Roundtable: Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)
Anton: So here we are to discuss James Cameron’s latest film, Avatar: The Way of Water, after our James Cameron Retrospective, which began in late November last year. With the many Cameron viewings and discussions we’ve already had, I’m sure each of us has a lot of thoughts about Cameron’s newest blockbuster and how it fits into his body of films.
But before we address the larger significance of Avatar: The Way of Water as a James Cameron film, why don’t we start off where everything Avatar typically starts off: with the cinematic experience. What was your experience of The Way of Water?
At this point, it’s a truism to say Avatar is an immersive cinematic experience, so let’s try to get at why it feels so immersive. Also, as I’ve mentioned before, until recently, I had only seen the original Avatar in 3D in theatres, so it’s worth noting in what format we watched the film as it can have a big impact on the experience.
I saw Avatar at 9:50 in the morning the day after Christmas, and it was in one of those theatres where each seat is a big comfy leather recliner. It was a very cold day, and as I walked into the theatre, I saw that everyone was basically lying down on these recliners and covered in their winter coats as blankets. It kind of looked like everyone was lying down for cryosleep, heading out from Earth on the voyage to Pandora. And then, man, that crisp, popping 3D and the amazing visuals effects. Watching the movie was like a lucid dreaming experience.
Aren: Describing Avatar as a lucid dream is very accurate, both experientially and thematically.
I saw The Way of Water opening night the way that James Cameron intended: absolutely soaking wet. There was a freak rainstorm in Toronto on the Thursday of the premiere, so I got drenched getting to the theatre for the screening and had to sit through all three hours and 12 minutes with my jeans dripping cold water.
Anton: You are truly living the Way of Water, Aren.
Aren: I am committed to the immersive theatrical experience….
However, despite the physical discomfort, the film did a great job of making me forget about the wetness. This movie is big, beautiful, and all-consuming. My prediction that it would be the first film to outdo the effects in the original has been proven accurate. As well, I was pleased to see how well the 3D High Frame Rate (HFR) worked throughout the film. It’s been years since 3D has really added to the experience of a movie and I’m not sure HFR has ever been done properly until now, even if I’ve enjoyed the experimentation of it with The Hobbit movies and Ang Lee’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk and Gemini Man.
Anton: There’s something about the HFR in The Way of Water that works in a way I haven’t seen before. In The Hobbit, the HFR made the digital effects look incredible crisp and tangible, but when Jackson was shooting, say, Frodo talking to Bilbo in the Prologue, the images had the appearance of the motion-smoothing effect on some TVs, or, even worse, the appearance of daytime soap opera video.
In Avatar, the HFR especially contributed to the underwater effects, I thought. I’ve never seen water look so real.
Aren: It probably has something to do with Cameron ramping up the use of HFR and ramping it down, depending on the scene. It kicks in during action sequences to provide extra clarity, but then goes back to 24fps during the quiet dialogue sequences, so you don’t get the daytime soap opera look.
Anders: I’ve seen The Way of Water twice now, both in the same theatre in IMAX 3D HFR projection. The first viewing was on the opening Thursday night, and I went with our friend Jesse Hutchison (who 3 Brothers Filmcast listeners may remember from guesting on our The Beatles: Get Back episode), who hadn’t seen the original film until that very afternoon on Disney+! Jesse can correct me if I’m wrong, and he may not be totally Cameron-pilled like me, but I believe he still enjoyed the films. It only took me a few minutes to completely re-immerse myself in the world of Pandora, and I almost forgot about the 3D and the HFR as the film drew me in. I think, in many ways, that’s the ultimate compliment, that you forget that basically everything you’re seeing on screen is digitally composed or altered in some way. Without seeing the behind-the-scenes material, I would be hard pressed to really understand how they accomplished some of the effects.
And yes, the HFR here works really well. I didn’t sense any of the uncanny motion-smoothing effects I did during my viewing of The Hobbit films. On my second viewing, I tried to pay attention to when the HFR kicks in during the action scenes, and I appreciated how crisp and immersive it made them. There’s a moment in the last hour when the whaling ship is lifted out of the water for a moment at full speed and the detail of every 4K rendered wave and person on the deck of this massive ship is clear and visible, and it’s as impressive as any special effect in any film I’ve ever seen. I could sense the weight of the ship and the stomach-lurching vertigo you feel when you break gravity for a moment. It’s truly stunning.
