The Shuffle: Cinema's last hope (for 2022)

I wrote: “One would think if Cameron weren’t in the mystical world of ‘Avatar,’ he could be giving us the next ‘Terminator’ or ‘True Lies.’ Heck, we’d at least take a movie on par with ‘The Abyss.’”

The truth is that the stuff Cameron has had a marginal hand in, like the Robert Rodriguez-directed “Alita: Battle Angel” and the endless “Terminator” flops, have not been good. After a dismal box office year, cinema kind of needs a new “Avatar” like the sequel “Avatar: The Way of Water,” being released this week.

I still stand by most of what I said in my 2017 column. I think the first “Avatar” is a dazzling spectacle with incredible use of 3-D and beautiful visuals. It’s also chock full of stock characters and some of the worst dialogue Cameron has ever written.

In more than a decade, I have softened my criticism of it. Part of it is because, in a world where most of the cinematic hits are Marvel movies, it was an original idea (No matter what people say about it taking parts of “Dances With Wolves” and “Ferngully: The Last Rainforest” mashing them up.)

It’s wild that this became the highest-grossing movie at one point. It’s pro-nature and rails against colonialism and the military-industrial complex.

The other part is James Cameron is an unhinged maniac who truly believes in this project. Unlike most blockbusters, he has the kind of clout to make a movie like “Avatar: The Way of Water” with no studio notes or interference. He is, after all, the guy that walked into the 20th Century Fox board room pitching a sequel to “Alien” by writing “Alien$” on a whiteboard. He’s also the guy who’s so ocean-obsessed that he became the first person to make a solo expedition to the bottom of the Mariana Trench — and that was in his late 50s.

Even though I don’t have the highest hopes that Cameron’s weakness for cliche-filled dialogue and rote character work will improve four decades into his career, “Avatar: The Way of Water” is something I’ve been anticipating.

As a fan of the cinematic experience, I also hope this will keep people coming back like a “Top Gun: Maverick” or “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” so 2023 will start on a good foot for movie exhibitors.

If you told me five years ago that I would be excited about returning to Pandora, I would have called you crazy. Now, I’m totally down for another Na’vi adventure. Funny how that works.