I didn’t care about Avatar: The Way of Water – seeing it on the big screen changed that-Tori Brazier-Entertainment – Metro

It’s been 13 years since we last saw Jake Sully, but has the world missed him? (Picture: 20th Century Studios)

This week, renowned filmmaker James Cameron’s long-awaited sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, is released in cinemas worldwide – and I’ve shocked myself with quite how invested I am.

If you’d asked me just a couple of weeks ago how I felt about the film, my use of the phrase ‘long-awaited’ would have been followed by a wry, ‘well, for James Cameron, at least’.

After a gap of 13 years – lightyears in Hollywood – the writer, director and producer is attempting to persuade the world to care all over again about Pandora and the Na’vi. But it initially seemed so passé to me.

I could barely remember any of the complicated terminology, lore, names or science from the film either, except, unfortunately, the cringingly clunky ‘unobtanium’.

Essentially, I really wasn’t sure who was asking for it. Even as a passionate film fan, open to every genre (except horror, I admit I’m a wuss), it certainly wasn’t a movie I was clamouring after – and I say this as someone who has also visited the Pandora land of Walt Disney World’s Animal Kingdom, which left me very impressed by its technology and design but still pretty unbothered over the Avatar franchise in general.

When Cameron revealed he had four sequels planned, while we were still years away from seeing The Way of Water (or even knowing anything much about it), my active disinterest – and bafflement – continued. Where was the demand for these films? Was Cameron drunk on power and budget?

Jake (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) in the original, which was cutting edge then (Picture: Moviestore/Rex/Shutterstock)

One of his admissions during this movie’s press tour saw him reveal he’d pushed back against 20th Century Studios, who were trying to shorten the three hour 12 minute running time, by reportedly declaring: ‘This building that we’re meeting in right now, this new half-billion dollar complex on your lot? Titanic paid for that, so I get to do this.’

So yes, quite possibly drunk on power and privilege.

However, it seemed the director did have some inkling of what he was up against, later saying that the movie was ‘very f**king expensive’ and would have to be the third or fourth highest-grossing film in history, just to break even (the first film is still at number one).

He also publicly stated that he would end the whole franchise early, after the already-filmed third instalment, if it became apparent that audiences no longer ‘give a s**t’.

I wasn’t sure why James Cameron was going so all in on Avatar, with his franchise of five planned films (Picture: Anthony Harvey/Shutterstock)

With all that being said, me (and my bladder) approached the screening of Avatar: The Way of Water I was invited to with some trepidation.

But gosh darn it if Cameron didn’t reel me in.

I’m generally a pretty positive critic and movie-watcher – I won’t trash things unnecessarily and I’ve only ever walked out of one film and given one one-star review (not for the same thing). But I will absolutely criticise where necessary.

Avatar: The Way of Water is by no means a perfect film, but the reaction I had to it as a viewer was unexpected in its strength. Obviously I knew, going in, that the visuals were likely to be the headline element and represent the cutting edge of CGI, just like last time.

However, even fully expecting that, I was blown away. The detail, the quality and the immersion are all next level. It’s quite something to be observing the skin of the Na’vi – entirely made-up beings – and think that its texture makes it look more real than real. That level of technical skill is almost obscene.

Unsurprisingly, there is water in The Way of Water, offering a whole new medium in which the VFX team stun (Picture: 20th Century Studios)

The texture detail is remarkable, especially on a giant screen (Picture: 20th Century Studios)

Without a doubt, the visual spectacle will move everybody – despite some jarring transitions between 48 frames per second and 24 if you see it in a cinema fitted out to project the sequel in a high frame rate – but what I wasn’t expecting was the story to manage it too.

Avatar’s basic plot was nothing original: marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) falls in love with Na’vi Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and feels conflicted between following his military orders and protecting her and her planet from humans. Stephen Lang was also his superior officer and a very good baddie, and there was some kinda cool mumbo-jumbo science to explain how humans were able to create their hybrid Avatars and link their minds with them.

However, it was essentially a love story with two leads from dramatically different backgrounds – the same as Cameron’s other box office smash hit, 1997’s Titanic, which he dethroned himself from number one with, thanks to Avatar.

This time, we move away from the romantic love story and home in on the relationships between the Sully family, now Jake and Neytiri have/look after five kids (including Sigourney Weaver, 73, giving her best 14-year-old) . Again, it’s nothing revolutionary with its focus on teen angst and ‘second son syndrome’ and it’s also quite corny. However, Cameron is such an earnest filmmaker that he just about gets away with it, ably supported by the commitment of the rest of his team, including the cast, creatives and crew.

Sihourney Weaver as Kiri, 14, is not quite as odd as it first seems (Picture: 20th Century Studios)

New creatures including Tulkuns are introduced in the sequel (Picture: 20th Century Studios)

My suspension of disbelief probably does stop just short of The Way of Water’s decision to subtitle its marine mammals’ communication in the Papyrus font though. That’s a step too earnest even for me.

However, I should probably also feel a little sheepish for doubting James Cameron with Avatar: The Way of Water when he has such fine form in the field of delayed sequels. Aliens in 1986 saw him continue Ripley’s (Weaver again) story in first-class fashion, seven years after Sir Ridley Scott’s original, thereby birthing a science-fiction horror franchise.

He did exactly the same again when he continued his own iconic original story from The Terminator in 1984 with 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day – which, coincidentally, is one of my favourite-ever films.

Cameron has form in sequels with Aliens, and also Sigourney Weaver (Picture: 20th Century Fox/Kobal/Rex/Shutterstock)

He is also responsible for one of my top films, Terminator 2 (Picture: CBS via Getty Images)

Again, like Avatar 2, here was an example of Cameron shifting gears between an end-of-the-world romance in among the action with Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor and Michael Biehn’s Kyle Reese, and then the odd-couple friendship their 10-year-old son John (Edward Furlong) shares with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s reprogrammed T-800 Terminator in the sequel. Yeah, maybe I shouldn’t have doubted that The Way of Water could be good.

Avatar was event cinema with its 3D glasses, big screens and big hype back in 2009 when it was released, and it’s similar this time. Cynics could easily say that the inflated prices for 3D films (remember when they used to cost a couple of quid extra?) is what helped the first film reign supreme at the box office, as well as the relentless push to see it in cinemas.

However, it has also enjoyed multiple re-releases since, all of which have done well – the last one even pipped Harry Styles’ turn in Don’t Worry Darling at the box office. There’s clearly appetite to see it in the format intended, and several times over.

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With Cameron a real cinemagoer’s director, it’s absolutely the same this time around, so I do expect a box office boom as you really can’t do watching this movie justice properly outside seeing it in on the biggest screen possible with (most of) its hi-res bells and whistles.

How well it fares in viewers’ estimations when it’s eventually given home release and unleashed on Disney Plus though remains to be seen.

And as far as Avatar 3, 4 and 5 go? I can’t say I’m all in, because that is a lot of Avatar, but let’s just say… I see you(r potential).

Avatar: The Way of Water is in cinemas now.

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