No two people feel the exact same way about any film. Thus, Team Experience is pairing up to debate the merits of each of the awards movies this year. Here’s Glenn Dunks and Cláudio Alves on James Cameron’s latest.
GLENN: Hi Cláudio! Welcome to Pandora... the whales are majestic, the grass gets you stones (mmhmmm) and the eyewear are Ray-Bans. An awful lot of ink has been spilled across the 13 years between Avatar movies. Ink about how nobody remembers Avatar. Ink about how it has no cultural imprint. Ink about how nobody knows the characters' names. Ink about how nobody actually even liked the 2009 original and it was purely a hit because of the 3D. And yet here we are with a James Cameron movie already having become (yet again) the highest grossing movie of the year and also potentially (yet again) the leader of the nomination board on Oscar morning 2023…
Avatar: The Way of Water is one gosh darn goofy movie and yet I love it. Reservations? Minor. The high frame rate is unnecessary and Zoe Saldana feels somewhat sidelined in order for Sam Worthington to give about eight speeches around how it is his role to protect his family. But otherwise, I was transfixed and transported. Yet again.
I had seen the original's re-release in anticipation, at my city's IMAX (a real IMAX, one of the largest in the world) and was genuinely surprised at how much I still liked it. In fact, it had risen in my estimation; improving over time partly due to the dereliction of duty that so many action filmmakers are guilty of, meaning Cameron's Avatar remained unbeaten and unparalleled. I didn't care that the story was still relatively thin or that Worthington's casting was the most dated thing about it. It's just an extraordinary experience. And that's what I want/need from cinema.
I'm not sure if Cameron's sequel improves upon it—I think it does in some areas and doesn't in others. But before this is just becomes me gushing over the sheer audacity of James Cameron pausing a three-hour-plus movie for a 45-minute chill out session under the sea, or the sheer gumption of the man to sink another ship as the climax of a movie, I'd like to hear from you Cláudio about you are somewhat cooler to the touch of this way of water.
CLÁUDIO: Hello Glenn, and thank you for that wonderful welcome. To start answering your query, I must make a confession. I'm profoundly mad at myself for the inability to embrace Cameron's return to Pandora without reservations. I've been a defender of the original Avatar ever since I first saw it, and would call myself someone for whom the audiovisual experience of cinema always supplants any storytelling concerns. For me, this art form is about visceral stimuli more than ideas conveyed in text, through character or narrative. It's about images made possible by the intervention of the movie camera, time collapsed and retrofitted onto the screen, reality repudiated in the search for something more real than it. And yet, I couldn't quite get over that awful script. What have I become?
The retreads to the first movie in terms of structure and antagonist felt the most disappointing, maybe because I wasn't quite prepared for them. Having kept myself ignorant of what the picture was about beyond the teaser trailer, I didn't even know that Quaritch was coming back. Let me assure you that it made for a terrible, eye-roll-inducing surprise upon first seeing the newly blue Stephen Lang. Still, that's just one of many sad inheritances from Avatar '09, elements that once made sense in this dramatic milieu but no longer pass muster. Jake's interior monologue, now divorced from the video log framing device, is another congenital malady passed from picture to sequel. Not only is it redundant and often repetitive, but it disrupts the audience's immersion in a film where underwater reverie devoid of human-like voice feels like the raison d'être for the whole affair.
Oh, how I loved those passages when the world went wordless, and all that was left was the sheer beauty of Cameron's aquatic utopia, the magical bonds between twinks and whales, between colors that shouldn't work together but somehow do. I'd go as far as saying that the first encounter with Payakan is one of the greatest single sequences of the year in film.
GLENN: Interesting points—and certainly those that I have seen echoed by others. I wonder if Cameron's reticence to go off narratively in a new direction wasn't out of some fear (as loathed as he would be to admit it) that, yes, 13 years is a long time between drinks (pun unintended) and that we as audiences needed something familiar to guide us back into its work. Especially without so much of the human world this time. Speaking of which, the one thing I would excise from this whole movie if given the opportunity. Brendan Cowell. A rather unlikable Australian actor who first appeared on screen while I was out taking a toilet break. The groan I let out when I was told of his arrival upon my return by my viewing partner. I wonder if other non-Americans get that feeling when local performers that they don't like suddenly appear in big American productions.
Okay, now that I've gotten that off my chest (seriously, Jermaine Clement was right there), I can get back to vigorously praising almost everything else.
I am glad you brought up Payakan. That Cameron went and gave one of the most emotional arcs to a non-anthropomorphic whale-like creature was just so delightful. That it communicates through signing and (papyrus) subtitles is the sort of thing that must have given studio execs the cold sweats, but which only adds to the impressiveness of Cameron's vision and is one of the things that sets it apart from so many boring blockbusters that I am getting tired of having to defend my lack of enthusiasm for.
