Avatar: The Way of Water may be the biggest disappointment of my life...

(Seriously...I don't have much else going on.)

Writer, director, and all-round genius James Cameron was a huge part of my adolescent film fan experience. The Terminator and Aliens were two films that generated a huge amount of playground buzz despite us all being too young to see them. It was two films that became a badge of honour amongst peers, along with Robocop and Predator. These were the core four films that everyone had to see. When I finally got around to it, I found both films to be exhilarating and imaginative but was mostly focused on the gore. Arnie doing self-surgery on his eyeball with Stan Winston’s animatronics and in Aliens the chest burster sequence and Bishop being torn in half by the queen alien. It wasn’t until later I would go back and appreciate both films for their craft and structure. Both films are built like rollercoasters, upping the ante at every twist and turn, and the stakes felt suitably high the whole time. They were crucially made for quite low budgets, even for the 80s.

I was obsessed with the film when The Abyss was due to be released in cinemas in 1989. Here was, to my mind - Aliens underwater. It looked like nothing I had ever seen before, and I even read the Orson Scott Card novelisation. I would have been invested even if I didn’t know Cameron was behind it. The fact that he was only made my anticipation greater. When we finally got to see The Abyss in early 1990 in its compromised theatrical form, the disappointment was palpable. I remember telling everyone it wasn’t good because it was like ‘a kid’s film,’ and I was all of 12 years old at the time. I went back a couple of years later and appreciated the film on its own terms. I came to love the film when the special edition was released with the restored ending that made more sense.

It was a general curiosity that had been building since childhood about who did what and how, but I later learned just what kind of hell they had gone through making The Abyss and the technology Cameron himself invented with his engineering background. In between of course, we got Terminator 2: Judgement Day, the first 15-certificate film I ever saw in cinemas at age 13. This film blew me away. Again, you had the spectacular morphing CGI effects, but everything had been amped up from the first Terminator film. The action, the pacing, the heart and the sheer horror of a possible nuclear war. It was a seminal experience that I have never forgotten.

But then, Cameron…. changed. Or maybe I changed. One of us changed anyway…

True Lies again pushed the envelope in terms of effects and what could be done on screen with action and a considerable budget. This was when the reports of Cameron going wildly over budget and productions getting out of control began. Pre Waterworld, True Lies was the most expensive film ever made, and thanks to Last Action Hero disappointing the year before, the naysayers started predicting doom. When True Lies came out, it was a solid hit, but it felt very…lightweight? An edge was missing, and the tone felt confused between family comedy and outrageous violence. It’s enjoyable enough, but its sexual and cultural politics have aged it massively. Between this and Titanic, Cameron produced and co-wrote the massively underrated Strange Days with Kathryn Bigelow directing. Strange Days was the kind of film I felt Cameron should be directing. Something action-packed and with an edge, cool concepts and heart.

The pre-release doom-mongering for Titanic is now part of the legend. Cameron being a beast on set, sabotage, unhappy actors and a budget that went way beyond what was expected. Of course, Cameron went down to the actual wreckage and pushed the envelope again in terms of CGI and practical sets. Say what you will about floating doors and Celine Dion, but Titanic is a great film. It deserved its success and shaped epic cinema for the next decade. It just wasn’t the sci-fi action epic I felt he should be making.

Avatar along with Battle Angel Alita had been mentioned as a possible future project for Cameron since even before Titanic. Similar to George Lucas with his Star Wars prequels – Cameron had been waiting for effects technology to move to a point where his vision could be realised. Having said that; the man will pretty much invent stuff if it doesn’t exist to not rest on his laurels the way he did with The Abyss and T2. He was pioneering 3D technology as well and taking it way beyond what it had been in the past with his undersea documentaries. Avatar would be a sci-fi epic for the ages pushing all boundaries and limits of what could be achieved at the time. Needless to say, I was excited.

I don’t exactly remember the doom-mongering pre-release, but I feel that Avatar had a lot of people shrugging when the first trailer came out. When the film came out, however, it was HUGE. It started fairly slow but built and built in terms of word of mouth and the fact that it was like nothing you had seen before, especially in IMAX 3D. The film itself is enjoyable, and on that first viewing, it’s awe-inspiring stuff. It’s only in the days that followed that I realised the story was nowhere near original. It’s Dances with Wolves in space in simplest terms. It’s the great white hunter/saviour recognising the rich culture of those he is meant to despise and turning on his own kind. The design of the thing cannot be faulted, the heavy metal technology Cameron loves is back for the first time since Aliens and it’s a good film if not an excellent one. However, despite it being a return to hardcore sci-fi concepts, Avatar remained at the bottom of Cameron’s filmography for me.

