*Please know that this review will contain mild spoilers for the film*
Hello everyone and welcome or welcome back to my blog. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the movie and I needed these days to process my feelings and get my thoughts together. I think I’m ready now to give my personal review of this film. But before I get started, I will give the warning that this blog post is going to be very long.
Summary
Avatar: The Way of Water follows the journey of the Sullys as a family unit. In this film, we are introduced to the Sully family with a brief recap of what has been taking place over the past decade, and we meet each of the Sully children. The Omaticaya have found a new place to live since the first film and have adapted to using the more violent weapons that they have been taking from the RDA each time the RDA comes to try and kill and colonize. As a clan, they stop the RDA from inflicting further damage on Pandora and take the weapons to use for when they come up against the RDA again.
The Omaticaya have built a type of militaristic base in a high cliff where they store the weapons and RDA equipment. Jake is putting his military background to good use and seems to be doing a decent job at keeping the Omaticaya safe. But of course, this does not last, and the RDA bring in the big weapons that the Omaticaya can’t win against, and just like before, the clan has to move again.
Once Quaritch’s conscious is restored into the body of an Avatar, as well as many other RDA troops whose human bodies died, he goes on the hunt for Jake Sully with only one goal: Kill him. He gives a Pandora speech to his new troops that is almost identical to his speech in the first film, and they are soon on their way.
After a scary run in with these new Avatars, the Sully children almost get taken by Quaritch and these new RDA people. Jake and Neytiri come to save them, and it is at this point that Jake sees that Quaritch is alive again and that his family is no longer safe in the forest. So, he gives up his title as Olo’eyktan, passing the title and position to another clan member, and he and his family leave the Omaticaya clan for good, seeking refuge in the reef with the Metkayina clan. This is where the movie truly begins and the TWOW story finally starts.
Characters
Jake Sully & Neytiri – Although Jake and Neytiri are important characters and very vital to the overall story of TWOW, it felt like they were secondary characters – especially Neytiri. This might have been on purpose since the franchise as a whole seems to be turning into a family saga of sorts that will follow the Sully family for many generations.
It was interesting to see Jake and Neytiri step into the role of parenthood and all the struggles that parenthood entails, in addition to running for their lives. I do think that their lives were made significantly harder due to the number of kids they had. 3 biological kids, 1 adopted, and 1 sorta kinda adopted, for a total of 5 kids to look after. In terms of safety, that’s just too many and we see throughout the entire movie just how dangerous this is.
It was interesting to see Neytiri take on the role of a mother. In the first film she was very much a warrior in her own right. She was harsh, stubborn, fierce, and mostly showed tough love. However, she loved deeply – both her partner, Jake, and her people. In TWOW, we see a softer side of Neytiri. This softness does not completely overshadow the Neytiri we grew to know in the first film, however, the overall toughness seemed to be hidden away for the majority of the film. We don’t get to see Neytiri in all of her glory until the very end of the film and I found this disappointing. However, Zoe Saldana’s performance during this climax scene was absolutely amazing! I felt her rage. I felt her hurt. I felt her passion to protect yet hatred enough to get revenge, and it brought tears to my eyes.
Seeing Jake as a father was interesting. In a way, I still see him as the bumbling idiot that had no idea how to survive on Pandora and ran into everything headfirst and dealt with the consequences later. As in no thoughts, head empty, let’s just see what happens. And even though Jake was this way in the first film, he did always try his very best. He gave everything 100% effort no matter how stupid his actions were.
In this film, even though he does still have some of these same qualities, we see that he thinks more before acting. He has become completely strategic and has come to rely on what he knows that can keep people safe, and that just so happens to be rooted in his military training. I think this was a necessary development for his character since the franchise seems to now be moving toward being a family saga. The contrast in still seeing Jake Sully as a Pandoran newbie vs. a skilled Na’vi leader and protector of an entire clan and family is still hard for me to process, personally. Maybe if we could have gotten more time to see Jake living on Pandora as a Na’vi and as an actual clan leader, the shift into this new era of his character would have been easier to digest. But what can we do when it’s been over a decade between films? Oh well.
