Jonathan Peterson ‘23
Co-Executive Editor
Avatar: The Way of Water is a beautiful movie underscored by compelling messages. However, the movie falls short of its potential thanks to writing and character development that is far less effective than the movie’s visuals and the messages those visuals support. Ultimately, the movie is certainly a success despite these shortcomings, and it succeeds exactly where it intends to: immersing viewers in a beautiful world and inspiring them to care about that world. Some viewers may find the messaging overly didactic and heavy handed—however, these qualities may be a necessary evil in order to drive home the movie’s themes effectively.
Visuals and World Building
It isn’t hyperbole to refer to The Way of Water as stunning. This should be expected, considering the movie’s predecessor, which was marketed largely on its revolutionary use of CGI. The movie is in its element when depicting the world of Pandora and the intimate lives of Pandora’s inhabitants, the Na’vi. The movie spends a significant amount of time in the forest, allowing viewers to reacclimate themselves to the story, which is now over a decade old. However, the visuals truly take off when the movie shifts to a new coastal culture.
By switching the setting, the film allows viewers to immerse themselves in and explore the beauty of Pandora. Not only does this allow the director, James Cameron, to blow the socks off of viewers with beautiful scenes of various aquatic animals, it enables Cameron to create and insert new and compelling forces that push forward the themes that make the backbone of this series.
One common, and perhaps valid, complaint about these scenes concerns what feels like an unnecessary amount of time designated for the sole purpose of showing off the visuals but not actually pushing the story forward narratively. While I think this complaint is valid, it should not be emphasized too much. In a story that needs its audience to be invested in the world in order to appreciate the story’s themes, it seems necessary to spend a significant amount of time actually emphasizing the natural world and why the characters care for it, so that the audience can appreciate the broader themes and messages of the movie.
Themes and Messages
The Way of Water is designed around two central themes: the conflict between environmentalism and corporate goals as well as family. The environmental focus of the movie should come as no surprise to those who have seen the first movie, as it is carried over wholesale between the two films. However, while environmentalism was certainly the main theme of the first movie, family, and the idea of extended family, features heavily alongside this environmentalism in The Way of Water.
The thematic climax of the conflict between environmentalism and corporate goals is highlighted in the context of harvesting resources from sentient, emotionally complex animals. In short, the film takes the stance that, even if humans had direct and accepted evidence that a species they hunted was more complex spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally than our own species, corporate interests would still justify rather barbaric hunting and harvesting of those animals, despite the moral implications of this action. This theme is what necessitates what many critics have seen as an unnecessary amount of scenes which seem to do nothing to drive the plot forward narratively; these scenes instead serve to illustrate the full context of the conflict on Na’vi so that viewers can appreciate the spiritual, emotional, and moral complexities inherent to the conflict.
Further, developing this first theme promotes the second: family. The film pushes at what it means to be family and what it means to care for individuals and groups other than oneself. It forces viewers to think about how broad the idea of family should be, and how far the kind of care and love that we extend to family should be extended to individuals and entities outside of one’s direct family. This is one of the few themes in the film in which some character development regarding the theme actually occurs outside of just the protagonist’s own family.
Character Development and Writing
Character development and, in particular, writing seem to be the main points where the film struggles. Much of the dialogue feels choppy, unnatural, and plain. Many of the characters feel like they barely grow at all. Certain developments, such as one character’s seizure, just happen. There’s no development or explanation to them whatsoever.
These are the main critiques being levied at the movie at the moment, and they are hard to rebut. The best response that the movie could make to these claims is simply that the movie had different goals, which I think may also be true.
However, it isn’t all quite as bad as everyone says. I think that Jake Sully and his family all developed throughout the movie in terms of their respect for each other and their understanding of the value they each brought to the table. Even the main antagonist draws some lines in the sand by the end of the movie that might have surprised viewers.
Conclusion
Overall, The Way of Water does what it set out to do and does it well. The movie is far from perfect, but it sets its focus on narrow goals involving imagery and messaging and delivers in those areas. Fans who criticize the movie on the basis of poor writing and character development are absolutely justified in those criticisms. However, they should not allow viewers to be blinded to the areas in which the movie succeeds. Overall, I would rate the movie an eight out of ten.
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jtp4bw@virginia.edu