Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)

Yes, it’s been thirteen years since Avatar, and I can say that not a day has gone by when I’ve wanted more from the franchise. I’ve strolled around the theme park in Orlando, and I’ve listened to the soundtrack off and on, and I even attended the IMAX rerelease three months ago once it seemed that James Cameron was finally going to deliver on his decade-plus of promises to revisit the world of Pandora. I did all these things out of no particular affection for the movie, its creators, or even its specific world; any attachment I have to Avatar is purely on the level of an appreciation for spectacle. Avatar: The Way of Water is no better than its predecessor, but it is certainly more, and your take on the movie will probably tell us more about you than it will about the film itself. It is, in a sense, a pure cinematic Rorschach test.

It’s been several years since Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) “went native” and abandoned his human body for a Na’vi avatar; he’s started a family with Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) and made a home in the forests of Pandora. But when the “sky people” return to the alien world, in search of profit and revenge, they’re accompanied by the impossibly-resurrected Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who wants Sully’s blood for himself. To protect their Omatikaya tribe, Sully and his family flee their home and take refuge with the water-dwelling Metkayina Clan.

 

Let’s begin right off the bat with an admission that The Way of Water is loaded with some Grade-A nonsense, bordering on sheer balderdash. Even setting aside the bonkers reinclusion of Stephen Lang’s snarly villain, this is a three-hour movie where Sigourney Weaver also returns, but in the body of a blue teenager; where holding your breath is a pivotal plot point; and where crucial exposition is delivered by an immense telepathic whale. If you made it through that sentence without rolling your eyes, this might be the movie for you, but if not, your patience for sci-fi claptrap may wear thin long before the film’s three hours elapse. 

 

And it is long, make no mistake about it. It’s three hours long, and it does feel it; though I’m not sure exactly what I would cut (because James Cameron seems never to have met a Chekhov’s gun he didn’t fire), the last twenty minutes feel like extended set-up for a third film. While things are always happening on screen, there’s a point about two hours in, just before the third act and all its 3D action begin, when one’s hindquarters may be falling asleep. I was never entirely bored, but I was growing restless. Put another way, The Way of Water never quite earns its runtime the way Avengers: Endgame did – which may say more about me than about either movie. 

 

Part of the challenge is that The Way of Water is paper-thin. Its plotting is entirely unsubtle, its characterization never transcends the immediate needs of the plot, and the dialogue is in places ear-scrapingly direct. (“Who’s got the harpoon now?” one character sarcastically asks another after a third quite literally takes possession of a harpoon.) As far as the story goes, Cameron has never really scored points for originality. Indeed, after Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, he’s not even the first movie this winter about a lost civilization of underwater blue people at war with a technologically-advanced military. Like the first one, this Avatar is equal parts Pocahontas and Dances With Wolves, Ferngully and Smurfs in space, though The Way of Water is generously leavened with Free Willy and even a helping of Moby-Dick. We’ve seen all of this before, and most of it in the last Avatar film.

 

Yet I will give Cameron points for the film paying out like a slot machine in its third act. Nearly everything that’s been set up in the first two acts comes to bear in the grand finale, and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I too got swept along with the rest of my theater when the aforementioned giant whale returned to the plot and did its Tulkun thing all over the bad guys. Other plot threads resurface in surprising ways, including one especially gratifying amputation, and you do end up with a very satisfying conclusion – if you have the patience and the tolerance to get there.

 

I can grumble about the fact that the acting is a little wooden (especially and egregiously, Edie Falco, who seems to be reading her lines cold off a cue card) or that the storytelling is nothing new, but I don’t think anyone comes to a James Cameron film because he’s some sort of poet laureate. Rather, he’s an expert ringmaster in the circus of spectacle; we come to his movies to be entertained, to be dazzled by special effects and ultra-widescreen action. Things blow up in three pristine dimensions, and water has never looked this crystalline. You have to wade through storytelling that is less than inspired to get there, but the Cameron vibe has always been, “Trust me, this will be worth it.” No one came to Titanic for the greatest love story ever; we came to watch a big ship sink. Likewise, no one comes to The Way of Water because we can’t get enough of those Na’vi; we come to see motion-capture evolve, to see a world unlike ours, and if it feels a little like a nature documentary, so be it – The Way of Water has a mellow hang-out aura that verges on overstaying its welcome before hitting a rousing third act. 

 

In terms of its narrative, The Way of Water is only as effective as it needs to be to serve that third act, and on an emotional level I’m not sure that we grow attached enough to the characters to feel the climax. But on the level of visual spectacle, there’s really nothing quite like an Avatar movie, and your ability to derive maximum enjoyment from the film really depends on how much you’re willing and able to silence your critic’s brain and just ride the waves. That’s, after all, the true way of water – go with the flow.

 

Avatar: The Way of Water is rated PG-13 for “sequences of strong violence and intense action, partial nudity, and some strong language.” Directed by James Cameron. Written by James Cameron, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Josh Friedman, and Shane Salerno. Starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, and Kate Winslet. 

Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)

If you asked me to explain the multiple alternate and parallel timelines at play in The Terminator and its sequels, I’ll quickly change the subject. I don’t fully understand them myself, nor do I believe any of the filmmakers have tried to keep the continuity house in order. What’s more, though, all these disparate timelines are far and away the least interesting thing about any Terminator film, which are at their best when they mash up impressive action sequences with an unstoppable metallic killer whose immortality may as well be lifted from a slasher horror film’s antagonist. 

Case in point, Terminator: Dark Fate, which ignores most of the sequels and pretends – just like its predecessors, Terminator Salvation and Terminator Genisys – that only the first two Terminator films “actually” happened. For a franchise that continually rewrites itself, Dark Fate is an oddball legacy sequel (or legacy-quel, if you will) that works much better when it’s not sidestepping its own prismatic past.

 

Years after Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) averted Judgment Day and the rise of Skynet, a new Terminator (Gabriel Luna) arrives in Mexico City to kill Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes). Assuming Dani will be the mother of some new future messiah, Sarah rushes to her side, only to find the cybernetically-augmented Grace (Mackenzie Davis) has already time-travelled to save Dani from the forces of the future.

 

What separates Dark Fate from the other Terminator sequels is the return, supposedly triumphant, of franchise forefather James Cameron, who had no hand in the preceding three films. Here, Cameron is one of six credited writers, but one senses that his voice rings the loudest. Each of the trio of protagonists is that very specific Cameron brand of Strong Female Protagonist – tough and resilient with only enough emotional complexity to feel human; indeed, their heroic prowess seems measurable by the size of their firearms, a Freudian insight which feels almost retrograde for 2019. What felt innovative for the 1984 original (and Cameron’s Aliens two year later) now feels familiar and perhaps overdone. It’s as though Cameron has returned to the franchise both to save it and to insist upon reminding us (however spurious the claim) that he invented tough-as-nails heroines. 

 

In short, it’s the girlboss Terminator, even if it doesn’t quite explore that concept until very late in the film, when we finally learn why Dani is essential to the future (in a plot twist that is telegraphed either effectively or obviously, depending on where you’re sitting). Dark Fate asks, “What if, this time, a lady helped a lady save a lady?” Points for finding a new angle on an old favorite, I suppose, and kudos to the trio of women anchoring the film for all doing a credible and watchable job. Hamilton’s return is ostensibly the centerpiece of the film, even more so than Arnold Schwarzenegger reinventing his role as an aging Terminator, while Davis is a clever update on the Kyle Reese archetype. The film does her a disservice, though, to focus more on her physicality than her personality, given a brief flashback that only teases what she’s really like.

 

Then there’s Natalia Reyes, who has the closest thing to a character arc in the film, and it’s because of her emotional attunement as Dani that the film’s third-act twist lands at all. The film asks her to be John Connor and Sarah Conner and her own person all at once, and Reyes manages to take the film’s thin character sketch and finds a way to track Dani’s evolution from factory worker to future hero. I’d be just as happy to see any of these three come back for a future Terminator film, though I would recommend audiences not get too attached. We’ve been down this road before, with Terminator 3 and Salvation and Genisys each promising a new direction that never came to pass. 

 

We don’t, however, come to a Terminator film for internal logic or amazing new characters. After decades of fits and starts, we keep coming back for the bang-up action sequences, and on that count Dark Fate truly delivers. The film’s first act includes a freeway chase that’s very nearly as good as the one at the heart of The Matrix Reloaded (though I’m sure the proper antecedent is in Terminator 2, which I haven’t seen recently enough to recall with precision), and the pace never quite lets up. We’ve also got a claustrophobic sequence within an immigration detainment center, with a climax set amid an expansive pursuit over land, sea, and air. Throughout, director Tim Miller is constantly recalibrating the bar, both raising it for effect and narrowing his scope to give this action film a welcome degree of versatility. 

 

Dark Fate is very seldom boring, and perhaps the only sense of fatigue in the film is the idea that we’ve been told four times now that, no, no, this is what a Terminator film ought to do. At the core of the franchise is an irresistible – and proven – premise, though the box office receipts seem to be a tale of diminishing returns. As these films often remind us, the future is not written – and nor, it seems, are the sequels this film had been hoping to greenlight. Dark Fate may have portended its own future with its eponymous subtitle, casting the franchise prospects into uncertainty. 

Terminator: Dark Fate is rated R for “violence throughout, language, and brief nudity.” Directed by Tim Miller. Written by James Cameron, Charles Eglee, Josh Friedman, David Goyer, Justin Rhodes, and Billy Ray. Starring Linda Hamilton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mackenzie Davis, Natalia Reyes, and Gabriel Luna.

The Terminator (1984)

When I announced in my review of Terminator Genisys that I’d never seen the original Terminator, you’d think I was confessing that I hadn’t had my requisite vaccinations. Such was the public outcry that I pushed James Cameron’s 1984 original to the top of my list. My immediate reaction was one of surprise (at the subsequent direction of the franchise) and then satisfaction. I liked it, but then I hadn’t expected I wouldn’t.

