Here’s what I can’t quite work out regards James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of the Water. Visually, its quite astonishing, no doubt. The level of work involved in the technology, realising it onscreen, the water simulation, the underwater motion capture, as well as the thought and attention given to all of the film’s simply gargantuan art direction, all the environments, character and creature designs, costumes, props, future-military hardware, it cannot be denied. Its phenomenal worldbuilding. We’re so used to big, spectacular and (largely) photorealistic visual effects now that we can get quite blasé about it, and sometimes its good to step back and just appreciate the immense work and cost involved. How far film has come and where it might yet go.
But how frustrating that for all this attention to detail and hard work, the story itself doesn’t get anything like the same attention, no matter how much Cameron may crow about scripting four movies at once. Its clear that, just like with the original Avatar, Cameron is trying to build a mythology here, and I don’t quite mind all the liberal borrowing and inspiration from other sources – its nothing George Lucas himself didn’t do, after all- but really, its so stupendously lazy and ill-reasoned such a lot of the time. I could give the first film a pass, but second time around, when Cameron should be making his narratives and myth-building deeper, more reasoned and complex, Cameron’s instead just keeping things depressingly silly and simple. All humans are bad, all native Pandorans are noble, honest and strong. We don’t see any humans objecting to the invasion or destruction of Pandora, or questioning the brutal methods of their military, and likewise there seems no shades of grey regards the Na’vi, so even his protagonists are woefully underwritten and one-dimensional. Cameron clearly isn’t interested in Terran politics, or perhaps wondering how colonies on the moon or Mars might impact things, or showing perhaps how the starving millions on Earth are so desperate to live they just don’t care who humanity tramples on?
Its all just black and white, just the broadest strokes. Most of the narrative arcs are telegraphed right from the start (some repeated ad nauseum, like one of Jake’s kids always ignoring his orders- you can tell that won’t end well). As for just swapping one hilarious McGuffin for another- Unobtanium (I still can’t quite believe he had the nerve for that) now seems to have been suddenly forgotten, replaced by some space-whale brain juice that, get this, seems to grant immortality for humans, naturally giving humanity an all-new excuse to behave like a race of total bastards.
So how come so much is so silly while the visuals just soar in ways someone like Kubrick could only dream of? Imagine Kubrick with Cameron’s toybox…
the ghost of 82 