Netayam – The first-born Sully child and the oldest of the kids. He’s a teenager who does his best to look after his siblings but very clearly has a soft spot for his younger brother and often allows him to get them in trouble. For the most part, he is mature and has a good head on his shoulders and wants to live up to the image of his dad who has become a bit of a living legend. His father is the Toruk Makto, the Olo’eyktan, and has helped lead the Omaticaya to victory on numerous occasions against the RDA (such as when the RDA raids Pandora and the Omaticaya stop them, like we see in the beginning of the film). Netayam sees he has big shoes to fill, and he tries his best to be perfect.
Lo’ak – The second born son. Lo’ak is stubborn, disobedient, and so much like Jake that Jake just has no idea what to do with him. Lo’ak is constantly getting into trouble because he also wants to be like his dad, but he also wants his dad to be proud of him. Lo’ak is eager to be a warrior and often finds himself in trouble because he never thinks before he acts. And since he’s so pushy and stubborn, he often drags his siblings and new friends into his shenanigans.
Lo’ak was pretty much the main character of this film and therefore the best character in the movie because he had the most story and character development. I would not be surprised if the next film follows him even more.
Kiri – Kiri is the eldest (adopted) daughter and the most different. We find out pretty early on that she was born from Grace’s Avatar body, however, it is not explained how this was able to happen. Kiri is around the age of 14 or 15 and she feels a lot closer to nature and her environment more than she does people. She also has a very unique connection to Eywa and Grace Augustine. She can feel Grace inside her just as much as she can feel Eywa and we soon learn that Kiri has abilities that so far no other Na’vi has.
Throughout the film, Kiri very much seems like a fictional version of Jesus. She is “weird” and different from other Na’vi her age. Not just because her mother was human and she was born from her mother’s Avatar body, but also because of her abilities that are very much along the lines of “performing miracles” like how Jesus did in the bible. Kiri seems to be a spiritual offspring of sorts, conceived by Eywa through Grace. Which again, is very reminiscent of Jesus who was conceived by God through Mary while Joseph/Jake are just kind of hanging around for the ride.
I have no idea where Kiri’s story is going to go or what we are going to find out about her, but I am hoping she gets more story and character development in the next movie because in this one, her story seemed to fall by the wayside. There is a moment in the film where Kiri connects with the Metkayina’s tree of souls under water where she meets Grace face to face (since Grace was buried with Na’vi ancestors in the first film). Right after Kiri asks why she is so different, Grace gets snatched away due to connection issues with Kiri (no spoilers for this as this was quite intense and you need to see why the connection was lost for yourself) and we never get an answer. This mystery around Kiri’s existence remains for the entirety of the movie.
Spider – The human child on Pandora. We find out early on that Spider is the son of Quaritch and it was assumed that Spider was going to be shipped back to earth after the events in the first film. However, babies can’t be placed in cryo-sleep in order to space travel, so he stayed on base at Hell’s Gate on Pandora. He is pretty much a third son to the Sully family as Jake has taken a liking to him and the kids see him as another family member as well. Neytiri is the only one in the family that does not have loving feelings for him.
Spider and Kiri have a closer relationship and I think it is because they are both so different than everyone else. Kiri is different due to all the things I just explained above, while Spider is different because he is the first human ever born on Pandora and feels like Pandora is his home even though he cannot breathe Pandoran air. He feels more at home among the Na’vi, yet he is not Na’vi himself and wants to be.
Tuktirey – The youngest daughter in the Sully family. I believe she is only around the age of 6, so we don’t actually get a lot of her character, developmentally. In my opinion, she seemed to only be there as a plot device. She was just there to be cute and then to also serve as tension when she is placed in danger.
The Metkayina clan and royal family – This is the new clan we get to know in this film, and please note that I am only using the word “royal” as a description to separate the clan leaders and their family from the rest of the Metkayina. I understand that the term “royal” is a western view of hierarchy when understanding indigenous leadership.
