powerful moment of her own revenge,
brutally killing and screaming at humans on board the sinking ship and almost killing
their adopted son, the son of the human Quaritch, that she didn't really have a big connection
with.
It's way more character driven in the sequel and we get a greater sense of the
character's drives and how they feel when something that means everything to them is
either taken from them or could be.
James Cameron delivered an intense and emotional climax, one that
is partially inspired by his own record breaking film, Titanic, and one that like his previous
work, connects to the audience through all the heartfelt thematics and character build
up in the first two acts of the story.
In the first Avatar there was the romanticism of two people of different species coming
together, and our human protagonist eventually becomes one of the people.
In Titanic there was the romanticism between a poor man and
rich girl, and that love lived on reagrdless of the disaster that came with it.
There's essentially a romantic pull at the heart of each of his
films, and whether that's to do with an actual love with someone or a love for something,
Cameron universally knows how to attract an audience every single time.
In Avatar The Way Of Water, the romanticism comes through a growing
love for the oceans and a sense to protect the love that already is, with a family learning
to fight and survive together.
And it seems like that greater sense of romanticism has
hit a cord with the audience once again.
In fact, when all the doubters were ready to proclaim that Avatar 2 had flopped at the
box office in it's first weekend, the known pattern of Cameron's
films exploding during their second weekend looks to be happening once again, now that
people have seen the film and spread the word around.
It's on track to make $1.5 billion in the next week, meaning that it's averaging around
$50-$70 million a day worldwide.
So the filmmaker behind some of the biggest blockbusters
in history, clearly hasn't lost his way nor his connection with universal audiences.
The many plot holes, the weird hints at science and the occational shabby use of dialogue
seem unaffected by the universal appeal that his
movies bring and the high level of visual and immersive filmmaking that he and his team
aim to constantly produce.
In the end, we got a movie that was everything Cameron wanted.
A thrilling 3 hours of cinematic immersion on another world, that yes, has all the action
spectacle you'd expect, but more importantly, all the
emotional heart with a family learning to fight together in the darkest of times.
But that was my video discussing why I believe that James Cameron's Avatar The Way Of Water
is a visual masterpiece.
From the visual production in digital filmmaking to the elevated
sense of immersion and emotion in its storytelling, Avatar 2 is an attempt at creating pure cinema
and not just a generic sequel.
It's such a weird instance for me, because normally when
a sequel has an unbalanced script and takes beats from the original film, I would tend
to not love the film as much as I do here.
But as I said, cameron has this spark about him when it
comes to the filmmaking and the connective storytelling on show.
He uses 3 hours to put you firmly in a world or with a group of characters and make you
truely feel their journey.
He connects you to the intimate themes of romantisism
and togetherness in a way that other filmmakers can't on this big a scale.
It's all about the wonder of the big screen experience and I
really respect that when it comes to big screen spectacle.
It's what made me fall in love with cinema decades ago, and like Top Gun Maverick, The
Way Of Water captures what the cinematic experience is all about.
But let me know down below in the comments section what you thought of Avatar The Way
Of Water alongside whether you agree with the points I raised about
cinematic immersion and the visual beauty of James Cameron's epic sequel.
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But anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed it, I've been Cortex and as always make some noise.