“Water is life's matter and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water.” – Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
There have been 4,746 days between the release of Avatar (2009) and the long-anticipated sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water. It took director James Cameron 13 years to deliver on his promise of continuing forward with the Avatar franchise. After countless delays, mainly due to how much VFX work was required to resurrect this world, we started to ask if it was going to be worth it. Cameron hasn’t gotten any younger and contemporary blockbuster cinema has grown stale - but Jim patiently waited for the technology to evolve before reintroducing us to Pandora and all that inhabits it. The effects work in the original was revolutionary and by some miracle, The Way of Water surpasses it along with anything else in the realm of it. As audiences have become accustomed to the sludge of conveyor belt blockbusters month to month, The Way of Water rehydrates the audience with a spectacle unlike anything on this side of Avatar. Instead of taking to the sky as many others have, Cameron descends into the womb of the Earth to explore the emotional crutches of computer-generated relics within the heart of Pandora.
James Cameron has long been lauded for his embracement of technology. He’s become a trailblazer of sorts for the advancement of digital imagery and the 3D format. Some don’t see him as more than a tech revolutionary, but the genius of Cameron is that he understands how to push the medium forward while staying true to the roots of cinematic storytelling. Avatar has been bludgeoned with comparisons to Ferngully, Dances With Wolves, and other classic stories that we’re familiar with. Colonialism, a conquest of the Eastern world, shadows of imperialism, and the military complex aren’t foreign to the films we’ve seen but the visual infrastructure that Cameron creates is what sets him apart.
On the surface, Avatar is a new world with sights unfathomable to the mind but at its core, it is about something(s) we’re accustomed to and familiar with: the tantalizing nature of emotion. Cameron carried us through that depth of emotion in the first film and is something he plunges into in The Way of Water. He invited us into Pandora with ease as we’re overwhelmed with a blitz of sight and sound and sharing that experience with someone who has yet to is why the revisits prove to be rewarding. Pandora is a treasure trove of some of the most sincere emotions that one billion dollars can buy, and Avatar was just the surface above the depths that The Way of Water uncorks.
As a species, we often wonder about what the future holds. Our minds race to deep space exploration and we ponder if there is a discoverable surface worth inhabiting as we leave Earth behind. A cynical thought to believe Earth is unsalvageable. Cameron takes this belief and pushes it toward the stars anyways, showcasing how that cynicism is cyclical in humans. How Cameron contrasts the nature of humans and the nature of the world is fascinating as he glosses over it with a coat of CG. The CG is never a distraction when it pertains to the real-world consequences that have been conditioned into our line of thinking. No matter how deeply we dream of the stars, whatever we come to inhabit will fall prey to the Western world's intent to seize and conquer. Avatar is the embodiment of that consequence, and The Way of Water is the answer to how we combat that.
Water is the connective tissue of the world. The liquid depths that connect all people is a space that Cameron has ventured into on numerous occasions. He became the first solo expeditionist to reach the bottom of the Mariana Trench in 2012. Since he was a child, he was fascinated by projectiles that could soar into the sky or become submerged in the water. Being the eldest of five and considering his infatuation with deep sea exploration, you can see how that takes shape in The Way of Water. Dating back to The Abyss (1989), Cameron has used the sea as an opportunity to wrap itself around these classic romantic tales. He seizes all that he knows about these subjects and brings them to vibrant life here. This time around he shifts the perspective of this dynamic by tethering it to the Sully children. Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), Neteyam (Jamie Flatters), Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), Tuktirey (Trinity Bliss), and Spider (Jack Champion).