So, we meet the Metkayina pretty much the same way Jake met the Omaticaya in the first movie. I really enjoyed getting to see this new clan and I loved how some of the visual and cultural aspects were inspired by the Maori people of New Zealand/Aotearoa. I will admit, I wanted to see more of Maori culture in the film because I have loved learning about the Maori ever since I met a Kiwi for the first time back in 2018 who loved sharing things about New Zealand culture. But I had to keep reminding myself that this is a fictional film and the cultures we see inside it are only inspired by. Not true representations.
Ronal and Tanuwari are the leaders of the Metkayina clan, and they have three children with one on the way. Two teenage sons and a teenage daughter. And as with the Sully children in this film, the royal children also get way more screen time than their parents. I don’t have much else to say about them besides kids will be kids, and there is a very obvious potential romantic connection between Lo’ak and Tanuwari’s daughter, Tsireya. It’s not one I care to see, but whatever.
Actors
I think overall, all the actors did a great job with their characters to tell the story that needed to be told; even the characters we are not supposed to like. I think the Na’vi Dreamer Best Actor Award goes to Britain Dalton who played Lo’ak – he seemed the most real to me in presenting a coming-of-age story, Zoe Saldaña who played Neytiri (Seriously! Her final battle scene is truly one to experience), and Stephen Lang who plays Colonel Quaritch. Anyone who can make me hate a character this much definitely deserves an award. The Na’vi Dreamer Best Actor Runner Up Award goes to Kate Winslet who played Ronal. I really liked her as Tsahìk of the Metkayina and wished we could have seen more of her. She is tough and strong-willed just like Neytiri, and we see a few times throughout the film how they clash yet still come together because they are ultimately fighting for the same thing.
Actors I did not particularly care for were Jack Champion who played Spider and Bailey Bass who played Tsireya. I know I am a minority in saying so because so many Avatar fans love them and there has been a lot of hype lately surrounding Bailey Bass as an up-and-coming actress, but this is just my opinion. Jack Champion did not give the emotions I felt were necessary in the situations he was in which made me not feel as strongly for his scenes. And I personally am just not a fan of Bailey Bass as an actor, even in other things I have seen her in. When I watch interviews of these two actors, I feel the same. There is something about the both of them that I find off putting personality wise. They just don’t do it for me. Oh well.
Something I find the new actors of this film struggled with, is trying to speak with a Na’vi accent. Everyone sounded completely different and no one’s accent was consistent. Most times, there was no accent at all. I try not to hold this against anyone too strongly since the main cast was just a bunch of kids under the age of 20 during filming, but it’s still something I noticed heavily.
I also found myself wishing that more Na’vi language was used because there was significantly less used in this film in comparison to the previous one. Absolutely everyone spoke English and the English used was so modern and of today that it would often take me out of the immersion once they started using terms like “yo” and “bro”. Even with a sky person as a father, I found this hard to swallow that Na’vi children would speak like this when the only person from Earth they’ve been around is their father, Jake. Not to mention, the first film took place in the year 2154 which means the second film is over a decade after that. I’m pretty sure people from Earth are no longer using the terms “yo” and “bro” that far in the future. Had they started using other modern slang like “cap” and “lit” I probably would have walked out the theater.
I also questioned why the Na’vi weren’t speaking Na’vi to each other and why they relied on English. My brother, who I saw the film with, told me his point of view which was that to us it is English for the sake of understanding the film, but to them, it was supposed to be Na’vi and this transition into Na’vi sounding like English happened when at the beginning of the movie when Jake Sully was narrating and said that he no longer hears the difference between the two languages anymore. Na’vi comes just as naturally to him as English does. And as he said this, his two kids that were arguing, we hear them speaking Na’vi but then switch to English. However, I did not get this transition at all if that’s what it was supposed to be. I still felt like there needed to be more Na’vi language in the film and at least some consistency in the accents.
Plot/Story
The main plot itself was very basic and “one note”. And that was: Quaritch is trying to kill Jake Sully. Jake Sully is trying to protect his family. That’s it. However, all the nuance comes in once we start to explore what it takes to keep family safe, specifically kids; what it means to live through a war and have that war follow you wherever you go; how it feels to never have a true sense of safety and to bring that safety insecurity to other people around you. And also, what it is like to grow up with this as your constant backdrop of life. It’s tough. It’s scary. And one cannot stay a child for long in situations like this.
