Avatar: The Way of Water is a sublime experience

  Blender Dumbass
December 17, 2024

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I made myself review both Avatar movies in one day, which was something I had to do to see the progress, or lack thereof of James Cameron. And there is progress. A lot of it!

As I wrote in the review of the first film, the technology in 2009 was rather limited compared to what is possible to do today. Blender's Cycles Render which comes gratis with Blender is capable to do more impressive renders than those of Avatar 1, because it is a true path-tracer. The difference is, in 2009 they had to resort to faking a lot of the ways the light interacts with objects. For Avatar 2 they had the path-tracers, that would simulate the light instead. Resulting is an enormous jump in quality.

More than that, computers in those 10 years got so much more capable, storage became cheaper and Random Access Memory ( RAM ) became larger, enabling the artists to compute incredibly enormous scenes with incredible detail.

One very noticeable change is the increase in dynamic range. Avatar was very colorful and pretty to look at, but it lacked the harshness of the sun and the deepness of the shadows.




Here you can see the difference. The color pallet of the original Avatar was limited to this unnatural tint of blue, in the scene where Jake arrives, because trying to give the sun or sky a realistic value, would be to make everything so blown out, it would not even show up. In Avatar 2 they used more advanced color science allowing to render the shot in a much wider dynamic range. Which looks a lot more naturalistic.

This image doesn't really give it justice. I've seen the movie in the cinema in an awesome HDRI screening, and the dynamic range is wider than what a PNG supports. So just the quality of the color science alone improved in the order of magnitudes since the first film.

I touched briefly in my review of the first film on the criticism of the plot, which was being apparently not very original, and I drew similarities of it to something like Hamlet. I think James Cameron was very self aware that he bases the stories of these movies on something preexisting. There is even a sequence referencing Hamlet directly, where one character picks up a scull in a dramatic manner. And knowing that the movie will be accused at rehashing Free Willy James Cameron chose to end the movie with a direct homage to Free Willy in a form of a shot of a whale jumping over a sunset.

There is one more homage in this film, which a lot of people noticed. James Cameron reuses techniques he learned on Titanic. Specifically the tense atmosphere created by surrounding the characters with a rising water in a sinking ship, which Cameron wonderfully recreates with CGI in the climax of this film.

The every frame a painting rule Cameron used for the original film was slightly relaxed here, but only because he can now simply show something breathtaking without needing it to necessary have a ton of moving parts. In the original film every shot would have some particle simulation, or cloth sim, or hair blowing the wind or some other animated complexity, to keep the image constantly alive. Here he can point the camera on a character who is looking at sand and meditating. And it is equally breathtaking to look at.

Though it doesn't mean there aren't incredibly complex simulations or animations in the movie, quite the opposite. Only the water simulations alone are worth praising more than probably all of the simulations of the first film combined. But then, it seems like Cameron specifically challenged the animators with simulating very complex things: Their clothes aren't just made of fabric, but fabric with small cutouts and stuff hanging on various things. And all of this should move naturally; the water stuff requires sand stuff to work equally as good; and a lot of attention was paid to various hard to notice things. Like a character might be slightly bleeding, and you could see a cloud of red stuff happening around him, when he is in the water.

When I saw it in 3D I noticed that a lot of attention was paid to the transition between air and water and the refractive qualities of light interacting with both mediums. For example, when the camera is in a submersible vehicle looking into the water, you see an interesting 3D effect ( which is not visible in the 2D version of the film ) which simulates the way the refraction between those two surfaces would mess with our perception of depth.

Also skin doesn't look wet when there is water all around it. The wet look happens from the light reflecting off of the water, but underwater, the water is everywhere. So there is no such reflection. And I'm thinking how hard was it to make characters be half way in the water. Where the shaders should both be wet and dry depending on whether any specific point on the character is in or out of the water. Water that moves because it is simulated.

Seeing both films one after the other gave me an unusual connection to the characters prompting me to tear up towards the end. Which I thought was interesting. Even though the writing in this film is not as consistent as in the first. For example in the first Na'vi spoke their Na'vi language and humans spoke English. And some Na'vi knew English and some humans also knew Na'vi. And all of the scenes where a mix of both in a more or less realistic way. In the second film early on Cameron is trying to tell us that Jake knows Na'vi so well that it sounds for him like English, transitioning to English, when by the plot they apparently speak Na'vi. Which is fine. But then is other scenes they actually speak Na'vi. And it is kind of strange.

The film introduces a whole new cast of characters ( children of Jake and Neytiri from the first film ) one of whom is a 14 year old teenage girl played by Sigourney Weaver who is 70+ years old. She did her god damn best performance here it seems, because she had to channel her inner child to make it work. Still I think it is a strange choice, because she still sounds like Sigourney Weaver. It is hard to buy her being a teenager, when she speaks. Because she speaks in a very Sigourney Weaver voice.

Kate Winslet plays a very interesting character. She has this edge at thinking through situations in a very loud manner, making her very tension inducing. Because she might say something and the entire diplomacy situation will be ruined.

Though my favorite new character is probably Tuk played by Trinity Bliss. Tuk is so awesome, I want a whole 6 movies Avatar spinoff series ( 4 hour per each movie ) where every shot is about Tuk. And that would not be enough. In the climax where she tries to rescue everybody dragging Bailey Bass's character with her. Damn respect!

I don't think Jack Champion who played Spider did an excellent job. In a few scenes he is slightly overacting, or visibly trying to act without much nailing it. But for the most part he is alright. I like the concept of Spider. I like the name Jack Champion. It sounds awesome. I slightly cringe sometimes looking at him trying to emote. But to be honest, most of it is probably Cameron's fault. He gave Jack very little room to move around. And kept a closeup on him sometimes for too long. The ending scene where he decides to save a character is acted actually very well. It's just I think letting him move more could have made it better.

The best performance ( acting quality wise ) is definitely by Zoë Saldaña who plays Neytiri. She goes through such range here. It is insane. And it is even more insane that it is a computer generated character that she is acting. The performance capture tech is so good at this film, it is mind blowing. Seeing Neytiri at this state in the end of the film, where she lost all hope. Just oh my god!

Anyway. I think I should stop praising this film, because I could type for another 2 hours and will not end the damn review. So that is going to be it...

Happy Hacking!!!

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