Following the massive success of Avatar, it was announced that Cameron would be staying on Pandora for the foreseeable with 4 more movies in the series. I can’t deny that this news was sort of disappointing, but money talks. It took Cameron 13 years to bring us back to Pandora. Word spread that he was doing stuff with motion capture that had not been done before. Taking things underwater and pushing that envelope again for our enjoyment. The initial photos released however did not fill anyone with confidence. It looked very kiddy-centric this time out with new cast additions. I listened to quite a few annoying podcasts pre-release that debated Avatar’s cultural relevance, and doom was once again predicted for the sequel. The trailers were spectacular but felt more like an ad for a tropical resort than an action-packed sci-fi sequel. I knew that Cameron wouldn’t let us down, this series would evolve into his Lord of the Rings, technology would be demo’d, and blocks would be busted.

The film came out and started to make all the money. Then I saw it…IMAX 3D format, just as I had seen the first one. Turns out Avatar: The Way of Water is one of the worst films I have ever paid to see…

**SPOILERS FROM HERE FOR AVATAR THE WAY OF WATER**

Don’t get me wrong, as a really beautiful 3D fish tank demo, the sequel is hard to beat. The film picks up some time after the first movie’s events with Sam Worthington making house and family with Zoe Saldana. However, the ‘sky people’ come back and destroy the remaining habitats of the tree people. Sam Worthington and fam flee to the beach and meet ‘the water tribe.’ An uneasy alliance is formed, the events of the first movie repeat themselves with home tree replaced by a space whale…that’s about it…that’s three hours and ten minutes.

There’s a point about an hour into The Way of Water where I got over the eyegasm and started to get bored. Really, really bored. The space whale named Tollbooth or something is introduced and is cute for a gelatinous blob of CGI, but you know exactly where this ends. Due to the mammoth run time and nursing a large Pepsi, I needed to pee. The way I planned this was as follows…

When the sky people turn up on their boats, they will kill Tollbooth. When the boats appear, I will go to the toilet; when I return, Sam Worthington will be giving the water tribe a rousing speech. I went to the toilet, replied to a text, came back, and that’s exactly what happened. After that I was just running out the clock, waiting for the thing to end because I had paid for it. Cameron remains a fine architect of battle mayhem, but this time out, I cared not.

Colonel Quaritch, played by Stephen Lang, was by far the coolest part of the first Avatar. He is back in this one despite being killed in the first movie. What remains of his human body makes its way into a Na’vi suit along with a few other mercs who do the same. So, you have tattooed and pierced Na’vi stalking the remaining tree folk spouting military speak like “We’re Oscar mike” and “Watch your six.” I’m sure this is supposed to be badass or intimidating, but it’s frankly embarrassing. I won’t even begin on motion-captured Sigourney Weaver playing a child; it serves no purpose other than skeeving me out.

I stopped caring when this happens, Jake and Neytiri’s family are annoying and the tech demo starts. All empathy, investment, or goodwill I had left for Avatar, and maybe even Cameron himself just evaporated. I think more than anything, I felt annoyed. I had long been one of those “Don’t doubt James Cameron” people. I had defended the first Avatar; I had hyped up the next one on my own podcast as being a highlight of the coming year of 2022. I told everyone that Cameron will right any potential story issues and will have listened to feedback. Avatar 2 will be a masterpiece, I said!

With Cameron basking in this success, his pre-release quotes saying he won’t direct all of the sequels is likely a thing of the past. He has mentioned ‘fire people’ for Avatar 3 which is already largely done, I think. So, you just know where this is going, don’t you? The 4^th will be the air people, and the 5^th will bring all the tribes together for a final battle. Earth, Water, Fire, Air…get it? It’s not bad to provide a message; Terminator and The Abyss did this beautifully, but this series (so far) has no weight to it at all, and Cameron is not fulfilling any potential he showed with those seminal first four films.

Avatar: The Way of Water is perhaps the most disappointing film I have ever seen. I will watch it again on Disney Plus; maybe splitting it into two sittings will change my opinion. Perhaps the problem is that Cameron himself has mellowed. There haven’t been any reports of on-set tantrums in a while and he has now been in the longest of his 5 or so marriages. As you grow older, you do go through the motions to an extent, and if you are lucky, you find peace with loved ones. However, it hurts so much because it feels much like George Lucas, and Peter Jackson, Cameron fell utterly in love with his toys and lost sight of actual humanity beneath the tech. Considering what Denis Villeneuve accomplished with Dune and even what the MCU managed with Avengers: Endgame, Avatar as a franchise is just not good enough.