Things got a little convoluted and strange when three other plot points were introduced but then never truly explored. At first, we think that Quaritch has been revived to finish what he started and kill Jake Sully so they can finish the original plan: Get the unobtanium. But then we are introduced to a woman in charge of a new group of RDA who seems to be trying to colonize Pandora because Earth is on its last leg and humans won’t survive much longer on it. So, her job is to “remove the hostile party” who is preventing them from colonizing, which is the Na’vi.
But then! We meet some other people who are only on Pandora for hunting. They are hunting and killing the tulkuns just so they can extract some whale blubber that stops aging and sells for 80 million dollars a kilo or something else outrageous. Why they are going hunting for whale serum when the earth is dying, I’ll never understand. Anti-aging whale serum is not what’s going to save the earth.
And lastly, Kiri’s story. It’s a sub plot that never gets fully realized and left me feeling disappointed. We know that Kiri is essentially Grace’s daughter. But how was she born? How was Grace’s avatar impregnated? Why can Kiri feel Grace and Eywa inside her? How does she have the abilities that she has? Who is she and why is she so different? All of these questions are posed, but absolutely none of them get answered.
All of these forgotten plot points left a lot of questions to be answered.
Locations/Scenery
Was there ever any question that exploring a new area of Pandora would be absolutely stunning? If so, there shouldn’t have been because James Cameron did not disappoint! Seeing the marine side of Pandora was dreamlike, much like exploring the forest was in the first film. I really enjoy the overindulgence that James Cameron takes with showing viewers this new world. It allows us as viewers to take everything in and experience the newness at the same time as the characters who are also experiencing these things for the first time.
I personally have a love-hate relationship with water. I think water and marine life is amazing and beautiful. I love going to the beach and one of my most memorable moments at the beach was when I took a trip to Clear Water in Florida, bought some goggles, and went swimming in a more secluded area of the beach. I was able to swim among seaweed with small schools of fish, sea stars, sand crabs that burrowed away once I got too close, and I’ve even picked up a sea jelly before. However, I also have a fear of water. Storms absolutely frighten me, and I would never in a million years choose to live near a body of water, nor do I have any desire to ever go on a cruise. Being in the middle of an ocean with no land in sight is not my idea of a good time. That would bring me nothing but anxiety.
Seeing the underwater world of Pandora renewed my love for marine life and made me strongly want to go back to Clear Water to take another swim with the fish. I loved getting to see the Tulkuns and Ilus and the sea jelly that resembled a butterfly that helped Na’vi breath under water. I also loved the marine version of the tree of souls. It looked like a cross between a sea anemone and a palm tree which was really cool.
I also loved the differences in physical appearance of the Na’vi clans. The Metkayina have wider and flatter tales and arms to help them swim. They also have skin that is more teal in color and their stipes look different than the Omaticaya’s stripes. The clothing is also more aquatic and made from items of the sea or the nearby sea forest. The Metkayina also tattoo their bodies which is something the Omaticaya do not do. I would have loved to learn what the tattoos mean to the Metkayina, but I suppose knowing that would not have progressed the plot further. Hopefully we get another book of canon that can explain more about the Metkayina.
Music
The movie opens with a new song that we viewers have never heard before. It is the voice of Neytiri, and it is beautiful, and melancholic, and filled with spiritual longing. Almost like a prayer; it held a lot of weight to it. I was happy initially, because I thought that finally, we were getting to see the musical side of the Omaticaya who are supposed to be the clan of weaving and music according to canon from the Avatar book ‘An Activists Survival Guide’.
By the end of the film, we find out that this song is a funeral song, and suddenly the song feels even heavier than it did at the beginning of the movie. I won’t share who died for the sake of anyone reading this who has not yet seen the movie. But my eyes teared up watching and while listening to this song. Who knew Zoe Saldaña had such a beautiful singing voice that can evoke so much emotion.
