Review of the film "Avatar: The Way of Water"

There are many words to describe the high-end visuals of James Cameron's original film Avatar (2009) - words like "impressive, breathtaking, dazzling." The primeval forest and floating mountain scenery of Pandora had an intoxicatingly dreamlike shimmer. You wanted to live there, even if the story that unfolded inside them was in the order of things.

In the bigger, longer, and more dizzyingly effective sequel to Avatar: The Path of Water (the story's all right), the technology Cameron uses to bring us back to Pandora is even more polished - in every way. 3D images have an uncanny believability, if you had to pick a word for them, it would be "super clear". The film also has an eerie quality - it seems that the action is happening right here and now, which is typical for shooting at a high frame rate. It is rather a mind game, as it was in the films of Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit". But it gives you the feeling of a single space with the characters. And that's sort of an accomplishment, considering most of them are tall, blue-skinned Na'vi warriors with mountain lion eyes and the speed of gazelles.

Avatar: The Path of Water contains scenes that will light up your eyes, dizzy your head and send your soul racing. The main action of the film takes place on At'wa Attu - a tropical island reef. Here is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), the leader of the Ha'vi rebellion, who started out as a disabled marine and became an inhabitant of the forests of Pandora thanks to the Avatar (he is, in fact, a half-breed), his wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and their four children have found refuge from "Heavenly People" These are corrupt military thugs who are fighting to colonize Pandora so that the inhabitants of Earth have a future. On the island, Jake and his family forge an uneasy alliance with the Metkain clan, who live in harmony with the water and are very similar to the Na'vi. Except that their skin is a light turquoise color and covered in Maori-like tattoos.

Teenagers of both tribes participate in idyllic age-related rites, riding long-necked creatures over the water surface. Every time the camera descends into the ocean depths, it becomes an exciting journey through the underwater world. The life we see in Pandora's ocean - iridescent fauna, transparent psychedelic plants capable of inducing visions, fish that look as fantastically weird as they do on land, bumpy whales with hammerhead shark faces - is a marvel worth seeing. But the main element of the filming is that the cutting-edge 3D technology (never punches in the face, just the images look and feel sculpted) makes every dive in the movie as immersive as it is in real life.

The Way of the Water was reported to have cost $350 million, which means it has to be one of the 3-4 highest grossing films of all time to break even. I think the chances of that happening are actually quite high. Cameron has upped the ante not only with the visual effects but also with the choreography, turning The Way of the Water, like Avatar, into the apotheosis of a must-see film. The whole world will say, "We need to find out what this exciting ride is like."

At its peak, it seems exhilarating. But not to the end. Cameron in The Way of Water remains the pompous and exacting classic popcorn storyteller, but what a story he tells! The script, co-written by him, is a series of useful clichés that give the film the kind of domestic adventure thriller that is needed, but nothing more. The story, in fact, could hardly have been simpler. The Sky People, once again led by the treacherous Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang), are now avatars themselves, with Quaritch remodeled as a scowling Na'vi hillbilly in soldier's boots and crew cut. They arrived in this disguise to hunt down Jake. But Jake escapes with his family and hides with the Metcains. Quaritch and his band of thugs take over the hunting ship and finally hunt them down. A massive confrontation begins. End.

This story, with its primitive dialogue, could hardly be positioned as an ambitious Netflix thriller and told in two hours instead of three. But that's the point, isn't it? The "Way of Water" weaves sequences that exist almost exclusively due to sculptural, figurative magic. This is indeed a movie fused with a virtual reality theme park attraction. In other words, this is a live-action film, inspired by the charms of animated fantasy. But while the faces of the Na'vi and Metkain are expressive, the actors make themselves felt, there is almost no multidimensionality in the characters. All multidimensionality is manifested in images.

Cameron, a forty-year veteran of bravura action logistics, hasn't lost an ounce of zest. His clashes are marvelously sustained, and he turns the tide in a relationship that Lo'ak (Britten Dalton), Jake and Neytiri's second son, strikes up with one of the whales, and which, in a great scene, becomes the centerpiece of a surprise attack. On the other hand, while the climax of the original Avatar was a startling spectacle with Na'vi flying back and forth on psychedelic gryphons, the climax of The Path of Water is more powerful, with bullets, apocalyptic fire, and a collapsing ship, which makes some characters look like this , as if they were in one of Cameron's Titanic disaster scenes. Recalling this movie is a tactical mistake, so it reminds you that Titanic is an amazing spectacle with characters that touch to the core. I'm sorry, but when I watched The Way of Water, the only part that was touched was my eyes.