Avatar 2: The Way of Mediocrity

20th Century Studios, 192 minutes

If you like boring characters, paper-thin plots, and long runtimes that require you to break up a tedious movie into multiple viewings, then you just might love Avatar 2: The Way of Water. 

Avatar fans will tell you that you can’t appreciate James Cameron’s sequel if you didn’t see it in 3D since that’s the way he intended for it to be seen and it needs to be watched on the big screen to really be appreciated. Well, to that I say poppycock. That’s an excuse for having a film with lazy writing, weak characters, and just not much going on.

In today’s world, a good movie needs to be able to be enjoyed and appreciated on multiple formats. There was a time many moons ago (AKA the mid-2000s), when it seemed like 3D movies were going to take over the world and we’d all have 3D televisions in our homes. That, however, did not come to pass. That means that as time progresses after a movie’s initial release, filmmakers will have an increasing percentage of people that have seen their movie somewhere other than a movie theater (and not in the 3D format it was filmed in this instance), a fact that they should account for.

Look at this 3D TV! It would be like having a dinosaur right there in the room with you! (Scary.)

That doesn’t mean that movies shouldn’t strive to be visually stunning, or even that James Cameron shouldn’t make a big, splashy 3D epic if he wants to make a big, splashy 3D epic (which he most definitely does). It simply means that movies need to have more going for them than how they look. A film should aim to be something more than a good TV demo to play on screens in the background while you walk through a Best Buy.

Storywise, there just isn’t a lot here. It’s crazy to me that you can spend almost half a billion dollars making a movie and become so wrapped up in the visuals that you totally neglect having an at least decent plot. Avatar 2 is a film where the entire bulk of the runtime is showing off visual effects, which are mostly impressive, but that can only get you so far when it comes to having a worthwhile overall movie-watching experience.

Cameron and his writing team split up the writing for all of the Avatar sequels, and I think that really shows. The dialogue and characters are generic and underdeveloped. It feels like someone wrote this looking at a list of some story beats and then writing without ever really getting into the deeper parts of characters or taking any risks with the story since they were not allowed to (which is probably the reality of exactly what happened). “The people will be safe,” says Jake Sully, our boring protagonist. “A father protects. It’s what gives him meaning. One life ends. Another begins.” This sort of dialogue is supposed to be profound, but it’s just so incredibly blah. We’re also treated to the members of the Sully family saying, “Sully’s stick together,” multiple times, which is super hokey and makes this feel like a little kids movie even though it’s rated PG-13 and is supposed to appeal to all ages.

There are a lot of characters in Avatar 2, and I’m sad to report that they all largely stink. We have the same cliché army villain from the first movie (except now he’s bigger and bluer). Jake Sully remains one of the dumbest and least interesting main characters in recent memory. For some reason, they make Jake’s partner and the mother of the kids, Neytiri, act more feral and like a wild animal than all of the other Na’vi in the movie. She doesn’t have much of a personality besides angrily snarling.

The kids are supposed to be a big part of the movie, but none of them are interesting. There’s the rebellious son, the good son, the little girl who’s got no role, and the Sigourney Weaver teen girl Na’vi. I’m never a big fan of having celebrities with recognizable voices playing CGI characters, and Weaver voicing one of the kids is really distracting since her voice is extremely recognizable. I kept thinking, “Why does this child have an older woman voice and also why is she Sigourney Weaver?”

The worst character in the film (by far) though, is Spider, a human boy raised on Pandora with Jake’s family. This kid, jumping around in his loincloth with his long dreadlocks, is so incredibly cringeworthy and has some of the worst dialogue in the film. I get that they wanted a human kid who’s connected to the villainous general for added tension, but this part of the movie really doesn’t work.

Overall, I don’t think Avatar 2: The Way of Water is an awful movie; it’s almost painfully mediocre. It’s a film that despite costing so much to make and having so many people work on it is basically a big nothingburger.

This is a movie that would probably best be watched on a long plane ride, just to fill up the time with something that you don’t really care about that isn’t all that good. I’m sure James Cameron would hate this idea since it’s the exact opposite of how he wants people to watch Avatar 2, but it’s his fault for not making a better film. Still, I’m going to go out on a limb and say this isn’t the worst sequel he’s ever directed since his directorial debut in 1982 was Piranha 2: The Spawning. Though I haven’t seen that one, so maybe it’s a hidden gem. Actually, there’s a solid chance it’s more fun than Avatar 2: The Way of Water.

Grade: 4/10