Well, it happens to the best of us.
James Cameron has run out of ideas.
 |
| Realizing that their presence puts the entire Na'vi clan in peril, Jake (Sam Worthington, far right) insists that his family — from left, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) and Lo'ak (Britain Dalton) — must leave their home, and move far away, to another part of Pandora. |
That said, sitting through this semi-slog a second time, won’t ever make my to-do list.
Writer/director Cameron, with a scripting assist from Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Josh Friedman and Shane Salerno, has basically recycled the first film’s plot, along with — thanks to cloning — the exact same primary villain: Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang). He and his elite team of kill-crazy mercenaries have been transformed into “recombinants” : artificial 9-foot-tall avatars embedded with the memories of the humans whose DNA was used to create them.
The character template has broadened a bit, and the setting has shifted from the forest-dwelling Omatikaya Na’vi clan to the ocean realm of the Metkayina clan. But the conflict is identical: Earth’s nasty-ass Resources Development Administration (RDA) returns in force, this time determined to colonize all of Pandora, as the new home for humanity.
“Earth is about to become inhabitable,” RDA’s Gen. Francis Ardmore (Edie Falco, appropriately callous) intones, “so Pandora’s natives must be … tamed.”
And, as if this bit of déjà vu all over again weren’t enough, Cameron’s climactic third act includes a re-tread of Titanic’s ultimate fate … except, instead of a sinking ocean liner, our heroes wind up scrambling about the shifting decks of a 400-foot-long attack vessel, as it slowly slips beneath the sea. Heck, we even get the same “climb this way … now this way” scramble involving two key characters.
All that said, this still could have been a reasonably engaging 150-minute film … were it not expanded into an insufferably self-indulgent 192 minutes. Cameron clearly didn’t trust his three co-editors.
The second act, in particular, accomplishes little beyond filling time. So many tight close-ups of slow, thoughtful takes; so many half-baked lines delivered with measured, melodramatic intensity.
The story:
Roughly two decades have passed since Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) and the Omatikaya Na’vi clan successfully sent the first RDA strip-mining operation packing. Jake has fully embraced his larger, stronger Na’vi identity; he and Neytiri have raised a family that includes sons Neteyam (Jamie Flatters), Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) and young daughter Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss).
They’ve also adopted Kiri, the mysterious teenage daughter of the late Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) — nobody knew she was pregnant, nor who the father is — who, thanks to CGI “youthifying,” also is played by Weaver.
The family unit is augmented further by Spider (Jack Champion), a human child orphaned by the earlier war: too young, at the time, to return to Earth.
“Family is our fortress,” Jake constantly reminds them (and us).
Brotherly rivalry has become a serious issue. The elder Neteyam is the “golden child” who can do no wrong, much to the ongoing chagrin of Lo’ak, who constantly tries to prove himself in his father’s eyes … and often comes up wanting.
Kiri seems to have retained her mother’s “oneness” with Pandora’s entire ecological system: a talent the girl doesn’t yet understand, but (we can be certain) will prove useful in the near future.
RDA’s return to Pandora is catastrophic. Recognizing that he remains a key target due to prior transgressions, Jake and his family flee across Pandora, and ask to be accepted into the ocean-going Metkayina clan. Tonowari (Cliff Curtis), the Olo’eyktan (clan leader), bows to tradition and accepts their presence; his warrior wife Ronal, the Shamanic Matriarch (Kate Winslet), fears that Jake and his family will invite danger from the RDA “sky people.”
Tonowari and Ronal’s teenage daughter Tsireya (Bailey Bass) quickly develops a crush on Lo’ak; Tsireya’s brother Aonung (Filip Geljo), a seasoned hunter, shares his mother’s wariness.
Considerable screen time is spent as Jake’s family struggles to adapt to Metkayina customs; the script flirts a bit with inclusiveness — Omatikaya physique, attuned to forests, evolved slightly differently — but, aside from minor bullying, this never really goes anywhere.
The focus instead shifts to the deeply spiritual relationship the Metkayina have with the tulkun, a species of sentient, highly intelligent, whale-like creatures.
Alas, Quaritch and his thugs soon track down Jake and his family; as a means of revealing how truly evil Quaritch is, the lengthy third act kicks off when — as a means of drawing Jake out — his massive RDA assault team begin to destroy reef villages.
When that doesn’t work, we’re treated to a gratuitously cruel — and needlessly protracted — tulkun hunt. Granted, we’re watching a fantasy film, and the tulkun are fictitious creatures, but the whole point of immersive cinema is to work on our emotions … and, let’s just say, the tulkun hunt is every bit as horrifying as a real-world whale hunt.
But this heinous act serves its purpose, as Cameron then launches us into the lengthy, explosive melee that occupies the entire final hour. Credit where due: It doesn’t let up, and simply gets more intense and exciting — if somewhat repetitious — as events proceed.
The acting is wildly uneven: no surprise, since CGI doesn’t really “act” successfully. Lang remains a thoroughly hissable villain, but Worthington’s performance is oddly flat throughout. Saldana and Winslet are persuasive as mother-bear warriors; Flatters’ Neteyam is rather emotionless. Dalton and Bass make the flirty dynamic between Lo’ak and Ronal rather sweet.
Champion becomes a key presence, once Spider’s ancestry is revealed. Perhaps not coincidentally — as he remains a human unencumbered by all the CGI artifice of the Na’vi — Spider is this film’s most interesting character, in terms of an emotional arc, and Champion’s performance is one of the strongest and most persuasive.
The members of Quaritch’s mercenary team barely have names, let alone distinct personalities; the best we get is that one woman likes to pop chewing gum bubbles. Like, that’s really deep, right?
As mentioned at the top, Cameron — along with production designers Dylan Cole and Ben Porter, and a veritable army of art directors — put heart and soul into creating this world, and its colorful and wonderfully varied sea creatures. If you’re satisfied with that, do see this film in 3D, and on a giant screen; the visuals are breathtaking.
But this doesn’t compensate for the absence of plot originality, the tedious exposition and protracted pacing.
Media pundits and advance buzz predicted that Titanic would run aground, back in 1997; they subsequently said the same thing before the first Avatar debuted in 2009. Cameron proved them wrong both times, but I fear his luck has run out.
The Way of Water concludes with an obvious set-up for another installment, which — according to plan — will arrive in 2024 … following by parts four and five, in 2026 and 2028.
Seriously?
Only if Cameron sets his ego aside, and hires some better writers…
No comments:
Post a Comment