The Way Of Water has no beginning and no end

Continuing my trip up Empire's top 20 films of 2022

#4 :  Avatar - The Way Of Water

Never bet against James Cameron. When news broke that the record-breaking director had not one, not two, not three, but four sequels to 2009’s box-office-smashing, boundary-pushing Avatar on the way, the world wasn’t sure what to expect. The answer – with Cameron, always – is a movie-going experience unlike any other. Moving Jake Sully, Neytiri and their new brood to the oceanic base of the Metkayina clan in The Way Of Water gave Cameron a big new blue playground to swim in. The result? An otherworldly, transportative exploration of family, our bonds with animals, fatherhood, colonisation, revenge and sacrifice, with perfectly paced action sequences that will make your jaw drop. We see you, James Cameron – and we also can’t wait to see what happens next.

Skipping over Licorice Pizza (#8 here, #5 in The Guardian), Glass Onion (#7/#46), Aftersun (#6/#1) and The Worst Person in The World (#5/#30) this is an interesting one. I know a lot of people loved, loved, loved Avatar, but I was very much not one of them.  There was no doubt it looked impressive, but I found it an overly long version of a story that I just didn't care for - so it's safe to say I'm not exactly looking forward to this.

Dear God, there's 3:12 of the thing.  ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY TWO MINUTES!  Who needs that?!?  If I had just one guess, I suspect I'd go for "not me".

Well, I did it!  ALL the way through and boy was it a struggled.  There's no doubt that a lot of the components of the film are impressive and I promise I'll try to remember to mention some of them.  But...

...there's a very fine line between "epic" and "dull" and this film sees that line, speeds over it and leaves it for dust in the rear view mirror.  It also desperately wants me to care about the characters - and I just don't.  I don't know if it's because they're animated or because they are aliens or because they're not particularly well written - but I really don't care if all of them and their beautiful planet gets entirely destroyed.  In fact, I'd destroy it myself if it meant the film finished in half the time.

Actually, I'm not being entirely fair there - if it was half the time, then I might have cared an awful lot more about it all.  There is a decent enough (but not great or particularly original) story hiding in there and there were some moments in the last hour where I did feel slightly engaged - but even they were spoiled because...

...there are too many setpieces which are only there to provide a visual spectacle but they add nothing to the plot - they would be impressive (although still too long) if part of a David Attenborough documentary, but all you've got here is the imagination and ability of the animators.  There is, however, no doubt that they are very able animators (IMDB lists 63 of them!) - there's some very impressive visuals on display in pretty much every frame of the film.  I found the "animated" humans particularly intriguing - they manage to somehow look real and fake at the same time.

My other major talking point is that for a film with such a stellar cast, a lot of the voice acting isn't great - it's all very over the top.  The baddies in particular are all very pantomime villain and some of the other characters have very poorly written motivations, so I guess the cast were just working with what they'd been given but, once again, it didn't help me care about things.

Wikipedia tells me this film has grossed over $2 billion worldwide, which is an absolutely mad amount of money.  And, joy of joys, that means we're going to get Avatar 3, 4 and 5!!  Wikipedia also explains why it didn't appear in The Guardian's list with their critic having described it as having a "scathingly bland plot" - I agree with the sentiment, although I remain unsure about the use of the word "scathingly" there!

You know what (and this might surprise you) I really didn't like this film (although I did enjoy picking that quote as the post title) and I am completely mystified by its popularity.  If you want to watch it you can find it in all the usual places, but I struggle to imagine why anyone would want to do that to themselves.

Empire was doing very well with their list up to this point but they've let me down badly here - I wonder if they'll redeem themselves with the next and final choice (spoiler alert - they bloody well do!).

#9 - Impressive, if confusing
#1 - A spectacular film to end the list