It’s been said that great artists make their art look easy.
Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, for example, made dancing seem like a walk in the park (or for Kelly — in the rain!). Sinatra made every middle-aged man feel he too could croon like that. And in “Avatar: The Way of Water,” director James Cameron’s seamless visuals are so rich and real — the world he creates so complete and convincing — that viewers may be apt to take it all for granted.
But this was a labor of herculean proportions — and every ounce of effort is visible onscreen in this sumptuously satisfying sci-fi sequel to 2009’s smash-hit.
In this first of four planned follow-ups to what was once the highest-grossing film of all time, protagonist Jake Sully has settled into forest-life among the Na’vi, a race of tall, slender blue humanoids on the fictional moon Pandora in the Alpha Centauri system. Formerly a human but now fully transferred into his Na’vi avatar, Jake is happily married to Neytiri, his love from the first film; but when a new armada of ravaging humans arrives on a mission to kill Sully, the Na’vi couple and their brood of four must flee to a far-off tribe of Pandorans who live and work in the sea.
Naturally, it won’t be long before the humans find them, at which point a furious battle erupts to save not only Jake’s family but also the water people — along with the wise and graceful marine mammals among which they live.
This may not sound like enough plot to sustain a sprawling 192-minute epic (just 120 seconds shorter than Cameron’s “Titanic”); but the director and his co-writers keep things moving with a variety of subplots and subsidiary characters (especially Jake’s kids) — along with a dazzling array of wildlife and topography.
As fans of “Terminator,” “Aliens” and “True Lies” will recall, Cameron is a master at filming action; the furious, spectacular, and occasionally heart-stopping climax in this film is nearly an hour long, dragging only in the final minutes, with a bit too much focus on holding one’s breath underwater.
Which is one reason this movie was so tough to make.
The heavy reliance on computer-generated imagery may suggest it was all just a matter of keyboards and pixels; but the characters are played by real actors — and then transformed into otherworldly creatures using motion-capture, a complicated technique that has never before been used underwater; Cameron and crew spent 18 months just working out exactly how this could be achieved. And then all the actors actually did their own swimming — including Kate Winslet, who at one point broke Tom Cruise’s filmmaking record by holding her breath for well over seven minutes.
Despite the intense action, Cameron knows how to shift gears to more meditative, emotional, character-driven scenes — and to several sequences that simply revel in the luscious beauty of the world he and his team created. “The Way of Water” is one of the most visually stunning movies ever made, ranking with “The Wizard of Oz,” “Life of Pi” and the two “Blade Runner” films.
For this reason, Cameron’s epic is never boring. If you’re inclined to feel three hours and 12 minutes is too long, just remember the last time you binge-watched four or five episodes of your favorite series; as Cameron observes, “It’s okay to get up and go pee.”
That’s the way of water, ain’t it?