Jake and Neytiri take the backseat but their influence is projected onto their children and their actions are relative to what is expected of them. The story is formed around their motive to understand the world just as much as the developments of Jake and Neytiri in the previous film. It forms a bond between the two that is at once a natural continuation for the previous participants and a development of growth in the expanded cast that so many sequels miss. It’s something that Cameron mastered in Terminator 2 when he told a story about Sarah Connor through the eyes of her son, John. To see that take a larger shape here in a family of seven who are mixed and matched between natural births and adopted children is special. He allows the characters to establish these unique and thoughtful identities that they can express between each other. Cameron can use their discoveries in pivotal points of the story’s development in the more external parts of the film to complement the internal growth that the children are going through. Whether they’re trying to prove their worth to their parents, stick up for themselves, or understand who they are in the scope of Pandora, the Sully children reach a point where their worth becomes distinguishable and evident as the film begins to draw the curtains closed. On the surface, The Way of Water is about the teachings that children can give back to their parents. If you search beyond that, you’ll discover that Cameron is operating on a level fueled by indulgence and passion that no amount of money could measure.
“Our hearts beat in the womb of the world.”
The Earth’s surface is 71% water. 96.5% of that is the ocean. Despite the distance between seven continents, 195 countries, and the 7.8 billion people that inhabit them, the one commonality (besides language), is that we live on islands connected by water. Furthermore, life’s most precious resource is water and, as far as we know, Earth is home to 100% of it in the known universe. We know that Pandora is an allegory for Earth, and Cameron understands that children adopt the world their parents have created for them. The decisions they’ve made, whether mistakes or not, trickle down and affect the reality that their children would come to understand. Being raised as warriors, and victims to Sky People in this regard shapes how Jake and Neytiri’s children understand their reality. When events force them to pack up and ship out to sea, that reality changes. They self-exile from the comfort of their home and are forced to adapt to a new culture. A new way of life the forest couldn’t teach them. What is it about the way of water that the Metkayina clan teaches them that they didn’t understand before? Is it community? No, they had that. Is it culture? No, they had that. It’s the tides of life. What will wash ashore that emerges from the depths of this dynamic? Teachings. Guidance. Companionship. Perspective.
The most literal obstacles are the Sky People, but the more personal hurdles they come to face are with the world itself. The currents of the ocean, the beasts within, the critters that breathe with color, the ecosystem of life beneath the surface of the world that compliments their very own. The world teaches them how to adapt to the consequences passed on from their parents, and the swathes of information, tools, and teachings that they discover bring them closer to the world because they grew closer to themselves. I’d like to believe that that is what Cameron found in the depths of the Mariana Trench. That pitch-black void of sunless depths within the world gave him a resounding sense of comfort, stability, and a complete understanding of who he always has been as a storyteller. A family man.
His entire filmography is driven by family dynamics. Surrogate families in fantastic places under dire circumstances. The mother/son dynamic of The Terminator. The mother/daughter dynamic of Aliens. The husband/wife dynamic of The Abyss and True Lies. The star-crossed lovers of Avatar and The Titanic. All of that comes to a head in The Way of Water. An entire body of work as visceral and moving as the sea itself embodied in a 195 minute epic that he has been working towards since the beginning. The level of compassion, empathy, and self-reflection in this is incredible. You sense that the burdens he carried as the eldest of his family find their way into the entire second act of this movie. An act of storytelling so tranquil and at peace with itself and its surroundings. Urgency is removed in favor of relationship and world-building, and while that may be a mistake to some, it earns it because it is the necessary setup for the intensity of the payoff. Never has a film this big loved its world so much. A telling choice for someone as environmentally sound and plant-based as Cameron.
So what’s his answer? How does Cameron combat the attempts to voyage into the stars to conquer more? He asks us to listen to the world, to empathize with the troubles that natural life faces under the conquest of men. To live in it, learn from it, and apply all of its teachings through the vessels of family. These vessels can grow as we meet new people, understand their pain and study their way of life in order to implement it within the established fortress of our own family. He asks that we give as much back to the world as it has given to us and in return our respective units of tradition, culture, and identity may flourish. The amount of deep, thoughtful breaths this movie exhales is utterly tremendous. It is overwhelmingly thoughtful, cruel towards the proper characters and always kind, generous, and considerate in giving the audience a thrill that is majestic and inconceivable.