AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER FILM REVIEW -- A SEQUEL DROWNING IN EPIC SINCERITY / THE FINANCIAL TIMES P EDITORIAL

Avatar: The Way of Water film review — a sequel drowning in epic sincerity

Thirteen years after the original, James Cameron resurrects the Na’vi, adding children, ocean reefs and a hint of ‘Titanic’

Danny Leigh

The sequel finds the Na’vi heroes hiding out among an aquatic tribe

Did anyone even like Avatar? 

In distant 2009, millions of us bought a ticket for James Cameron’s 3D ecostravaganza. 

But keeping up with culture is not quite the same as enjoying it. 

Back then, a film could seem unmissable on the basis of scale alone. 

Now belated sequel Avatar: The Way of Water is released in a different era. 

Who will come? 

Thirteen years is a lifetime in mass entertainment. 

And if the ideal audience is still the newly teenage, they will need luring into a cinema — whatever one of those is — with zero connection to the original. (Unless, ickily, they were conceived after a screening.)

Yet onscreen, much is unchanged. 

Take the tone, once more both entirely humourless and hard to take seriously. 

The heroic Na’vi are back too, of course, 10ft tall and Viagra blue, earnestly protective of lunar home Pandora, all lush forests, strange beasts and spiritual illumination. 

Chief among the clan is Sam Worthington, returning as former US Marine Jake Sully. 

You will recall he ended the first film gone full Na’vi. 

Here he has evidently stayed with warrior princess Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), the couple now the parents of multiple kids, genes a mixed bag, dialogue pure tween. 

(“I hate you, penis face.”)

The human factor doesn’t end there. 

Last time out, Jake helped the US invade Pandora to strip-mine natural resources. 

Now more jarheads attempt another conquest, spiced with a revenge mission trained on Sully. 

Between booing the buzzcuts, you might ponder the contrast with another big-league sequel hinged on the US military, Top Gun: Maverick. 

By the time that movie came out earlier this year, the Reagan-era jingoism of the original had long become part of general, candy-coated 1980s nostalgia. 

Here, Cameron again makes blunt allusions to the Iraq war: no one’s idea of a fond memory.

At over three hours, you will have time to quietly mull geopolitics, as well as holiday plans, meeting schedules and recipe ideas. 

Having spent so long perfecting his outlandish digital flora and fauna, Cameron insists we stop to smell the flowers. 

And once Tully’s former comrades force the family into exile — hiding out among the aquatic Na’vi of Pandora’s ocean reefs — a vast new abundance of movie kicks in. 

There are subplots, learnings, and many scenes of euphoric Na’vi children riding on the backs of emotionally attuned sea creatures.

Sam Worthington returns as a former US Marine who has gone native

Hold that eye-roll. 

If Cameron’s worldbuilding is exhausting, it also has an epic sincerity far from the lazy cash grab of most sequels. 

Lazy Cameron is not. 

Every scene has been sweated over. 

Yet the energy is subtly different from the po-faced hubris of the first Avatar. 

This is still a film-maker desperate to show off his train set. 

Now, though, almost plaintively, he seems to want more than mere awe in response. 

He wants us to enjoy it.

As Jake frets about the “shame of being useless”, do we hear the inner voice of a veteran director, returning after 13 years to the Darwinian world of mega-budget blockbusters? 

Visual effects are so often sniffed at, but Cameron pulls off a rare balance. 

We note the eerie recognisability of a motion-captured Kate Winslet (now a Na’vi sea queen), while still immersed in his lavish fantasy. 

(Well, mostly.) 

This stuff is not easy. 

And iridescent plankton make you ooh and aah, and the gunfights are very good.

The violence is wrought by humanity, of course. 

But the misanthropy is offset by the hippie-ish conviction that the young may still lead us to a better future. 

Squint and you might even buy the child-centric plot as more than just putting kids in a movie to persuade kids to see it. 

Still, old tricks win in the end. 

A grandly spectacular finale goes big enough to leave us wanting more, or at least to forget the sad-sack fish of the second act. 

Cameron even sprinkles in a hint of Titanic. 

Call it a personal touch from a onetime king of the world, hoping the throne still exists.