It’s the highest-grossing film of all time by most accounts, it was everything anyone could talk about in 2009, it was one of the first animated incursions into the Oscars, it was James Cameron’s grand return — and yet, for all its merits, it’s almost as if no one remembers what madeAvatarso great back in the day of its release. However, those very conditions also makeAvatar: The Way of Waterone of 2022’s most intriguing cinematic events.
Nowadays hating onAvatarisn’t even cool; it’s basically mandatory. However, such a position does beg to ask why not even Marvel’s mightyAvengerscan dethrone Cameron’s CGIsci-fispectacle. To look atAvatarso many years later demands one’s acceptance that if Pandora and the Na’Vi were lacking depth or meaning, everyone still fell for it — even more so, that a film so popular in its heyday turned out to be so forgettable should be the best reminder that Cameron can indeed pull off the same trick twice. And now, he’s armed with the lesson that all the fancy special effects in the world can’t make up for a shaky script.
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Avatar’sVideo Game Approach
In 2009,Avatarwas almost bleeding-edge 3D tech. Cameron had new methods built from the ground up to satisfy his visual needs in order to make Pandora the most expressive cinematic world that humanity had seen up to that point. That focus is not too distant from what many triple-A games often do: placing the story quite low on the list of priorities in terms of time and budget because, well, not every game canconjure George R.R. Martin’s magic likeElden Ringcan.
Sure, there are fantastic games withamazing stories likeAlan Wake, but even for all its greatness, that particular Remedy masterpiece is on the verge of having its sequel stretch as far from the original asAvatar. Then there are games likeFar Cry,Dark Souls,or evenMario, where a lackluster storyis no obstacle for numerous sequels because they’re all about gameplay — and this is no detriment to their acclaim or success.
AlthoughAvatarfalls somewhere in between, its hiatus serves to highlight that besides the bombastic appeal of Michael Bay’sTransformers,Fast & Furious,orResident Evil, movies (especially big budget ones) rarely get away with such sins. That’s whereAvatarshould borrow a page from the video game playbook to come up with its own loosely related sequel. Like many games, what made it successful wasn’t intricate storytelling, but rather the experience it brought to theaters.
Because people barely remember itsPocahontas-inspired plot,Avatarcan turn the tables like video gamesoften do and abandon what little story elements it built upon 13 years ago. This premise assumes Cameron can once again deliver the best (or at least some of the best) cinematic visuals of 2022, but if so,Avatarcan still be cool again.
A Clean Slate ForAvatar
In many ways,The Way of Water’ssole title is a good omen forAvatar, as the synopsis for Cameron’s long-awaited sequel teases exactly the kind of time jump needed to turn the franchise into something better. “Set more than a decade after the events of the first film” suggests exactly thekind of changeAvatarneeds to work again, now with the premise of water possibly as the main playing ground and a scarce resource worth fighting for.
While it’s easy to dismissAvatar’soriginal plot as simplistic, the themes of colonialism (which many other works explore far better than Cameron’s) were and still are relevant in the world today, in the same way the commodification of water currently is in today’s geopolitical climate. It’s a mystery how the tides of war shaped the Na’Vi race after such a long time; nevertheless, this element can easily be tossed aside if what Cameron built to move forward holds up as any good movie should.
Like many games, ifAvatarcan come up with a better storyand characters than what it offered before, all with the same ability to shock and awe audiences (Cameron’s “gameplay”), forgiving or ignoring a decade-old unoriginal storyline won’t be hard for newer moviegoers.
In terms of demographics, it’s the new generation that never saw the firstAvatarbut may be watching the new trailerwho can tackle this blockbuster with a fresh set of eyes free of any preconceptions. Pass that test, and suddenly Cameron’s idea of three moreAvatarsequels doesn’t sound all that wild. For gamers, this is a common occurrence, not so much for movies.
Hardly anyone will get mad ifAvatar: The Way of Water’sstory is nothing like its predecessor’s, and that’s largely because the script wasn’t selling all those tickets in 2009. IfAvataris to succeed once more,Cameron ought to have learnedwhat truly made his sci-fi epic so special. It wasn’t the story, but luckily now he even gets a do-over on that front.
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