As for the rest of the music in the film, a lot of it was recycled music from the first film which was both nostalgic yet disappointing at the same time. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Avatar music from the first film, I was just hoping for new stuff throughout the entirety of this new movie. I found a lot of the music and sound effects to be very dramatic and initially over the top for the scenes that we were getting. But as the movie progressed and things started to get more tense, the music and sounds were much more fitting. I hope the soundtrack will be released so that I can give more attention to the music alone and have a better idea of how I feel about it.
James Cameron seems to like having “a big song number” or a theme song for his films. In Titanic he had the song ‘My Heart Will Go On’ sung by Celine Dion. In Avatar he had the song, ‘I See You’ sung by Leona Lewis. For The Way of Water he has ‘Nothing Is Lost’ sung by The Weeknd. I will be honest…I am NOT a fan of The Weeknd and never have been. His voice is just not my cup of tea. So, needless to say, I don’t particularly care for this movie’s theme song.
My favorite song of the film was the funeral song which sounded much like a cross between a prayer and a lullaby.
Overall thoughts and rating
Overall, I am happy that we finally got this movie. It’s been a long 13 years and thank you, Mother Eywa, that we do not have to wait another 13 before the next one comes out. This movie had lots of callbacks to the first film (sometimes it was a bit ham-fisted and in your face) but did not rely on them. This truly was a film that focused on family with the main focus being on the children. This wasn’t entirely my favorite thing, as mentioned before, because…well, as a young adult myself, I don’t care to watch films that center around children. There were some moments where I kind of rolled my eyes at certain happenings because the “kids were being kids”, for lack of a better description, and it was kind of annoying.
I have no idea where the story can go next as there were many loose ends left by the end of the movie. One of the things I hated (even though I knew it would happen) was that Quaritch survives, yet again. Like I said, I knew he would because it has already been shared across the internet by James Cameron himself that Quaritch will be in all 5 freakin films. My irritation grows with how he survived. I have never wanted a fictional character dead so badly in my entire life. I have ZERO desire to see a redemption arc for him. I have ZERO desire to see him grow a heart and remain Na’vi forever. And I have ZERO desire to see him change his mind about what he has been doing just to become “a family man”. No. No. And no. We don’t know what his overall arc will be; we can only speculate. But I will not be satisfied with anything but his death. That’s harsh. But I don’t care. He deserves any and all grisly endings that come his way.
Another thing I did not like was at the very end, when Jake is giving his little speech and he hugs Spider and says, “a son for a son”. Um…no???? This rubbed me alllll types of wrong ways and I think this line was in poor judgement and taste. If you’ve seen the film, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. In the scene where Neytiri said it, it made sense in the midst of her rage, taking on the meaning “an eye for an eye”. But in the scene where Jake said it, it was absolutely not okay, and very much felt like he was being quick to replace who he and his family had just lost. I hated it. He could have given his speech about family without including that line. I blame James Cameron and the writers for that. Bad choice.
We have a whole year to wait for the third film and I am as curious as I ever have been. What is Kiri’s connection to Eywa?
How was Grace’s avatar impregnated with her when there was no conscious or life inside the avatar? Who’s the father if there is one?
Is Kiri the Pandoran version of Jesus? Is she a seed of Eywa?
What story will be conjured up for the humans next as the reason why they are colonizing Pandora? In the first film, they were searching for Unobtanium. In this film it was colonization to actually live on Pandora since Earth is dying but then changed halfway through the film to be hunting for Pandoran whale blubber that stops aging completely.
What humans and Avatars survived the battle? Because it sure didn’t look like any survived besides Spider and Quaritch, and the good sky people who have completely defected over to Pandora who also hardly had any screen time at all. I mean, come on, Norm was on screen for what, 3 minutes?
Will Lo’ak be the main character of the next film? Because he truly was the main character of this one.
I guess I just have to wait and see. Anyway. I think I’ve rambled on for long enough now. Overall, even though I liked the film, I do not feel as strongly for it as I do the first one. I still recommend watching it if you have not seen it yet. Thanks for reading if you made it this far. I hope you liked the film if you saw it already. And if you feel so inclined to share your thoughts, leave a comment below!
