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Avatar: The Way of Water review – a soggy, twee, trillion-dollar screensaver

Thirteen years in the making, James Cameron’s insipid, overlong followup to his sci-fi record-breaker is a very expensive beached whale

D renching us with a disappointment that can hardly be admitted out loud, James Cameron’s soggy new digitised film has beached like a massive, pointless whale. The story, which might fill a 30-minute cartoon, is stretched as if by some AI program into a three-hour movie of epic tweeness.

The first Avatar was a pioneering 3D sci-fi spectacular which Cameron delivered in 2009. Now, after 13 years of unimaginably expensive pixel-crunching, the aquatic followup has arrived, with a third and a fourth on the way. This one is available in 3D and 2D, and so at any rate keeping loyal to that three-dimensional vision that Cameron almost single-handedly revived but which the rest of the industry has quietly forgotten about. Yet the whole idea of the “avatar” from the first movie – the artificially created body that can be remotely piloted into an unknown world and which crucially formed a dramatic part of the audience’s 3D experience – has been left behind.

The effects now, technically impressive as they are, amount to high frame-rate motion smoothness which is soulless and inert, creating not so much an uncanny valley but an uncanny Mariana Trench down in the depths. Cameron’s undersea world is like a trillion-dollar screensaver. Where is the oceanic passion and jeopardy of great Cameron movies such as Titanic or The Abyss?

The situation is that ex-human Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is committed to the Na’vi body he assumed when insinuating himself among the blue-bodied, pointy-eared tribe as part of the “avatar” strategy in the first film, before falling in love with dynamic warrior Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) and siding with her people against the humans who would exploit the Na’vi’s mineral resources. Now, some years later, Sully and Neytiri are living happily with their children and their stepdaughter Kiri – whose connection with the original film soon becomes apparent – and also a semi-feral human kid called Spider.

But just when they thought they were happy, the “sky people” of planet Earth reappear and there is an admittedly ingenious twist concerning the gung-ho marine colonel Miles Quaritch, memorably played by Stephen Lang. Sully’s family have to leave their rainforest habitat and hide away among the far-off Metkayina, an amphibious reef people led by Ronal (Kate Winslet) and Tonowari (Cliff Curtis). There they must learn the mystical Metkayina art of existing for long periods underwater. Sully’s children and Tonowari’s children, at first spiky and rivalrous, become as close as cousins. But this new Eden can’t last forever either.

The submarine world of this film is, in its way, its chief character and its whole point. The move from land- to sea-based existence is the way a new film was created. But the sea world is imagined with a lot of cliche. Frankly, there isn’t a single interesting visual image and the whole thing has the non-briny smell of a MacBook Pro. Finding Nemo was more vivid.

And what do we find aside from the high-tech visual superstructure? The floatingly bland plot is like a children’s story without the humour; a YA story without the emotional wound; an action thriller without the hard edge of real excitement.

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Avatar: The Way of Water to Living – the seven best films to watch on TV this week

James Cameron’s imagination-packed return to Pandora is full of stunning visuals, while Bill Nighy is quietly captivating in an adaptation of a Kurosawa classic

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Pick of the week Avatar: The Way of Water

Not a man to do things by halves, world-builder James Cameron is back with the first of four sequels to his 2009 fantasy behemoth. Sam Worthington returns as ex-human soldier Jake, now a Na’vi clan chief on the eco-friendly moon Pandora, alongside Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), with whom he has two children. However, Earth sends another military expedition, forcing the family to flee to a coastal tribe. The subsequent coming-of-age tale involving the kids is by the book, but it’s in the oceanic scenes that Cameron’s bravura imagination and technical genius come to the fore. From the undersea wildlife to the deep-dive set-pieces, it’s an impressively immersive experience. Wednesday 7 June, Disney+

Thomas Bezucha’s elegiac modern western is centred on Diane Lane and Kevin Costner’s wholly convincing performances as an ageing couple. After Montana farmers Margaret and George’s adult son dies in an accident, their grandson and his mother are spirited away to his violent stepdad’s clan in North Dakota. Fearing for the boy’s safety, Margaret sets out on a rescue mission and George reluctantly joins her. With a chilling Lesley Manville as another strong-willed matriarch, it’s clear that women are the real powers in this world. Saturday 3 June, 9pm, Film4

Picnic at Hanging Rock

“A dream within a dream.” From the sun-dappled imagery and woozy pan pipe soundtrack to its spurious claim to being fact-based, Peter Weir’s 1975 Australian drama is a beguiling, intoxicating experience. On Valentine’s Day in 1900, three boarding-school girls and a teacher vanish at a beauty spot in rural Victoria. The mystery of this elemental place bewitches and frustrates those left behind, with the fallout for pupils and staff, particularly Rachel Roberts’s headteacher, increasingly traumatic. Saturday 3 June, 9.30pm, Talking Pictures TV

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

What a remarkable life Nan Goldin has had. In this superb documentary, Laura Poitras lays out the photographer’s chequered history – from family tragedy as a child to involvement in Boston and New York’s creative and LGBTQ+ underclass, which Goldin captured in intimate, often stark images. This is interspersed with her activism, currently focused on making the wealthy Sackler family accountable for the wave of addiction caused by their painkiller OxyContin, which Goldin herself was once hooked on. A great insight into a great artist. Sunday 4 June, 10pm, BBC Two

Woman at War

Extinction Rebellion probably shouldn’t take tips from Icelandic eco-warrior Halla. In Benedikt Erlingsson’s delightful comic caper , the choir director has a secret life sabotaging power lines to halt Chinese investment in aluminium smelting. To confuse matters, she is also due to adopt a four-year-old Ukrainian orphan girl. In a dual role (Halla is an identical twin), Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir is a force of nature while, quirkily, the soundtrack musicians pop up on screen and join in with the action. Sunday 4 June, 1.40am, Film4

As a British adaptation of the 1952 Kurosawa classic Ikiru, Oliver Hermanus’s recent drama has its work cut out to emulate the original. That it succeeds is largely down to Bill Nighy’s finely graded performance. His 1950s civil servant, Mr Williams, finds a glimmer of redemption and joy in an empty, staid life when he is diagnosed with terminal cancer. As he abandons his nine-to-five to deal with the news, Williams is brought out of his moroseness by a young colleague (Aimee Lou Wood) and a writer (Tom Burke). A touching tale about the ways we give meaning to our existence. Wednesday 7 June, Prime Video

The Roads Not Taken

Film-maker Sally Potter and her Ginger & Rosa star Elle Fanning reunited for this poignant 2020 drama about the pain of remembering. Fanning plays Molly, visiting her father, Mexican writer Leo (Javier Bardem), in his New York flat. But he has a dementia-like condition that means he keeps drifting off into thoughts (or are they inventions?) of his past, which include mourning a loss with Salma Hayek’s Dolores and an encounter with Milena Tscharntke’s tourist in Greece. There’s a deep sadness to Leo as we piece together his life from these evocative fragments. SW Friday 9 June, 11.05pm, BBC Two

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Avatar: The Way of Water

Where to watch.

Watch Avatar: The Way of Water with a subscription on Disney+, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

What to Know

Narratively, it might be fairly standard stuff -- but visually speaking, Avatar: The Way of Water is a stunningly immersive experience.

Avatar: The Way of Water 's story is predictable, but the visual effects are so spectacular that it hardly matters.

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