Let me start with the caveat that I can hardly talk about the second part of “Avatar” – “The Nature of Water” without reaching hyperbole.
I doubt I’m alone in outlining the film-ready formulations: visual feast, cinematic mastery, captivating 3D technology. This is entirely expected given the early trailers and director James Cameron’s promises that we’re about to see the world of Pandora in more detail.
The hyperbole, however, comes from another source. Cameron would be the first director to bring a historical film back to the big screen, not only riding steadfastly on the wave of nostalgia, but also with a story that complemented the original.
Contrary to the fashion to rehash the same plot, the director revives the galactic Na’vi to open a new page of their existence, but also to reveal that Pandora is a planet larger than the scale of the first show run by “Avatar”.
Whether you’ve spent the last 13 years imagining what happened to Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), or you’re one of those agnostics who believe Avatar is an extended video game with no connection to cinema, the film deserves the 3 hours and 12 minutes.
It opens up new horizons for the sci-fi genre along with loads of new possibilities for evolution. “Avatar: The Nature of Water” has the potential to be a dividing line marking the boundaries “before” and “after” in the construction of the fictional Cosmos.
The rebirth of Pandora brings another boon for James Cameron. In his niche – that of directors – there are artisans and visionaries that the public has mixed in recent years, but basically their work is light years apart.
Artisans are those who master a particular set of skills and then practice them in a repetitive fashion and form. The result of their work always looks exactly the same as in mass-market commercial production.
Visionaries, however, are another matter.
They show fantasy, originality, their own handwriting, which, like plasticine, can change depending on the concept, characters and reality in which they thrive. Visionaries are not locked into a gifted capacity because their talent reaches greater limits.
With “Avatar: The Nature of Water”, James Cameron proved that he is a visionary in cinema, not a craftsman.
The story of the second part of his new franchise begins almost a decade after Jake Sully turned against the Sky People and married Neytiri.
In “The Nature of Water” he is a single na’vi and father of many children who has something to brag about: he has found happiness. He has two sons: Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) and Lo’ak (Bryton Dalton), a young daughter Tuk (Trinity Jo-Lee Brice) and an adopted daughter Kiri (Sigourney Weaver).
The family lives blissfully in the forests of Pandora, until the people of Earth remind themselves, proving they are not ready to give up the planet’s natural relics. Also, the Avatar army, led by Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), has Jake Sully’s teeth for treason and is directly targeting his offspring.
Seeing himself as a moving target, Jake convinces the Neytiri to flee their home and seek refuge in areas of Pandora’s Reef with tribes that are physically and culturally different from the giant blue creatures we know.
The move of the Sully family opens a new chapter in the anthology of the planet. With riding fish, aquatic wonders, and a new species of armored whale ten times smarter than humans called the tulkun. Pandora’s aesthetic palette has also been modified, taking the visual magic of cinema to the next level.
The environment is filled with dazzling realistic effects which are not only used for icing. They are a parallel character, suggesting that the planet is actually alive and taking an equal part in the action with the natives and the invaders.
While in the first “Avatar” Cameron puts on the 3D glasses to tell us a story the old-fashioned way, in “The Nature of Water” he lets digital landscapes flow across the plot, slowing down the action and displacing some of the main characters.
Galaxy is much more saturated than it looked in 2009, facial expressions are much more expressive, and the director pays solid attention to them.
It’s worth noting that people expecting explosion after explosion are likely to leave theaters disappointed. There are long stretches in The Nature of Water where we simply explore the environment and revel in its intricacies.
Sometimes we stare at the detailed beauty of the huge sea creatures, and sometimes we just sit in the water with Kiri. The action tediously calms down with intricate aquatic vistas, which surely won’t sit well with audiences who cringe at moments of direct confrontation.
The action bomb is delayed as much as possible to introduce you to the visual novelties, but Cameron finally drops it after more than 2 hours of walking beneath Pandora’s surface.
The surprise, however, is that in the second part of “Avatar”, the director overshadows the value of his protagonist Jake Sully and transfers it to his successors. The children, their adolescence and their idealism are the emotional core of the film.
By unveiling their characters, the director builds on a familiar genre trope of the outsider making his way to the top of society. With the spotlight on the new generation, Cameron lays the groundwork for the upcoming “Avatar” sequels, which are likely to be loaded with more emotional baggage due to the detailed childhoods of the characters.
In the DNA of “Avatar: The Nature of Water” are themes with the potential for a saga that will turn into a large-scale imperial revenge with references to modern politics. And whether the thread won’t snap somewhere in the writing process depends only on James Cameron’s ingenuity.
So far, it doesn’t seem like he’s run out of ideas for climactic battles played out between the more outlandish art, so there’s plenty to look forward to.
With the new “Avatar”, the director succeeded in his mission of an intense attack on the boundaries of cinema, whose 3D universe needed to expand with more than superheroes.
Avatar: The Last Airbender will be released in theaters on December 16th.
