There’s a certain beauty to how much technical wizardry James Cameron inserts into details that don’t really matter that much. The Marines in “Avatar: The Way of Water” possess machinery and weaponry that are the stuff of sci-fi wet dreams, yet here they’re just part of the scenery. That’s what gets Cameron excited: the ability to show the audience something they’ve never seen before, while treating it as if it’s no big deal.
If only he paid that level of attention to his screenwriting. Case in point: early in the film, a commanding officer tells his men, “You’re not in Kansas anymore.” It’s 2022, and Cameron is putting 83-year-old pop culture references in his scripts. Jesus.
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