Death and Doubles: The Way of Aliens to Titanic

I don’t go to the movies much anymore. The pandemic and price inflation have greatly influenced my behavior in that respect, but more so there’s not that many good reasons to do so, and that's despite that I’m obsessed with movies, studied them at university and throughout most of my life. The first film I’d seen in a theatre since early 2020 was a restored silent film, and that was back on 29 September of this year, for the second celebration of Silent Movie Day. In my review, I joked that I wouldn’t make my first return to cinemas to see some MCU or franchise reboot junk; that’d be my second return trip. But, even that seems rather a waste; the movies will be available on home video and streaming soon enough and of relatively similar quality on my 4k TV—just the screen will be smaller than one at a theatre, and I won’t be bothered by the moronic sociopaths with glowing faces publicly feeding their narcissism in the seats in front of me. Plus, I may pause the increasingly overlong tentpole productions; over three hours without an intermission is sadistic. They used to have them, when film was actually shot on and projected from celluloid, when people actually went to the movies, or at least those who knew darn well that analog TV wasn’t an acceptable alternative and that the communal activity still had value did so. Something of a pivotal late text in the digital revolution, “Avatar” (2009) has only ever been the highest-grossing picture because of inflated prices.

Anyways, my point is that I’ve become highly selective in my movie-going habits of late, and I like to pretend that I know something about such things. So, when I go to the cinema to see “Avatar: The Way of Water” in IMAX 3D, it’s because the movie is a big deal, and the act of viewing it again at home in the future won’t be comparable to that experience, just as it hasn’t been for the first “Avatar.” Nobody understands how to make truly cinematic blockbusters anymore like James Cameron does. If Marvel and the rest of the significant portion of the box office that Disney owns besides the “Avatar” franchise could come anywhere close in this respect, if not taking more than a decade between releases to do so, the continued success of theatrical cinema would be assured.

Moreover, Cameron evidently understands all of this. His scripts receive much criticism for supposedly being stupid, especially these “Avatar” ones. Sure, the surface-level cowboys-and-Indians action and postcolonialist and environmentalist politics is too simplistic to be of interest. But, c’mon, people, dive deep here. The “Avatar” movies aren’t merely the embodiment of the cinematic experience par excellence because the visual effects are nifty; they’re movies about movies and as imprinted with Cameron’s particular techno-filmic philosophy, one that’s more developed and complex than that of most other filmmakers. Thank the heavens he makes movies instead of working for Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse or some such atrocity.

In some ways, “Way of Water” improves on its predecessor by streamlining this (relatively, as the kidnappings, for instance, are repetitive). Even if the story is reduced to “Star Wars” personal vendetta, MCU superhero who must now take on the supervillain with the exact same powers. The video-game-like avatars of the capsules are gone, although there’s more of a virtual-reality heaven. Now, we only have death and rebirth by way of the double. Jake Sully replacing his late twin brother writ large. Film as ghostly double, film as death, and film is dead. Makes sense that most of this sequel is entirely the digital world of Pandora and its “global network,” more so than the original; the digital revolution is complete and indexical cinema a thing of the past. The “sky people” of the old, industrialized ways only combust like inflammable nitrate. Baudrillard to Derrida, no more real-world referent, only avatars left alive; cinema as computer animation. Back in 2009 that wasn’t yet the case, but “Avatar” more than most pushed it to become so. So, here we are again, with the only worldbuilding where stereoscopic mimetically matters, sifting through the remains of the slain. Indeed, one double of a character watches the video footage of his death, then poses with his skull—“Hamlet,” “To be, or not to be” style for extra credit. That’s what these movies are about.

The focus on family even underscores this, immortality by passing on genetics. Sperm oil as the fountain of youth. And don’t tell me a movie where Zoe Saldaña and Kate Winslet almost get into a “catfight” doesn’t have a sense of pun. Boy, how much better that is, too, than “unobtanium” and the tired 9/11 and Iraq War analogies. You basically have to go back to the silent era—say, the proto-documentary “Whaling Afloat and Ashore” (1908), or the feature “Down to the Sea in Ships” (1922)---to get a spectacular cinematic sense of how important whaling was for manufacturing, including in the early history of the United States, before it was replaced by drilling oil out of the ground (what wars are still fought over and what really funds the world, even Pandora). Even what might be described as the duller moments here, where not much plot is occurring, are like watching the best-produced family vacation footage you’ll ever see. Albeit I was reminded for a moment of the naked baby on the cover of Nirvana’s “Nevermind” album.

Interesting, too, that Sigourney Weaver, who essentially played James Cameron’s “avatar” in the last one, returns here as her own child. That Weaver was also cast to allude to Cameron’s earlier film “Aliens” (1986) also suggests films as something of the offspring of the filmmaker. So, “Aliens” that of the youthful master manipulator of mother nature (more wireless networking than the prior USB-like “tsaheylu” bonds), still an outcast attempting to enter a society. And, for the elder shaman, already builder and leader of communal experience, a whale of a great communicator: “Titanic” (1997), and its “avatar” Winslet. The final act here is what I imagine that the latest “Star Wars” trilogy, particularly “The Rise of Skywalker” (2019), with its saber fights atop dilapidated sets from the first films, or even the time-travel return to former franchise entries of “Avengers: Endgame” (2019), wishes it had achieved. It’ll deserve to beat the nostalgic excrement of “Top Gun: Maverick” (2022) at the box office. Add to that that the visual effects are improved, soaring to submerged, doing for the underwater virtual camera what the original did for the flying one, to the point that motion-capture acting comes across as effective (Saldaña especially goes on a rampage in the end), and that the characters and story this time aren’t quite so one-dimensional (including a much-improved baddie), generally less busy but deeper, and that it actually leaves one wanting a follow-up movie, and Cameron has done it again, a last vestige of an imperative to go to the movies.