My second viewing was with the whole family—appropriately, given the family dynamic of the movie—on New Year’s Day, in a still-full theatre with lots of other kids and multi-generational families. This film has staying power, testified to both at the box office given the audience size, but also in one’s imagination, even if its runtime of over three hours tested the patience of my younger son.
As a Sequel
Anton: We’ve talked a lot about Cameron as someone who makes a lot of sequels, is known for sequels, and approaches them in a trademark way. What did you think of The Way of Water as a sequel? Did you like it more than the first Avatar?
Aren: It’s too early for me to answer your second question, but as to the first, well, Cameron’s basically made Aliens or Terminator 2: Judgment Day again! I’m not really joking here, as he’s got a firm formula for sequels: do it again, but amplify the scale and focus on family.
Anton: As you put it throughout this retrospective: make it bigger and badder.
Aren: Yup. “Same but different.” He does all that here. We get the new environments, focusing on the reef region of the Metkayina; we get Jake and Neytiri’s children, Neteyam, Lo’ak, Kiri, and Tuk, who are the central characters much like John Connor is in T2. The film is longer, has a bigger budget, and is more expansive, but it also repeats elements of the first film, even having Quaritch repeat key beats that Jake does in the first film. Jim Cameron has a sequel formula that clearly works.
Anton: Anders’ comment in our Ranking of Cameron’s films that this is a sci-fi sequel in the manner of The Empire Strikes Back was very illuminating for me. That comparison helps clarify the movie’s structure for me.
Anders: I really think there’s something to that comparison. As Anton rightly noted in his ranking, and even if I don’t share the value judgement of his observation, the first Avatar, echoing many judgments of the first Star Wars, is almost entirely built from cliches, or archetypes. The second film has this established world, and then sets out to drop us into it and somewhat undo the triumphant ending of the first. Here the “Sky People” return after Jake and Neytiri note a “new star in the sky.” This leads to one of the film’s most haunting sequences, as a much larger fleet of human craft arrive on Pandora, incinerating a wide swathe of forest and multiple Home Trees. This sets up the dynamic of Jake and Neytiri as “rebel insurgents” on the run, similar to the attack on Echo Base in Empire. The middle chapter of the film deepens our understanding of the world, the Na’vi cultures, and introduces the Metkayina clan, or “water people.” This leads to a final showdown with the villain from the first film, Quaritch, in a new form, that also resolves this particular story but also sets up the next film as involving a larger scale clash.
I know I’m the biggest Empire Strikes Back fan of the three of us, but a lot of the stuff I love about that film, the asteroid sequences, hanging out with Yoda on Dagobah, the introduction of the novel environments of Cloud City and Hoth, corresponds with stuff I loved about this film. And of course they manage to push the visual effects to the next level too.
Anton: I have to say, some aspects of the film as a sequel didn’t appeal to me. I don’t think I needed to have Quaritch as a major player in the second movie. I mean, he might be enjoyable in a hokey way in the first film, but he’s hardly a Darth Vader-class villain. I think Cameron is making him too much of a big deal in the storyworld.
Anders: I get what you’re saying, though I don’t think he’s so much hokey as a stereotypical embodiment of the colonial human impulse. His values are the inverse of the Na’vi. Consider how in the first film he calls Pandora “Hell,” and now reborn as a Recombinant avatar, he’s forced to truly make Pandora his hell, potentially being reborn eternally. I like his connection to Spider, and setting up the parallel father and son plot: “A son for a son.” Also, I think Recom Quaritch is less cartoonish, as his experiences in this film complicate him and give him the possibility of growth and a deeper dimension…much like Empire did for Darth Vader, who really was the second-stringer to Grand Moff Tarkin in the first film until Lucas decided to make Vader something more.
Aren: Quaritch as the doppelganger for Jake is key. Not only is it ironic that he now has to exist perpetually in the body of the natives he despised on the planet he said was worse than Hell, but he also has to “go native” like Jake does in the first film, learning to fly a ikran, learning to live in the jungle, and so forth. He’s the dark father counter for Jake, and the final battle between them is the battle between fathers, much as the showdown between Ripley and the Alien Queen is the showdown between mothers in Aliens. Also, I think they’re setting up a possible redemption arc for Quaritch in future films, which would make the Darth Vader comparison even greater. I actually like Recom Quaritch more than human Quaritch in the first film, even though I enjoy how hammy and over-the-top he is there. Stephen Lang is an actor I really enjoy watching on screen.
