In the first “Avatar”, Jake, a paralyzed former Marine agreed to participate in a virtual reality pilot experience on the planet Pandora, was locked in a sensory box while his avatar set out to meet the Navis, a bluish people living on this planet on which scientists and soldiers are carrying out a colonizing mission. Like John Smith falling in love with Pocahontas, Jake was going to spin the perfect love with a charming Navi, which had the gift ofirritate his superior, a stubborn soldier, a sort of reincarnation of General Custer for whom “a good Navi is a dead Navi”. But phew! This horrible villain was pierced with arrows at the end of the film…
Beginning of “Avatar 2” : Jake has permanently abandoned his human self, has become Navi among the Navis and started a family. But this domestic happiness is threatened by a military villain clone inhabited by a single objective: “Revenge!” Jake and his family, just to have peace, choose exile, leave the forest and go to another side of Pandora, where they try to find refuge within a tribe versed in water sports…
This is the main argument – and the challenge – of this suite: make these characters evolve in computer-generated images in an ultra-realistic marine environment. Challenge perfectly met, because Cameron is an outstanding technicianand the contract of to make an ultra-spectacular film is respected. The question remains: for what scenario? Because, unlike the first film, a precursor in many respects (we approached virtual reality, the extinction of the earth, the ecological message), this number 2 dwells and recycles.
In thirteen years cinema has changed, Marvel imposed sometimes very inventive blockbusters of superheroes, and staged often complex heroes. Not so with Cameron, who seems frozen in patterns worthy of old westerns: there are the good guys and the bad guys, the defense of the family, the nice Indians – sorry, the Navis – with arrow bows – and the horrible settlers with their Caterpillar species that crush everything in their path… Frankly, in 2022, can we still stage such rudimentary plots? Cameron, obsessed with his technological performance, seems to have forgotten the heart of the problem : the weakness and total lack of originality of its plot. Result: “Avatar, the way of water” ends up really taking on water.
