“Avatar: The Way of Water” succeeds in one big way above all. It looks and moves and surrounds the way James Cameron wanted his underwater disappointment “The Abyss” to look, once upon a time in 1989.
As with most Cameron blockbusters, “The Way of Water” has a way of pulling you in, surrounding you with gorgeous, violent chaos and finishing with a quick rinse to get the remnants of its teeny-tiny plot out of your eyes by the final credits. In 3D, I enjoyed a lot of the first “Avatar.” In the new, swanky, upgraded 3D, in support of breakthrough motion capture underwater footage, I enjoyed “The Way of Water,” too, though it’s more of a technological win than what my old eyes might consider a cinematic or narrative one. I’m frankly still wrestling with the distinction there.
There’s a reason the first “Avatar,” 13 years ago, had some trouble sticking in the memory of millions of moviegoers who nonetheless felt they got their admission price’s worth because, as Cassius Clay says in “One Night in Miami,” it was just so pretty. Its protagonist, Jake Sully, who joined the Na’vi against Col. Quaritch’s genocidal security forces sent from Earth, was protagonist enough. Barely.
