The movie “Avatar: The Way of Water” is not only one of the most anticipated films in 2022, but for more than a decade. Since the first part was shown in 2009, and director James Cameron promised other upcoming parts, fans of the work are waiting warmly. Restore this pioneering experience in its time.
Avatar by Water has already premiered and has been nominated for Best Picture at the Golden Globes and has been doing well so far, but was this movie really worth the wait?
Or was it a pioneering experience in its time only and lost its luster?
Visual experience only
With a random question to some fans of the first part of the movie "Avatar", we find repeated answers, "It's the first 3D movie I've seen" or "I've never seen a movie like it before". Indeed, Avatar was a pioneering visual experience at the time, with a distinct use of visual effects to create The entire fictional world of the planet Pandora.
But with the passage of these 13 years, the state of cinema has changed a lot, 3D films have become very popular, with the emergence of different visual experiences, and the Marvel series, which also relies heavily on visual effects and dazzling fantasy worlds, so James Cameron had to mobilize all his ingenuity in making his work distinctive in terms of image. at least.
The world of Pandora, which we saw in the first part, was similar to terrestrial forests, strange trees and mountains suspended in the air, and giant blue inhabitants with long tails. From the water, a community with different physical characteristics with lighter colors and hands closer to the world of fish. Events move after the first third of the film to this marine area, which represented the biggest difference from the first part, by filming underwater for many scenes, and creating new, dazzling creatures.
When the American director "Martin Scorsese" criticized superhero films, especially Marvel, he described them as similar to "theme parks" with their dazzling games, but they are not real cinema. Very entertaining, the viewer feels that he is in the heart of a world different from his usual world, but within a cinematic framework that tries to present a story.
By watching the videos spread about the process of filming the movie "Avatar: Water Way", the actors appear wearing cameras fixed to their faces to take close-up shots that are combined through visual effects with the shapes designed for them, speaking to the void in place of the other beings that will appear with them in the scene, an experience that deprives the actors of integration With their characters, but that is not the priority of the makers of this movie who are looking for visual dazzle only.
Primitive and racist story
What after the brilliant visual effects?
The answer is nothing. Avatar, with its first and second parts, is nothing more than a very simple and primitive story similar to dozens of other movies and stories, with a really different and distinctive visual experience.
By canceling the visual effects and putting the faces of ordinary actors instead of the blue ones, we will find before us the story of a country that the white man is trying to colonize and seize its wealth with the resistance of its indigenous people. The black African citizen, the Latino, the indigenous people of America, or the Asians can be placed in the place of the inhabitants of Pandora, and the story will be very realistic with a direct metaphor.
The simplicity of the story was also accompanied by the antiquity of the treatment and the vision that makes the work appear as if it belongs to the American films of the eighties and nineties.
With his military and war experience, the white American leader can organize the ranks of the indigenous people and lead them to expel the colonialists from his own skin, a story similar in its plot to the very old and racist Tarzan novels that cannot be presented in an era in which political correctness has gained weight.
The hero of the film, Jack Sally, in the part, the former marine soldier, rebels against his commander and his comrades, and decides to save the planet Pandora, and in fact he expels them back to start his life in the second part as a leader of the people, and he has 3 sons and daughters, and he adopts two, and builds a happy and stable life, until humans reach the quiet Pandora of new.
They are looking for a new planet to settle in, and the earth has become a place unfit for living, and battles and hit-and-runs begin between the two teams until humans try to win the battle by sending a team consisting of hybrid bodies similar in their physical characteristics to the inhabitants of Pandora, but with the memory and personality of the military leaders from the first part, and by targeting "Jake Sally" In particular, he decides to run away to save his family.
The simplicity of the story certainly contributes to the film reaching the largest number of viewers who want to enjoy cinematic viewing without the need to focus on a complex plot, but the film has some gaps in the script as well, such as not mentioning the colonization process more than once at the beginning of the film, and then turning it into a mere journey. Colonel Miles Quaritch's revenge on Jack Sally and his family, with the incomprehensible support of the US military, which wants to subjugate the planet's population to its occupation, but after the middle of the film appears as an unimportant goal in a long journey of pursuit.
"Avatar: Waterway" is the first of 4 films to complete the "Avatar" scheme, and James Cameron has already begun filming "Avatar 3" in parallel with filming the second part, with the same cast and new characters.
But more than once, the director stated that the fourth and fifth parts depend on the success of the second and third, and given the revenues of the second part only a week after its presentation, we find that this is very likely, and it achieved 441 million dollars against a budget of 460 million dollars, and it became No. 10 in the highest films of 2022. revenue, which is highly variable with each day.