As a James Cameron Movie and as a Work of Science Fiction
Anton: If anything, though, I thought The Way of Water was too much a Cameron movie at times. After our retrospective, I cannot get over how focused Cameron is on a handful of interests and motifs, and he includes them all here. We can obviously go into more depth on water and technology in a bit, but how else is The Way of Water a James Cameron movie?
Aren: Not only is it a sequel focusing on family (check) and a movie obsessed with water (check), but it also uses groundbreaking technology such as underwater motion capture and speed-ramping HFR (check), is obsessed with Marine lingo and machismo with the Recom avatars (check), warns about the dangers of human technological advancement (check), and preaches peace and harmony even as it revels in violence (check). Oh, and it ends with a giant boat sinking with several scenes of people trying to flee compartments rapidly filling with water (check). Did I get it all?
Anton: I think you did!
Our Dad commented that he didn’t need a whole escape from the sinking ship sequence at the end, and I have to agree. It was like Cameron had to bring in a whole Titanic sinking sequence for his latest water movie.
Aren: I loved the ending because it combines the mechanics of the sinking ship like in Titanic, but also adds the battle component. Jake and Quaritch don’t actually stop fighting until the entire compartment has flooded and Jake thinks Quaritch is dead.
Anton: Anders, is it too much to say that The Way of Water might sum up Cameron even more than The Abyss?
Anders: Perhaps it does. In a way, the Na’vi are like a more fully realized version of the NTIs in The Abyss, showing human beings a mirror image of our possible goodness.
But, I definitely agree that The Way of Water is a summation and combination (recombinant?) of some of Cameron’s crowning achievements. We find this especially in its massive third act, or fourth act if you describe classical Hollywood construction as essentially a four act set-up as Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell have argued. It’s the finale of the Terminator films (fire) with water (The Abyss and especially Titanic in the sinking ship), with family front and centre. Perhaps where the film diverges the most from Cameron’s other movies is that it might have the most negative view of technological progress, though I have some ideas of how it challenges that straightforward dichotomy.
Ultimately the idea of “too much a Cameron film” though depends on how sold you are on Cameron’s project as a whole.
Aren: Yeah, it’s kind of a weird critique to say a movie is too particular to a specific artist’s vision. That’s like critiquing The Fablemans for being too much a Steven Spielberg movie. It’s more a factual statement than a substantive comment. Maybe you’ve just been watching too many Cameron films recently and you need a break.
Anton: Yes, it was Cameron all the time for me this past fall.
What I mean by my comment is that there’s nothing surprising about this film, and much of it retreads stuff Cameron has already done. Like I said, I didn’t need an extended boat sinking sequence. He already did a sinking and it was done better then. The Way of Water plays, at times, like the Pandoran remix of Cameron’s greatest hits. I’m not referring to the film’s tone and style per se, or Cameron's well-defined auteurist trademarks, but rather the blunt inclusion of his regular preoccupations, as if he could not leave them out. Could Cameron have gone to a region of Pandora that wasn’t the ocean for the second film? Is that sort of stretch possible for him? On the other hand, his biggest stretch is, in my books, his weakest film (True Lies).
Aren: Well, you may get what you want as rumours are that Avatar 3 will take us to a volcanic part of the planet with lava people.
Anton: In that sense, Cameron is like Tarantino. We’ve seen the mold, and he will never break out of it, or reinvent, in a way that Spielberg has on multiple occasions, even if Spielberg certainly shares common preoccupations and stylistic features throughout his films.
Anders: You’re not really selling me on it being a problem with the Tarantino comparison here… I’m not convinced that novelty is a paramount virtue, and I suspect you don’t believe so either, so maybe it’s just a matter of taste.
Anton: Obviously it’s a matter of taste. I’m saying I didn’t need a big shipwreck on Pandora and you are both saying you like the repetition. Repetition isn’t a problem in the abstract. Repetition can work. I’m saying here, for me, it doesn’t always.
Anyways, this is maybe a good time to also talk about the many references to other non-Cameron films. In my ranking, I riffed on Anders’ observation by saying that The Way of Water is The Empire Strikes Back by way of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and Thunderball. Now, setting aside any jokiness, I actually think those comparisons hold. This is the biggest anti-whaling movie ever made and shares many of the environmental themes of Voyage Home.
