Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)
Directed by James Cameron
Set more than a decade after the events of the first film, learn the story of the Sully family (Jake, Neytiri, and their kids), the trouble that follows them, the lengths they go to keep each other safe, the battles they fight to stay alive, and the tragedies they endure.
46 connections found
View:
46 films that influenced Avatar: The Way of Water
What critics say influenced Avatar: The Way of Water
And writer/director James Cameron still doesn’t seem concerned with rehashing past material from his filmography; whereas the 2009 film borrowed heavily from “Aliens,” this follow-up takes inspiration from “The Abyss” (and “Titanic”), particularly as Cameron’s affinity for the deep grows evident in the extensive submerged locales and creatures (and photography and gadgetry and submersibles).
James Cameron couldn’t make a sequel to Titanic – for obvious reasons – so here we get Avatar 2 , complete with a finale that is either a homage or a complete rip-off of Cameron’s Titanic (which, until three years ago, was the second highest-grossing movie in history).
As evidently seen during the final action-packed third hour, he goes all out with lots of gunfire, explosions, arrows and whatnot from aerial to water/underwater attack and at one point, a sinking ship that evokes Cameron’s own Titanic-like moments.
Cameron knows how to please a crowd and the climax has several beats, including a Titanic homage, that would count as the money shot in other movies.
Few directors are as adept at crafting gargantuan set pieces and intimate one-on-one showdowns with such muscularity and lucidity, and The Way of Water peaks in virtuosic fashion, nodding to virtually every prior Cameron effort (The Abyss, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Titanic) along the way.
There’s also a lot of nods to some of Cameron’s other work, such as TITANIC and THE ABYSS, which I assume was intentional.
The latter is reminiscent of a Free Willy-like story of an unexpected friendship between Lo’ak and a castaway tulkun .
Cameron explores the possibilities of spacey sea spectacle with high-speed races, furious fights, and even sentimental scenes of cross-species bonding that recall Free Willy or SeaWorld performances.
And writer/director James Cameron still doesn’t seem concerned with rehashing past material from his filmography; whereas the 2009 film borrowed heavily from “Aliens,” this follow-up takes inspiration from “The Abyss” (and “Titanic”), particularly as Cameron’s affinity for the deep grows evident in the extensive submerged locales and creatures (and photography and gadgetry and submersibles).
Few directors are as adept at crafting gargantuan set pieces and intimate one-on-one showdowns with such muscularity and lucidity, and The Way of Water peaks in virtuosic fashion, nodding to virtually every prior Cameron effort (The Abyss, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Titanic) along the way.
There’s also a lot of nods to some of Cameron’s other work, such as TITANIC and THE ABYSS, which I assume was intentional.
While storytelling elements are reminiscent of past Cameron opuses (most notably Aliens , The Abyss , and Titanic ), there’s never a false beat throughout this climax.
Canadian director/co-writer James Cameron is at his best in the water, as seen in “Titanic,” “The Abyss” and his real-life undersea exploration of the Mariana Trench depths.
In 2009, back when everyone was convinced that the blue cat aliens flick would lend James Cameron his first flop since The Abyss, producer Jon Landau presented a handful of scenes at Fantastic Fest, Austin's tastemaker genre film festival.
However, if you’re going to hate on “family” as a theme in Avatar: The Way of Water, then you have to extend your disdain to every Fast & Furious movie, two Incredibles movies from Pixar, and, heck, even The Godfather trilogy among many more rock-solid films that celebrate and emphasize family love for dramatic hold.
Advertisement
I still remember where I was in 2009 when I experienced the first Avatar in theaters: I wondered if that was what audiences experienced in 1993 with Jurassic Park or in 1977 with Star Wars .
The science fiction action thrill ride was a landmark, surpassing Star Wars, Jurassic Park, and E.T. in earnings.
It’ll also earn them some mockery from the locals, especially Tonowari and Ronal’s own teenage children, in a story that sometimes plays like a teen surfing movie by way of “Swiss Family Robinson.”
Other detractors make the claim that the film has had no palpable impact on the culture writ large, particularly in comparison to its peers like Star Wars , Jaws , or the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies.
Basically Avatar 2=Titanic + T2 + The Abyss + some of Spielberg's Jaws.
Few directors are as adept at crafting gargantuan set pieces and intimate one-on-one showdowns with such muscularity and lucidity, and The Way of Water peaks in virtuosic fashion, nodding to virtually every prior Cameron effort (The Abyss, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Titanic) along the way.
But the closing stretch, when he reminds viewers that he also directed Aliens and Terminator 2 , may knock their socks off anyway.
The best way to make an anti-gun/anti-violence film is to disguise it as Terminator 2 --and the best way to make an ecological screed is to cosplay it as a picture in which the prevailing stereotype for Native Americans remains the one where they're all spiritual children of a sentient Nature.
Its director, James Cameron, has made four narrative sequels in his career and two of those, Aliens and Terminator 2: Judgment Day , are inarguably two of the best sequels of all-time.
With the exception of 1982’s notoriously troubled Piranha II: The Spawning, he has done a great job with two sequels in Aliens (1986) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) even to the point of surpassing the respective original films.
Since (and including) his debut solo feature in 1984, The Terminator , multi-hyphenate filmmaker James Cameron has crafted a number of movies that I admire and enjoy, among them one of my favorite sequels of all time, the 1986 Aliens (his 1991 Terminator 2: Judgment Day is also quite fine).
Advertisement
And writer/director James Cameron still doesn’t seem concerned with rehashing past material from his filmography; whereas the 2009 film borrowed heavily from “Aliens,” this follow-up takes inspiration from “The Abyss” (and “Titanic”), particularly as Cameron’s affinity for the deep grows evident in the extensive submerged locales and creatures (and photography and gadgetry and submersibles).
But the closing stretch, when he reminds viewers that he also directed Aliens and Terminator 2 , may knock their socks off anyway.
While storytelling elements are reminiscent of past Cameron opuses (most notably Aliens , The Abyss , and Titanic ), there’s never a false beat throughout this climax.
By turns evoking memories of Titanic’s emotionally freighted sequences of inexorable disaster and the tendency of Cameron’s heroes — particularly Ellen Ripley from Aliens and Sarah Connor from T2: Judgment Day — to run back into the belly of the beast in defiance of such peril, The Way of Water’s finale reminds us that Cameron is a deft architect of high-stakes action.
Also in the mix as young Na’vis are veteran actors Kate Winslet and Sigourney Weaver, who have worked with Cameron in the past – Winslet on that other water adventure (“Titanic”) and Weaver on “Avatar” and “Aliens” (1986).
It’s insane that after directing two of the highest grossing films of all time and delivering arguably the greatest sequels ala “Aliens” and “T2: Judgement Day,” people would still doubt the king, but the chatter around his long-gestating return to Pandora in “Avatar: The Way of Water,” wasn’t so much around the quality of the film, but if people actually “cared.”
The adventures of Jake Sully (of the Jarhead clan) are probably never going to escape their sub-“Lawrence of Arabia” underpinnings or achieve the kind of popcorn-flavored poignancy that inspired this critic to list “Titanic” as one of the 10 greatest films ever made, but I’ll say this much: When “Avatar” ended, I couldn’t imagine caring about its characters enough to sit through a sequel, let alone four of them.