20th Century Studios
James Cameron intended Avatar to usher in a grand new age of 3D. Yet 13 years after the movie became the all-time box-office champ, that glasses-required revolution turned out to be merely a fad. For all its fiscal success, Avatar’s cultural and cinematic impact remains shockingly small, influencing few other works and inspiring little lasting critical or public adoration; its prime legacy, in fact, appears to be simply augmenting blockbusters’ reliance on CG spectacle above all other concerns. It’s the king of the movie world that no one seems to care about, much less ardently love.
It’s in that version of 2022—the one in which Avatar is simply an artifact—that the writer/director returns with Avatar: The Way of Water: a long-discussed follow-up (and the first of four planned sequels, some of which have already been shot) that aims to revive the franchise and solidify its position as the money-maker to beat them all.
Underestimating Avatar’s financial potential would be a fool’s game. But creatively speaking, The Way of Water (Dec. 16, in theaters) is of a piece with its predecessor, a would-be epic of boundary-pushing digi-grandeur in service of Pocahontas-style us-vs-them mush. There’s something absurdly ironic about Cameron continuing to peddle fantasies about nature-attuned, highly spiritual, indigenous people gallantly slaying the forces of advanced civilization via a wholly artificial affair that—produced by Disney with the priciest cine-gadgets available—is literally the Most Modern Movie Ever.