Avatar: The Way of Water

Dec 26, 2022

James Cameron no longer needs to prove almost anything. Aliens, Abyss, Terminator 2, Titanic… I love each one of them. And I admit it, I can no longer be impartial when evaluating them. Partly because they are part of my biography as a spectator, with tons of enthusiasm and attachment to a repertoire of films in which it is difficult to rule out a single title. There is a whole generation of fans of the director who could say the same, so I suppose they will face the same dilemmas that I do when it comes to evaluating the sequel to Avatar. But without a doubt, Avatar is my favorite movie of all time.

In Avatar: The Way of Water, Cameron once again flirts with the idea of ​​being a creator of worlds. Nor do I rule out that such an exuberant and plausible planet, Pandora, is real in the director's imagination. In any case, what counts is that this film immerses us in a world that, after five minutes of footage, already seems as authentic as the one in which we have had to live. It's not just the beauty of Pandora that amazes me. Cameron's ability to guide our eyes is also amazing, always two or three steps ahead of us.

There are moments when the sense of wonder is so compelling that one could accept that the film was a documentary. Getting out of that state of reverie is difficult, and that is the main merit of this sensational show, designed almost exclusively to be seen on a big screen and with 3D glasses.

There are few experiences like this in the world of cinema, and I fear that, at the rate we are going, it will soon be a memory in a landscape dominated by miniscreens and multi-platforms.

The script adopts the formula of classic family adventures. There are, of course, adult characters (Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña, along with Stephen Lang, Cliff Curtis, and Kate Winslet), but the weight of the story falls on a handful of children and adolescents, to whom Britain lends their voices and gestures. Dalton, Jamie Flatters, Trinity Jo-Li Bliss, Jack Champion, Bailey Bass, and veteran Sigourney Weaver.

The reader will not find in this tape not even a hint of cynicism. The plot is a traditional adventure, with heroes and villains, and although the world of Avatar only exists on the hard drive of a mega computer, there is more tenderness, innocence, idealism, and frankness in it than in much of the cinema that is shot today with actors and real scenes.

Impeccable in narrative terms and dazzling in its aesthetics, Cameron's film is, by far, one of the films of the year. As if that were not enough, the director's fans will recognize its tributes to the main titles of his prodigious career.

Synopsis

Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña reprise their iconic roles, playing Jake Sully and Neytiri, who have become wonderful parents who do everything they can to keep their family together. When unforeseen events take them away from their home, the Sullys travel across the vast reaches of the moon Pandora and flee to territory held by the Metkayina clan, a people who live in harmony with the oceans that surround them. There, the Sullys must learn to navigate the dangerous world of water and also gain acceptance from their new community.

With everything, they'd accomplished with Avatar in mind, and with the idea that the sequels were beginning to creep into their heads, Cameron and his former producing partner, Jon Landau, took the unusual step of convening top directors at a tech summit. from departments that had helped make the film. In February 2010, everyone met at a hotel in Santa Barbara, California to review what aspects of the making process had worked best and what could have been improved. The meeting spawned a trove of ideas as Cameron pondered envisioning a future for Pandora. “I don't think Avatar: The Way of Water would have been possible if we hadn't done that exercise,” Cameron says now.

Once he decided to explore more stories set on the lush alien moon, Cameron sat down and began putting a plethora of ideas to paper. With over 1,500 pages of liner notes and story plots, Cameron and Landau realized there was more than one story to tell. They enlisted an elite group of Hollywood's best screenwriters to work with Cameron to transform his story notes into the four films that continue the adventures of Jake, Neytiri, and the new family they've created together. There was no shortage of ideas, and the process took months to hone in on the exact stories for not just a sequel, but a series of subsequent films, all wildly ambitious but revolving around one central theme: the importance of family.

The filmmaker wanted to have all the scripts for all the sequels before going into production. “We had to write four movies before I could start on the first sequel,” says Cameron. “I wanted to map out all the stories and then put the actors in various movies and then shoot the live action. The idea was to consolidate the different stages of production together: performance capture, live action, and finally post-production.”

The heroic Jake Sully, who began Avatar as a paraplegic Marine grieving the death of his twin brother and desperately searching for a new path, now embarks on The Water Way as the happily married patriarch of his family and head of the Omatikaya clan, inhabiting completely his Na'vi body. “Family is our strength,” he often reminds his wife Neytiri and their children, Neteyam (Jamie Flatters), Lo'ak (Britain Dalton), Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), and their adopted teenage daughter, Kiri ( Sigourney Weaver). Much to Jake and Neytiri's chagrin, their children often hang out with Spider (Jack Champion), a human boy orphaned by the war and too young to return to Earth.

Once they had the story, Cameron and Landau asked the film's key department heads to come up with methodologies and new technologies that would allow Cameron to create even more expressive and compelling characters on screen and set them in a world that, despite his fantasy design, had to look real. The result was that when production began, Cameron had a whole new set of technological tools at his disposal. “The material we're working with now is very advanced compared to the first film,” says Cameron. “But does that make the movie any better from an audience perspective? Not at all. The public only cares about a story, the characters, and what they feel watching the movie. It's what I think about every day."

“When designing the oceans for Pandora, we knew we were in for a big challenge,” explains Dylan Cole. "For one, our director James Cameron knows more about the ocean than anyone."

It refers not only to Cameron's unprecedented solo dive to the lowest point on Earth in 2012, which he documented in the 2014 National Geographic film Challenge in the Deep but also to his lifelong passion for the sea. .

Beyond that, Cole's task was to create an ecosystem that would have shaped the entire Metkayina clean lifestyle. The characters themselves have a slightly different shade of blue than the Omatikaya. They also have a different physiology, with large hands, a broader chest and ribcage, and thick nubs of cartilage under their skin, almost like fins, that extend up the sides of their arms and legs to help them swim. They also have broader tails to propel their bodies through the water. Cameron explains: "The Metkayina clan, the reef people, have adapted to life in the ocean, so they look very different."

The experience is made even more exciting by the stunning visuals and compelling story Cameron and his collaborators tell using innovative technology, giving audiences a breathtaking and moving escapist experience they've never seen before. “With 3D, the high dynamic range, the high frame rate, today we can deliver a higher quality image than what we saw in Avatar and by far,” says Landau. “It goes beyond all of the above and we do it with the sole purpose of putting ourselves at the service of the narrative. It is a window to another world”.

Cameron concludes: “You walk into a movie theater and are transported to a fictional fantasy world. The more you let go of disbelief, the more fun it becomes. It's almost like a contract between the movie and the audience: we're all going to hold hands and jump into Pandora together. It's going to be wonderfully fun."