Arnold Schwarzenegger plays the eponymous Terminator, sent from 2029 to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) in 1984 before she can become the mother of future resistance leader John Connor. Her best defense is Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), a soldier with John Connor, also sent back in time, albeit to save Sarah from the Terminator.

There is something quite graceful about the simplicity of the plot, an art lost, I think, on today’s bigger-is-better cinematic culture. Having seen all the other installments in the franchise, there weren’t a lot of surprises to be had from The Terminator, but I was struck by the nimbleness of the film. I almost wish I’d seen this one first! It throws you into the plot without much exposition, allowing for a few nifty twists (like the presumed assumption that Kyle Reese is also a Terminator, until the film reveals that he’s not). Instead, the backstory comes in whispers and gaps, where Kyle gains Sarah’s trust during brief respites from the chase narrative.

This structure of the film led me to a feeling of surprise that The Terminator gave rise to a multi-picture science fiction franchise. In fact, I wouldn’t have expected that at all; I would have sooner assumed that The Terminator was a horror film than science fiction. Aside from the time travel element, which isn’t foregrounded at all, The Terminator has much more in common with John Carpenter’s Halloween than Terminator Genisys. There are all the tropes that were satirized in Wes Craven’s Scream – the relentless killer, the death of the sexually active, the one-last-scare in which said killer gets back up... all of which Cameron executes quite effectively. Indeed, as bored as I have been with Cameron’s more recent bloated material (e.g., Titanic, Avatar), I’m fascinated by what he can do with a much smaller scope/budget.

Going forward, it’s hard for me not to compare The Terminator to the recent Terminator Genisys, and I think the former certainly offers a few lessons as the franchise continues. First, keep it simple: the plotline of the original introduces only as many timelines as it needs to tell a coherent story. Next, keep it focused: the Terminator is terrifying because it’s relentless, not because there are a lot of them. Finally, keep it real: the Stan Winston robotics are much more chilling because they have weight, and there’s something genuinely creepy about the stilted movements as opposed to a smooth computer-generated Terminator. (This from a guy who thought the Cybermen were scarier before they could run.)

There is something very engaging about seeing Sarah Connor’s plot arc develop during the film, and Linda Hamilton does a compelling job going from naïve to tough. But maybe that’s the problem with the most recent films – we’ve covered this ground already, and it wasn’t bad the first few times. It might be sacrilege at this point (or just out of the question, depending on how many contracts have been signed), but maybe it’s time to be done with the Connors. Can the Terminators go after someone else? Can they go further back, maybe to the Old West? (Can there be a joke about Westworld in there somewhere?) Heck, I know they’ve faced Superman at least once.

Whatever the future of the Terminator franchise, it isn’t written yet, and we’d do well to look to the past for inspiration. But let it be a thematic inspiration, not a narrative one. This one was done well enough the first time around, and there are only so many diminishing returns until the well runs dry (and only so many clichés one can fit into a single sentence). As I remember, the second one entertained the heck out of my preteen self; stay tuned to see if it holds up on a rewatch.

The Terminator is rated R. Surprisingly, most of the blood in the film comes from The Terminator, whose flesh coating bleeds like a normal human’s, including a few gruesome moments of self-surgery on his arm and eye. Two men are seen nude from behind, and one of two sex scenes shows a woman topless (the second includes no visible nudity).

Monday at the Movies - August 27, 2012

Welcome to Week Thirty-Two of “Monday at the Movies.”  This week we continue our long-promised look at the “Alien Quadrilogy.”

Aliens (1986) – Aliens changes up a lot of what worked in Alien, swapping director Ridley Scott for James Cameron and moving from claustrophobic horror to expanded action.  It’s a film that tries almost too hard to distance itself from the original, but although it’s so different from its predecessor Aliens succeeds on a number of levels.  Returning as Ellen Ripley, Sigourney Weaver steps up her performance as Ripley suffers from PTSD after her encounter aboard the Nostromo; Weaver successfully evolves her character from fearful victim into proactive hero as she leads a military platoon against the Xenomorphs.  The rest of the cast is passable:  Lance Henriksen plays android Bishop, but he doesn’t do as much as Ian Holm in Alien, and Paul Reiser is surprisingly scummy as a company man whose only investment is in weaponizing the creature, while Bill Paxton plays an entertainingly campy soldier whose every line is a catchphrase (“Game over, man!  Game over!”).  And the action scenes are first-rate; much as it pains me to laud James Cameron, he does strong work filming the chaos of a full Xenomorph squadron’s assault.  But in this element perhaps rests the film’s greatest detriment; we see entirely too much of the Xenomorphs (indeed, we even have a name for them now).  There was something to be said about the original film’s refusal to let us see the creature fully, so an element of horror is lost when the creatures are seen in full lighting; worse, they’re not indestructible, which makes them mere cannon fodder at times.  But what Cameron sacrifices with the visible Xenomorphs, he reclaims with the Alien Queen, whose final sequence with Ripley and the iconic cargo loader is as exciting as anything the film offers.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week, but stay tuned later this week for our no-spoilers-barred review of The Dark Knight Rises!