Where do you sit, Claudio, in this area? Does Avatar get points simply for being what just about every other tentpole is not? And if so, do you think Academy voters will agree?
CLÁUDIO: At least Cowell's character suffered a gruesome demise. Once again, Payakan is a hero, dismembering the Australian villain with style. Damn, I love that alien whale.
Your theory regarding Cameron's cautious unwillingness to explore new narrative models may further justify another of the picture's capitulations to convention – the abandonment of the Na'vi language in lieu of full-on English dialogue. Did I realistically expect a blockbuster of this size to go for broke on an invented idiom? Of course not, but a guy can hope. It would have helped differentiate The Way of Water even more from the present tentpole landscape, that's for sure.
That point brings to mind another of this movie's main characteristics. I'm referring to how it repudiates current blockbuster trends by echoing Cameron's past filmography instead. Of course, there's his lifelong obsession with aquatic cinema, but also the notes of Titanic in the action climax, scenes lifted from The Abyss, a 'save the kid' last act straight from True Lies, and design elements that can't help but remind one of Aliens. It feels like a summation of Cameron, his cinema, what it means and has meant for audiences over the decades. More than the sense of uniqueness that might do the trick of exciting awards voters. Were you charmed by those apparent callbacks?
GLENN: Yes, in my conversations about the film with people, it seems the overt references to Cameron's own career have produced the more curious responses. For me, they only seek to remind me of how good he is at this. He has his bits and pieces that he enjoys and knows are visually and narratively effective. James Cameron makes movies that look cool and does things simply because he can, and sometimes that's enough. And I'd rather he do this than pull a Ridley Scott and just continuously re-work all of his old works to the point of being insulted that he made us pay for them in the first place.
Have you seen Top Gun: Maverick, Cláudio? I wonder where you sit on that one given the two are sort of competing for dominance (their battle would be more interesting if there were only five nominations for Best Picture, so maybe it's the director race we need to look at)...
CLÁUDIO: I enjoyed Top Gun: Maverick a great deal and feel it's a more consistent experience than Avatar overall. Apart from its propagandist streak, my objections to the Cruise vehicle never reach my irritation with Cameron's opus. However, it never achieves such incredible highs as The Way of Water. In other words, if it succeeds so well, it's because its ambitions are so meager compared to something like the Pandora-set epic. So, even though I'd rank Top Gun a little over Avatar, I respect Cameron more than I do Kosinski and team.
If one of those two has to define the future of blockbuster cinema, let the blue people lead the way, messiness and all.
Such conclusions should be reflected in their Oscar performances. While Top Gun may be closer to Best Picture gold, Cameron feels like the one bound to be embraced by the Director's branch, no matter what the DGA says. Indeed, out of the pair, I also think Avatar will get the bigger haul come nomination morning. So what say you, prediction-wise?
GLENN: I think the fact that so many counted the movie out will work in the film's favour, although I would expect it to get one or two less than the original—our understanding around digital cinematography, for example, appears to have advanced since 2009 and I don't think it's a contender there this year, plus sound has been merged into one so there's a already one spot it cannot replicate. Picture, director, art direction, visual effects, editing, sound and music all seem like strong possibilities yet again. My campaign for best movie to watch stoned clearly didn't make it to the Academy boardroom. It'd be a shoo-in. And you can't tell me Sigourney Weaver playing a teenage version of herself rolling around in the grass getting high off her planet wasn't intentional! I suspect James Cameron is more fun than the reputation suggests.
CLÁUDIO: Do you know what's been truly fun? Talking about Cameron's latest opus with you.
Though it's unfair to say this about a story that never presents itself as something other than the middle chapter of a much larger epic, I still left the theater wanting more. In other words, the picture feels incomplete in ways that don't register with the first Avatar. There's a conclusion, for sure, including a Nausicaa-lite funeral, but I wasn't completely satisfied. Hopefully, what now feels like preemptive table setting and unresolved narrative threads will bear fruit in the near future. I can't wait for the teens to grow up and bring back romance into Pandorian cinema, for Weaver to reach her Jesus-y apotheosis, for Falco and Winslet to justify their casting. I can't wait to know who or what is the Seed Bearer!
And on that note, here's a final question for you. What are your hopes for the next Avatar?
GLENN: I am so curious about what Jim Cameron will get out of Michelle Yeoh. I hope he doesn't waste her talents just as she seems to be cresting. Like Payakan over those terrible scientists' boat.
It's been a wonderful conversation, Cláudio. I look forward to another in (apparently) two years time (doubtful).
other "split decisions"
- All Quiet on the Western Front - outstanding or overrated?
- Babylon - thrilling or interminable?
- Everything Everywhere All At Once - essential or exhausting?
- The Fabelmans - joyous or phony?
- TÁR - utterly engrossing or underwhelming?
- Triangle of Sadness - facile or multi-faceted?
- The Whale - moving or just plain bad?