Avatar: The Way of Water

The things that clearly strongly appeal to James Cameron can be listed in such a way that it seems to form a spectrum, with two very different ends: mysterious and awe-inspiring nature; the sea; water in general; family; imagining futuristic forms of transport; military-type culture and macho military-type dialogue; ammunition and firepower. The more of those things he can cram into a movie, the more satisfied he is likely to be with the result. Compared to the first movie, this one greatly tones down the sense of discovering an exotic quasi-human culture, instead taking all of its cues from commonly-held and familiar notions about the character of Pacific islander society (mainly Tongan, I guess), and focusing on a bunch of teens who are faced with sitcom-level adolescent problems and who use the word “bro” an awful lot. Plus people get trapped on a big boat that’s sinking, which reminds me of another movie. It’s rather remarkable that after fourteen years the filmmaker settled for so little, and for what, in many ways, amounts to a significant regression from what he aimed for with the first instalment.