It’s also like Thunderball, which was the Bond sequel that tried to redo the big scale of Goldfinger by making it longer and having lots of underwater sequences. In fact, The Way of Water probably has the biggest underwater action and fight sequences since Thunderball. And think about the neat sea gadgets and vehicles the whalers have, and all the different sea creatures the Metkayina ride. There are plenty of great action figures to be made here.
The other thing I’d say is that in addition to being Voyage Home and Thunderball, The Way of Water takes the beginning scenes of The Thin Red Line, about the AWOL soldier with the Polynesians, and throws them into the middle act. The musical score even incorporates some South Seas-style chanting and singing. The Way of Water also has affinities and contrasts to Malick’s vision of nature and human corruption and fallenness. You cannot simply try to escape it, try as you might.
To cap things off, I think the middle sequences among the Metkayina clan, which Aren described to me as being like an underwater documentary about Pandora’s oceans, also have lyrical touches that recall Malick. Especially with the voice-over narration while the camera whirls above and beneath the waves.
Anders: Your comments really cement for me why I liked this film so much. I know a lot of Bond fans don’t rate Thunderball highly, but I ranked it the highest of the three of us back when we did our Bond retrospective and I still really like it.
As for Voyage Home, it’s a great Star Trek story and there’s a reason it’s one of the most successful Star Trek films with audiences. I like your Malick comparison, especially to The Thin Red Line. I think that this film’s approach to the relationship between war and nature is interesting to think about more. It really does suggest that you cannot run away. I think that Malick may be more of the opinion that nature is really indifferent to human conflicts though, in a way that Cameron isn’t. I think of the scene where the Polynesian tribesman simply walks through the fight between the Japanese and Americans, indifferent to their conflict. But the voiceover really does give it a Malick nature feel, especially when Tsireya explains the whole philosophy in a kind of Zen koan, even if the overall sentiment is more Taoist in my understanding.
It was interesting that Aren pointed out in his review of Avatar the film’s seeming indebtedness to Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Word for World is Forest, which I ended up reading over Christmas break. This sequel has more than a touch of Le Guin’s Earthsea world to it, not just in the themes of sailing and water, but also the theme that a person cannot outrun their Shadow, as Sparrowhawk cannot, and that a person can also find a new life in a new culture, as Tenar does in the books. Not to mention the Taoist themes more broadly.
Aren: Also, the Earthsea books have the raft people of the wide ocean, who worship whales as the Great Ones, and here we get the Tulkun, the sentient whales of Pandora.
The Way of Water
Anton: What do you make of the film’s main theme, which is simply “the way of water”?
Aren: The line reads:
The way of water has no beginning and no end. The sea is around you and in you. The sea is your home, before your birth and after your death. Our hearts beat in the womb of the world. Our breath burns in the shadows of the deep. The sea gives and the sea takes. Water connects all things, life to death, darkness to light.
This really does sum up the film’s thematic interests, as it furthers the premise of the original film, which is that humanity needs to be one with nature. The climax of the original film sees Eywa join the Na’vi in battle against the humans, showing that the Na’vi and the natural world are one-and-the-same. The Way of Water goes further in creating a kind of Zen koan that explains how there is no boundary between civilization and nature on Pandora. The ocean is one body of water, but it is made of billions of individual drops of water. It is all and it is one. Cameron is verbalizing the pantheism of his worldbuilding.
Anton: With Eywa as well as Dr. Augustine's research into the neural connections between organisms on Pandora, Cameron seems to be interested in more than just vague pantheism: it’s a literalized Gaia hypothesis.
It’s interesting that, apart from the impact on Sigourney Weaver’s Kiri, Eywa takes a step back as an active agent in The Way of Water. The Ocean, with its portrayal as an interconnection of individual things forming a Oneness, becomes almost synonymous with Eywa. I wonder where Cameron might take these connections and parallels in future films.
Anders: Yes, I think it’s also important that Kiri has the greatest ability to connect with the water, in a way that surprises even the Metkayina. I suspect that Kiri’s connection to Eywa through her mother, Grace Augustine, will be key in future films.
Aren: As the Chapo boys mention on their review episode, you have to wonder whether Kiri is some kind of Na’vi Christ figure, literally embodying Eywa in a person.
The Dangers of Technology
Anton: I was struck by the film’s contrast of two kinds of human technology. A more primitive and yet more harmonious kind, that works with the creatures and compliments the natural balance of things, with the human colonists more invasive and destructive yet technologically advanced modes.
