In the world of Hollywood, emotively-rich dramas sit on one side of the storytelling equation and big, brassy, visually resplendent blockbusters sit on the other, and never, usually, the twain shall meet.
But just occasionally, in a happy marriage of lushly visual FX, gripping narrative and compelling characters, a blockbuster emerges from the pack that immersively enraptures with its ability to tell a heartfelt story with emphasis and thoughtfulness, and messaging that feels organic and not shoehorned-in clumsy, and a epic feel that somehow is affectingly intimate too.
After what feels like a million years of tantalising promises and PR hype full of possibility and endless assurances, Avatar: The Way of Water has been released and instantly emerged as just a film, a sequel over a decade after the original 2009 film became a watercooler sensation which seamlessly blends together a rich, involving story, meaningful musing on the dark threats of colonialism and environmental degradation, and worldbuilding so lustrously wondrous it’s all too easy to get lost in it.
It is, however, you slice it, and god knows a desperate humanity does it’s best to do just that, a masterpiece of cinematic storytelling, which is content to take the time it needs to immerse us in the luminously rich world of Pandora, a moon rich in beauty, biospheres of wonder and a people attuned to their sentient lunar gaia in a way that feels enviably enveloping.
Not having to spend as much of the film on setting the scene as Avatar, Cameron dives right back in, taking us into the world of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), once human, now Na’vi and chief of the Omaticaya forest clan, fierce warrior wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) and their four children – Neteyam (Jamie Flatters), Lo’ak (Britan Dalton), Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) and Tuktirey aka Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss) – which is blissful and natural after the moon’s indigenous people saw off the imperialist “Sky People” from Earth.
Theirs is a world of family and communion with the wider world around them, a world they connect with physically by way of luminescent tendrils at the end of their hair braids, and which sustains them spiritually as much as physically, shaping their lives in ways profoundly intangible and groundedly real.
As a picture of a perfect world, it is unmatched and Cameron gives us the time to match the rhythm of the Sully family’s lives, six Na’vi who are resolutely close and who, flawed decision-making aside, because yes even those in full communion with nature are capable of not being perfect, a sign of Cameron’s willingness to not sanctify the Na’vi as too perfect to be regular beings of love, life and colour, always have each other’s back.
It is the closeness of the Sully clan, all of whom we get to know intimately through long passages of watching the kids grow up and Jake and Neytiri working to parent them in a way that fulfills the promise of their regained homeworld, that forms the beating heart of Avatar: The Way of Water which may have some big messages about the callousness of humanity when it comes to its treatment of fellow beings and the environment they inhabit, but which remains resolutely and winningly small when it comes its emotion al centre.
Even as the story inevitably goes wide and large with the return of humanity fleeing a dying planet, an impelling cataclysmic ticking clock that seems to embolden them to colder and crueller than they were in Avatar, much of the storytelling, the battle-heavy final act notwithstanding, stays focused on how an attack on a Pandora is an attack on all Na’vi and how the only way they will get through the hell of fighting for their home after militarily superior invaders, is to hold fast to family and to the innate sense of direction and belonging it provides.
So profound is this focus on the way the Sullys cleave hard to each other, and in so doing provide reassurance, comfort and guidance to those around them, that even when Avatar: The Way of Water expands its world-building reach to the clearly Māori-influenced people of the sea, the Metkaytina, led by Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and wife Ronal (Kate Winslet) with whom the Sullys take sanctuary at one pivotal point, it keeps its eye firmly on the emotional heartbeat of family and connection that centres all of us but which is pivotal to how the Sullys weather the heartbreakingly intense story of the film.
This willingness to go intimate and let emotional bigness more than match the epic nature of the visuals and the wider world-shattering narrative means that even in the searing intensity of the third act where furious fiery battles and monstrous cruel killing dominate, that we never lose of the beating, emotionally rich, heart of the film, a commitment to emotionally-centred storytelling which infuses a film that is huge in so many ways with an emotional meaningfulness that captures your heart over and over again.
So effectively does Cameron keep admittedly big emotions intimately handled through Avatar: The Way of Water that the finale, which sees a titanic battle between the forces of good, represented by Jake Sully (and his family) and bad, fronted by Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), a Recombinant (human memories poured into a Na’Vi avatar) whose human form was killed in the first film and who is back to seek vengeance on Jake, is a soul-searing journey into pervasive grief, the kind that comes from watching your home and family begin to lose out to evil that sees itself as essentially good and noble because it is saving something, in this case, human civilisation.
But the truth is that while humanity may think its survival warrants all kind of abhorrent action and that the Na’Vi are primitive lifeforms who don’t deserve to be treated as the warm, caring, culturally rich sentient beings they are – the same cruel treatment is meted to the whale-analogue, the Tulkun, who are infinitely more intelligent and emotive than even the Na’Vi – their behaviour is beyond horrific, proof that while our species now has shiny spaceships and galactic might on its side, that it hasn’t learn a thing about how to treat others or their environments well.
In many ways, Avatar: The Way of Water is a horror story, a tableau of terrors played out on a people and a place where harmony genuinely reigns, a connectivity of life that isn’t wafty or New Agey but rich, real and with considerable emotional heft.
This is life lived large, and Avatar: The Way of Water celebrates both its greatness and grandeur but also its emotional granularity in the form of the Sully family who exemplify what it means to belong to each other, to their clan and to the immeasurable complex and infinitely beautiful world around them.
Brought to the screen with a visual lushness that will take your breath away, Avatar: The Way of Water is a superlative example of what a blockbuster can and should be, leaving its big screen rivals in the dust, its visuals are awe-inspiringly lovely (so real you want to run through the forests and dive into the seas), its characters compelling, its story nuanced and thoughtfully immersive with long passages just devoted to being, not action, and its message a critically important one, woven into the greater whole with the same care and attention as every other flawlessly-rendered element, reflecting the same wholeness and aspirational beauty that typifies Pandora and which you can only hope we one day find here on Earth.