It took thirteen long years for James Cameron to achieve the film he wanted to make. Avatar 2, subtitled The Way of the Water, takes place more than a decade after the events chronicled in the first Avatar and tells the story of the members of the Sully family (Jake, Neytiri and their children), the trials they face, the paths they must take to protect each other, the battles they must fight to stay alive, and the tragedies they endure.
Push the limits
From the first sequence, the visual and sensory revolution once again promises to be spectacular. The director of Titanic pushes the limits of what is possible in cinema from a technical and visual point of view. Impossible, even for the most jaded, not to be amazed by this absolute immersive universe of exceptional beauty where the magic becomes real, as much as in a waking dream. The camera twirls with disconcerting fluidity and the special effects are so successful that it is almost impossible to distinguish between real shots and computer-generated images, so much so that we end up not asking ourselves the question and let yourself be guided by this hypnotic journey of 3 hours and 12 minutes in the world of Pandora.
A highly didactic ode to natureThe actors, from Kate Winslet to Sigourney Weather, Zoe Saldana and Sam Worthington, give that extra touch of humanity to 3D characters that we end up recognizing one by one. a. The immersion is all the more life-saving as this whole visual universe is at the service of the characters, a story and the emotions.
Even if sometimes certain sequences, very elongated, take on the appearance of a fantastic marine documentary, it is to better testify to its beauty and its richness, then to demonstrate its fragility, especially when its balance is threatened by foolish savage exploitation. An ecological discourse that once again irrigates the entire film and even takes on a didactic dimension on certain current human behaviors vis-à-vis the nature that surrounds it.
Virtuoso camera
Not only contemplative, at the time of the action scenes, Cameron shows a mastery and a total inventiveness which have no equivalent except in a Spielberg in great shape. The film is readable, masterful, hard-hitting… A single action sequence from Avatar the Way of the Water puts all the action scenes in Marvel films together. The director also takes the opportunity to revisit all of his cinema, from Aliens to Titanic, Terminator 1 & 2, and The Abyss, as if the sum of the themes and technical achievements of his entire filmography had been necessary to make Avatar 2 possible.
In the end, La Voie de l'eau is a film about the family and transmission, nature and its fragility, the human -what's left of it-, but also and above all about cinema. If the film is a success, three more feature-length Avatars should follow and the director's urge to film the first reaction of those who went to Pandora for the first time will come to fruition. In any case, one thing is certain when seeing Avatar the way of the water, if cinema in theaters has a future, James Cameron has just marked out the most salutary path.