And what is it all for? In The Way of Water, humans aren’t seeking unobtainium. It is amrita, an elixir of life contained within the brains of Tulkuns. In the end, however, both are basically a MacGuffin of human avarice. What do we crave? Energy and fuel. Life-sustaining forces. But those technological wants and needs directly contradict the Way of Water, which sees death and decline as part of the balance of the water, every surface of which is self-levelling. So, just as Jake Sully learns he cannot run from the conflict with the human colonists, the message of the film is that the rapacious, consuming colonial invasion of the humans is totally incompatible with the way of Pandora. One side has to give or be destroyed. Which sets up the need for (at least) a third film.
Aren: You also have to compare the human wants with the Tulkun wants, as the film goes to great lengths to portray the Tulkun as not only sentient (they get subtitled dialogue!) but actually smarter and wiser than both humans and Na’vi. And the Tulkun are portrayed as radical pacifists, believing that violence of any kind, even justified violence, always begets more violence, and, thus, is evil. So if you go one step further, you can say the Tulkun embody the “way of water” and the acceptance of death as a part of life, while removing deliberate violence from the equation entirely. And then you have to think about what the implications of amrita are for the humans: that the richest people back on Earth get to live forever, and, thus, continue to colonize the galaxy, much as they are colonizing Pandora. For the Tulkun, the way of water is peaceful harmony; for the humans, the everlasting life just leads to everlasting death and destruction of new environments.
Anton: But is the film saying the Tulkun are wiser? Don’t the actions of Jake suggest that passive evasion is impossible against a foe that, not unlike the Terminators, will never stop coming, ever. Humans will keep coming to Pandora. I think the film admires the Tulkun way but also thinks that way does not have a viable future.
Aren: That’s kind of the tension, right? Can radical pacifism be justified in the face of technological conquest that leads to environmental oblivion?
Anton: That said, at this middle stage in the larger story, it’s unclear how we should read Jake’s conclusion. Is Cameron endorsing Jake’s moral at the end of the movie? Or, to further the comparisons to The Empire Strikes Back, are we getting the impulsive choices of a Luke Skywalker going to Cloud City? Sure, Han and Leia would have died, as Yoda says, but the Force would find a way. Luke bends his story arc towards more immediate conflict.
Anders: I do think that The Way of Water confronts a similar dilemma that Luke faces in Empire. Is sacrifice in the name of principle necessary and essential? As Luke asks Yoda, “And sacrifice Han and Leia?” “If you honour what they fight for? Yes,” responds Yoda. The Star Wars prequels complicate our reading of Yoda and the Jedi’s judgments, and likewise The Way of Water invites us to at least question the unbending adherence to the Tulkun way, as Payakan, our outcast Tulkun character has violated the code of no violence.
Anton: And Payakan really becomes a hero in the narrative.
Aren: He’s the breakout star of the movie!
Anders: Still, Luke does jeopardize everything, since he lacked full understanding of what Vader and the Emperor wanted with him, even if it turns out alright in the end (ignoring the Disney films). Also, Luke must eventually throw down his lightsaber rather than defeat Vader in combat to claim victory. We can judge that the Tulkun way never accounted for a culture as rapacious and selfish as humans are in this film, and that human technology brings in changes in scale that amount to changes in kind when it comes to war (as does something like nuclear weapons in our own world). Still, they’re not wrong that the choice to fight inevitably brings suffering even if it is necessary, as Neteyam dies because of that choice.
This is why the film’s approach to technology, particularly what we might call machine technology as opposed to tools and other forms, is perhaps more ambivalent, or given less of a positive spin in this film. Sometimes the pursuit of technology might actually bring about an irreparable loss. When Kiri has what Max Patel says is an epileptic seizure after connecting with the underwater Spirit Tree, the human medical brain scans and technology can only advise that she should never connect with the Eywa trees anymore lest she trigger another seizure. It also states that such mental states can produce religious ecstasy and experiences. It is only after the rituals of the Metkayina, which Ronal administers, that Kiri recovers.
So, is there a place for human technology in the film? Avatars and recombinants are called “demon” technology, things that violate the natural order. Yet, I think the film is a bit ambivalent in having this technology make Jake, and now, Quaritch, more open to the possibility of discovering the “way of water.”
But man, does it make the human settlement of Pandora seem horrifying. The scene of the humans in their mechs and fireproof suits walking out of the newly arrived spacecraft that have descended from the sky and destroyed massive swathes of the forest really seems hellish.
