Fine, I'll Say It. 'Avatar: The Way of Water' is My Most Anticipated Movie of the Year.
When was the last time you saw a movie in 3-D? It may have been in 2009, when James Cameron finally unleashed the behemoth of computer-generated imagery that is Avatar. The film, as you may know, made a bazillion dollars at the box office, emboldening Cameron to spend well over a decade planning four more of these movies. First up is Avatar: The Way of Water, set to debut December 22. I'm just going to say this up front: it's my most anticipated movie of the year. But... I didn't see Avatar for the first time until a few weeks ago. I'll explain.
Sometimes, when I tell people I never watched Avatar during its late-aughts heyday, they look at me like I told them I was born with a tail. My avoidance of Avatar wasn’t on purpose, you know! One of my friends saw it five times in theaters, and gushed about it like it was some kind of life-changing experience. But in 2009, the only kind of experience I wanted a movie theater was making out with my high school crush. (I never got to experience either.)
The more time passed since Avatar released, the more ludicrous it seemed to watch it. I mean, it debuted so long ago, that to watch it for the first time on my laptop on a boring weekday night felt anticlimactic. But when Avatar rereleased in theaters late last month, I knew it was my moment. Finally! I could be part of the hype. As a millennial who still listens to Fall Out Boy, I was more than happy to time-warp back to 2009 and experience Avatar for the first time.
All I knew about Avatar was what people joked about when it came out: giant hot blue aliens and hair sex. Wouldn't you know, there’s much more than that. One of the most expensive films ever made, Avatar was only a sparkle in Cameron’s eye for more than a decade. In a 2007 interview with Entertainment Weekly, the director said that he had been working on the Avatar story for 11 years. The technology needed to carry his vision out was catching up. Of the process, Cameron said, “as the actors perform, I’m able to see in the monitor not only what they might look like as their CG character, but in the CG environment we’ve created, and direct them accordingly.” It sounded like something out of a fantasy. As for Cameron's story, it seemed to challenge critics at the time, who before the film’s release, were unable to predict how audiences would react to the film.
Going to see Avatar at the Downtown Brooklyn Alamo Drafthouse on a quiet, rainy Sunday evening, I also felt conflicted. What if the movie didn't hold up? What if the effects now looked like one of those old NSYNC music videos that used CGI that resembled a bad Windows screensaver? What if the sexy blue aliens just looked like overgrown furries? Even on a Sunday evening, the seats around me filled up. Avatar still puts butts in seats, I guess.I donned my 3-D glasses and was introduced to the beautiful, looming silver moon of Pandora. I quickly felt myself looking on in awe. When was the last time I was in a theater, feeling such a sense of childlike delight and wonder? Hell, when was the last time a Hollywood film was actually lit well enough for you to see what was going on?
Let's get to the story. I was immediately thrust into a dystopian future, one where the resources on Earth have been completely depleted. (Uh wait, was this 2154 or was it 2022?) Jake Sully, the main human character and our entryway into this brand-new world, was a charming himbo. Dumb, but with a whole lot of heart. The stakes on Pandora are urgent, by the way. There’s this mineral called unobtanium. Kudos to Cameron for the Star Trek-esque, made-up word. We Earthlings want it really bad. What do we use it for, though? To fuel our Teslas as we drag-race through the barren wasteland that is Earth? Doesn’t matter, because the military makes it clear that they don’t care how many indigenous Na’vi they need to blow up to get access to it.
The cast of characters are exactly the types you’d probably meet on a military base on an alien planet. There’s the smart, no-nonsense scientist leader, Grace, played by Sigourney Weaver, who summons up Alien-esque tough bitch energy here. There’s Stephen Lang’s Colonel Quaritch, who looks like the kind of guy who enjoys towel-whipping bare asses in the locker room. And Neytiri, a Na’vi female who somehow resembled a ten-foot-tall Love Island contestant, played by Zoe Saldana.
Jake fades into the background as we take in the lush environment of Pandora. Which was perfectly fine, because who cares about a white boy everyman, when there was a visual feast before me? Every type of flora, every animal, and every new landscape has its own function and unique movement. We move seamlessly between humans interacting with their dreary military base to completely CGI’d aliens flying around glimmering blue terrain. If Cameron wanted to take us to a genuinely otherworldly place, he certainly accomplished it. Fans of the film have even coined a term for the feeling of sadness they experience from leaving the beautiful immersive world of Pandora: Post-Avatar Depression.
Avatar reminded me of what's so amazing about going to the movies: pure escapism. Even after almost three hours of living in Pandora, it barely felt like enough. To be honest, I had to pee for the last thirty minutes of the movie, but every time I thought I could slip away to the restroom, shit went down. Oh, the military just bombed Hometree and killed the Clan Chief of the Na’vi? Maybe I could run to the bathroom. Nope! Now Grace has been shot and might die. I watched all the way until after the credits, where there was a special teaser for The Way of Water.
The film wrapped around midnight. As I filed out with the rest of the crowd, I found myself chatting with the Avatar super fan who sat next to me in the theater. Pierre Osias, a Brooklynite, saw Avatar when it first released in theaters. “I love how we can see human history through this lens, Osias told me. "I became a fan the first time viewing it; it’s a game changer." He revealed that he’d just returned to Brooklyn from Fort Drum, a U.S. military reservation in New York.
“We understand the history of America and European imperialism,” he said. “It’s good to be aware of the past and those dichotomies, so we can be more informed in terms of our present circumstance. The movie is teaching us about that. The themes hold up.” This was especially interesting to hear, given accusations that Avatar is anti-military at the time. So, for Osias—a viewer with military experience who had watched Avatar many times throughout the past decade—the themes of environmentalism and colonization are ones that still feel vital and relevant to him (as well as myself), even watching a decade later.
OK, so I totally sipped the Avatar Kool-Aid. I'm counting down the days until The Way of Water's premiere. But one question kept gnawing at me: where was the alien hair sex? I’d heard so much about the funky alien hokey-pokey, and yet the sex scene I watched was very underwhelming. After some Googling, I learned that the hair sex scene had only been available in the extended cut that was included in DVD versions of the film. So all this talk about how Avatar having no lasting cultural impact, yet everyone was secretly at home watching Na’vi hair sex? C'mon, people. I know I'll see you at The Way of Water.
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