Directed by James Cameron | Written by Cameron, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Josh Friedman, and Shane Salerno | 197 min | ▲▲1/2 | In Cinemas
James Cameron is the most successful Canadian filmmaker in history by the simple measure of box office returns. It’s hard to deny he knows what audiences want, going back to the Terminator franchise, Aliens, and Titanic. I’m on the record as being no fan of this franchise — the first one impressed mostly for the action set-pieces and the digital universe building but rapidly faded from memory, and the second, while even more eye-popping was so poorly scripted, the heart of it is a teen movie written by a dude in his 60s with every expression out of their mouths ringing as inauthentic. The argument about Avatar‘s lack of cultural cache feels like sour grapes given how many people come out for these films.
But the biggest problem with the Avatar theme-park ride blockbusters is they’re a white dude’s fantasy of indigeneity, fully appropriating the cultural signifiers of First Nations, Polynesian, and African peoples for the humanoid aliens, the Na’vi. It’s no secret Cameron’s been inspired by the history of European colonization of various continents for this multi-chapter interstellar epic, and wants to show how they stripped all the natural resources and enslaved the people who lived there, but his movies never escape feeling oppressive and patriarchal, especially as his original hero, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), is a human who transformed into a Na’vi and is now a heroic figure in blue skin. There’s no getting away from how problematic that is as an allegory.
Still, people everywhere love it, they don’t care. All they want is to spend more than three hours in this world, to bathe in the azure waters, run through the jungle, and fly between the floating mountain ranges on dragonback. And I get the argument that Cameron’s intention is noble, to get people thinking a little about colonization and the environment while they enjoy big-budget blockbuster thrills.
The visuals and action elements remain the movies’ biggest draw, and to this one’s credit it’s paced like the Shinkansen — it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a movie topping three hours that moves like this does, and I genuinely felt engaged by most of it. This is a big improvement over the abysmal The Way of Water. The teenagers are less obnoxious, most of them now old enough to participate in the battles rather than just standing around whining and calling each other “bro.”
The Sully family unit remains the centre of the story. They’re deeply grieving their eldest son, Neteyam (Jamie Flatters), who died in the previous instalment — something I had completely forgotten, probably because the second movie was such a bore. Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) seems to be taking it the hardest. The middle child, No’ak (Britain Dalton), gets to provide an unnecessary voiceover, while the youngest, Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), gets to be cute.
Still around is adoptive daughter Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), who has a special ability to connect with the spiritual world on the planet, Eywa, and make out with her fellow adoptee, Spider (Jack Champion). He’s part of the Sully clan even though he’s the human son of villain, Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who’s also become Na’vi.
The thematic backbone here is Daddy Issues: Big Blue Digital Smurf Edition. Quaritch has become more complex, appealing to his son, Spider, who might end up being super-important to the “Pink Asses” wanting to dominate Pandora. The movie gives Spider reasons to reject Jake, who still has moments of being the universe’s worst Dad, especially in how he interacts with No’ak.
In order to hang with the Sullys and live in their world. Spider needs to wear an oxygen unit, like an all-day CPAP, which is battery powered. The film makes no effort to explain how the batteries are charged in their anti-technology enclave, but then there’s a lot here we have to take on faith. Despite the impressive knack Cameron has with the nuts and bolts of action sequences — the way he moves the camera to keep us right in the middle of it all in these gorgeous environments is second to none — he doesn’t care to orient us geographically in this world at all. Quaritch and his goons struggle to find the Sully family at one moment, but then have no trouble minutes later. Characters escape antagonists easily in one scene and are overpowered easily in another. The plot armour is obvious, as are many conveniences.
The biggest improvement this time is the addition of a charismatic Na’vi leader who’s lost her faith in the spiritual world of her brethren — Varang (a weirdly foxy Oona Chaplin). She and her people live on the edge of an erupting volcano, and her connection with Quaritch, and embracing military firepower, is one of the most compelling elements of this third chapter.
It’s nice to see some new characters — a very welcome David Thewlis hiding his Blackpool accent but not his delivery, and a somewhat plot-convenient role for Jemaine Clement, who is less convincing as an American rather than a New Zealander.
Otherwise, there’s a little too much going here that’s too similar to the first two movies. The scale has increased: bigger ships, bigger guns, and more of them, but the third act battle is to the last movie’s third act battle as the finale of Return of The Jedi is to the finale of Star Wars: bigger in almost every way you can measure, but not necessarily better. The introduction of a cetacean justice tribunal to the tale isn’t quite enough to distinguish it.
I like that this one is more entertaining than the last, but we’ve still got two more to come. Let’s pray to Eywa that numbers four and five offer something prominent we haven’t seen before, especially if they’re also at these bladder-bursting run times.