Aren: Yeah, it’s Cameron once again leaning into his fear of nuclear destruction and the power of human technology, depicting the engine burn from the ark landers as a kind of nuclear bomb that destroys the forest around it for miles. It’s another example of the film being “too much of a James Cameron movie,” treading similar ground as The Terminator films, The Abyss, and True Lies (to an extent).
Anton: Humanity has become fully orcish in these films.
Aren: I think we might be orcish in reality, too.
The Importance of Family
I really liked this angle of the film, since even though it’s not the greatest depiction of a family, it is surprisingly refreshing in the superhero movie age.
Anders: It’s definitely a bit of a cliche portrait of family. I also think that in the end we’re supposed to be slightly skeptical of Jake’s treating his family like a military unit, and his belief that all he can offer is the protection of the father, since he ultimately fails at that. I mean, the whole audience laughed when Tuk exclaimed, “How am I tied up again?!” Though the idea of family as a fortress against the incursions of the outside world is a nice one.
I got a kick out of the kids and the way they are always calling each other “bro” and “cuz.” People are already making fun of it, but, bro, it fits with the theme of the film!
Aren: The focus on the family gives the film stakes that most superhero films lack, in that Jake and Neytiri’s actions create chains of events that threaten their kids. It makes Jake and Neytiri more interesting as characters because now they are not just defined in relation to their story roles as audience avatar and native princess, but also in their relationship to their children.
Also, however conventional the portraits of the kids—the perfect firstborn son (Neteyam), the screwup middle kid (Lo’ak), the weird adopted kid (Kiri), the plucky little girl (Tuk), and even the friend who is around so much he’s essentially a part of the family (Spider)—they are all distinct characters with their own motivations and desires. They’re probably more endearing to the audience than Jake and Neytiri are in the first film and have a bit more personality—Kiri is especially odd and memorable. I also want to credit the film for making me care about teenagers (which isn’t easy in movies, since teens are so often annoying) and get invested in their survival, which makes Neteyam’s death very affecting.
Anton: I liked the characters here more than I did in the first film. I also appreciate the multi-generational narrative. There was a time when there were lots of family movies in which the family’s little children, adolescents, teenagers, and adults all played important roles (think of The Goonies or Home Alone). I appreciate how much The Way of Water seems to be channeling that sort of family storytelling, which, I’m guessing, also allows different age groups within the audience to each view the film differently.
Anders: As a father of two boys, something I’m sure you can relate to, Anton, the film certainly plays differently for me than it might have years ago. But yeah, I think there’s a little something for everyone in this film. You can engage with it on a lot of different levels, action, emotion, environmental fable, etc.
Final Thoughts on Avatar: The Way of Water and Cameron’s Career
Anton: I’d liked The Way of Water. It’s a truly enjoyable work of cinematic escapism. I’m usually jaded watching a big movie these days.
At the same time, watching The Way of Water after our retrospective clarifies some of my judgments of Cameron as a filmmaker.
For me, the exceptional nature of both Aliens and The Terminator in his body of films—the two films which I rank as his top films—points to Cameron being undeniably great and gifted, but with ingrained weaknesses. And I think his tendency to always want to do more and to be bigger and badder is actually sometimes a weakness.
The enormous budgets also set his film production need to continually expand and exceed previous profits against his utopian dream of a human mode of living that isn’t constantly consuming more and more.
Anders: I would be more critical if he truly failed in going bigger. I think we need to clarify the cost of the film versus the box office receipts, since you’re getting at something interesting, but I don’t think it’s as at odds as you note. As he explained in his interview with GQ, if someone’s going to give him a billion dollars to make the film he’s going to take it and use it, not so he can pocket a bigger and bigger share but so he can employ more and more people and give a livelihood to them. This is why I’ll always roll my eyes a bit at people who complain about how much movies like this cost. It’s not all just going to the pockets of the actors and producers. It literally employs a city of people!
Aren: It’s an interesting comment, Anton, about how Cameron’s own filmmaking practices might be at odds with the messages of his movies. He is cinema’s foremost developer and purveyor of technology, and yet he makes movies about the dangers of technology. He creates epics with messages about living simple lives in harmony with the natural world, but he spends hundreds of millions of dollars to make these films, which contain no natural environments and which also function as giant economic pieces of content within a capitalist system. There are tensions within his artistic approach, which have been there from his earliest films, so it’s worth noting, but not particular to Avatar: The Way of Water.
I think it’s clear that Cameron is operating on a scale that few other filmmakers can match and that he creates movies that speak to a very broad audience. He’s a great filmmaker and I’ve come to appreciate him even more through this retrospective and after seeing The Way of Water—his idiosyncrasies and all.
I also want to once again argue against the idea of a director following his own passions being an inherent weakness. The same can be said for Christopher Nolan and George Lucas, filmmakers we’re all huge fans of, and I don’t think you would assume that these filmmakers doubling down on their specific interests and modes of filmmaking would be inherent weaknesses—that’s like saying that Nolan always messing with time in the structures of his films is sometimes a weakness, which I’m not sure is true. It’s just how he makes movies. I also think that Cameron has been justified in going bigger every time he has done so. I think Titanic is his best movie and it’s certainly one of his biggest. The scale is a key appeal.
But I also don’t take issue with you thinking Cameron is good, but not one of your favourites. That’s completely fine. He clearly speaks to some people more than others.
Anton: So, first to Anders, I’ll say that I’m not trying to specifically slam Cameron as hypocritical or something. I’m curious how his films, though, between their themes and production histories, seem to embody contradictions. But yes, Cameron isn’t just an avaricious human trying to scoop up more and more profit for no good reason. And frankly, after watching the documentaries, Cameron might even comment to someone around him, “It’s interesting I use so much technology to tell stories about the dangers of technology.”
Cameron wants us to be reignited with wonder for the natural world, but as Aren said, he never actually photographs the actual natural world in his fictional films (which might indicate the essential role his documentaries play in his career). A movie like The Way of Water might actually drive people further towards the Metaverse (which also points to some of my concerns about the transhumanism of the avatar conception).
Anders: Yes, though I think it’s a question of mode of presentation versus message, since the avatars are not really transhumanist in the sense usually understood. They simply allow you to inhabit a different environment and relationship to a real physical world, not transcend it in a virtual world. That said, can one ever separate the message from the presentation? It’s complicated.
Anton: The avatars are transhumanist in the sense that they allow an individual to transcend the limitations of not only their individual body but also their collective species. (Whether the avatar body should be considered a prosthetic or cyborg enhancement or whether it actually creates a different person is for another conversation.) The name also obviously has associations with gamer culture and the digital world, as you note. And watching the film itself is essentially entering a virtual world on a level unseen in previous films.
To Aren, I think it’s a matter of judgment. I don’t think Nolan so far has taken a major misstep even though he certainly has confined himself to a specific film project and mode of structuring his narratives, which only The Dark Knight Trilogy, to some extent but not entirely, escapes.
Anders: I admire Nolan and after reading Tom Shone’s The Nolan Variations, I think there are a lot of comparisons between the directors, as I noted on our last bonus podcast. But you should admit it is certainly a niche opinion that he hasn’t made any missteps with his preoccupations, even if I admire all of his films to various degrees, as I do Cameron’s. Just a point of order.
Anton: Well, of course, I’m talking about my own niche opinion of Nolan. These are my judgments of the two directors.
I like The Way of Water a lot. It and Top Gun: Maverick have finally given me a good time at the cinema again.
But I do think that in certain cases Cameron’s opting for bigger fails him. I don’t think Titanic is an example of that. But Cameron also said he wanted a bigger Aliens and the longer length for that movie was the wrong choice, in my books. His special edition is a weaker version of the movie, and it raises the question of what a two and half hour Way of Water would be like. Would it be an improvement? The first Avatar is long, but certain sequences are fairly compressed. At the same time, in the first film, Cameron throws in favourite scenarios that that film really didn’t need. “Okay, now Jake and Quaritch will have a mech fistfight.” He was once again rehashing a previous sequence.
There’s a lot in The Way of Water that doesn’t feel essential, although it is still very enjoyable. I did find this film’s running time a bit stretched though. The last act drags, raising some of my concerns about blockbusters that always feel the need to tag on more and more action at the end.
Anders: All that said I’d love to see Cameron return to a smaller budget just to see what he’d do!
Anton: But as he said, he never will.
Avatar: The Way of Water (2022, USA)
Directed by James Cameron; written by James Cameron, Rick Jaffa, and Amanda Silver, based on a story by James Cameron, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Josh Friedman, and Shane Shalerno, based on characters created by James Cameron; starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Edie Falco, Brendan Cowell, Jemaine Clement, Jamie Flatters, Britain Dalton, Trinity Jo-Li Bliss, Jack Champion, Kate Winslet.