avatar two movie review

Avatar: The Way of Water

James Cameron wants you to believe. He wants you to believe that aliens are killing machines, humanity can defeat time-traveling cyborgs, and a film can transport you to a significant historical disaster. In many ways, the planet of Pandora in “ Avatar ” has become his most ambitious manner of sharing this belief in the power of cinema. Can you leave everything in your life behind and experience a film in a way that’s become increasingly difficult in an era of so much distraction? As technology has advanced, Cameron has pushed the limits of his power of belief even further, playing with 3D, High Frame Rate, and other toys that weren’t available when he started his career. But one of the many things that is so fascinating about “Avatar: The Way of Water” is how that belief manifests itself in themes he’s explored so often before. This wildly entertaining film isn’t a retread of “Avatar,” but a film in which fans can pick out thematic and even visual elements of “ Titanic ,” “ Aliens ,” “The Abyss,” and “The Terminator” films. It’s as if Cameron has moved to Pandora forever and brought everything he cares about. (He’s also clearly never leaving.) Cameron invites viewers into this fully realized world with so many striking images and phenomenally rendered action scenes that everything else fades away.

Maybe not right away. “Avatar: The Way of Water” struggles to find its footing at first, throwing viewers back into the world of Pandora in a narratively clunky way. One can tell that Cameron really cares most about the world-building mid-section of this film, which is one of his greatest accomplishments, so he rushes through some of the set-ups to get to the good stuff. Before then, we catch up with Jake Sully ( Sam Worthington ), a human who is now a full-time Na’vi and partners with Neytiri ( Zoe Saldana ), with whom he has started a family. They have two sons—Neteyam ( Jamie Flatters ) and Lo’ak ( Britain Dalton )—and a daughter named Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), and they are guardians of Kiri ( Sigourney Weaver ), the offspring of Weaver’s character from the first film.

Family bliss is fractured when the ‘sky people’ return, including an avatar Na’vi version of one Colonel Miles Quaritch ( Stephen Lang ), who has come to finish what he started, including vengeance on Jake for the death of his human form. He comes back with a group of former-human-now-Na’vi soldiers who are the film’s main antagonists, but not the only ones. “Avatar: The Way of Water” once again casts the military, planet-destroying humans of this universe as its truest villains, but the villains’ motives are sometimes a bit hazy. Around halfway through, I realized it’s not very clear why Quaritch is so intent on hunting Jake and his family, other than the plot needs it, and Lang is good at playing mad.

The bulk of “Avatar: The Way of Water” hinges on the same question Sarah Connor asks in the “Terminator” movies—fight or flight for family? Do you run and hide from the powerful enemy to try and stay safe or turn and fight the oppressive evil? At first, Jake takes the former option, leading them to another part of Pandora, where the film opens up via one of Cameron’s longtime obsessions: H2O. The aerial acrobatics of the first film are supplanted by underwater ones in a region run by Tonowari ( Cliff Curtis ), the leader of a clan called the Metkayina. Himself a family man—his wife is played by Kate Winslet —Tonowari is worried about the danger the new Na’vi visitors could bring but can’t turn them away. Again, Cameron plays with moral questions about responsibility in the face of a powerful evil, something that recurs in a group of commercial poachers from Earth. They dare to hunt sacred water animals in stunning sequences during which you have to remind yourself that none of what you’re watching is real.

The film’s midsection shifts its focus away from Sully/Quaritch to the region’s children as Jake’s boys learn the ways of the water clan. Finally, the world of “Avatar” feels like it’s expanding in ways the first film didn’t. Whereas that film was more focused on a single story, Cameron ties together multiple ones here in a far more ambitious and ultimately rewarding fashion. While some of the ideas and plot developments—like the connection of Kiri to Pandora or the arc of a new character named Spider ( Jack Champion )—are mostly table-setting for future films, the entire project is made richer by creating a larger canvas for its storytelling. While one could argue that there needs to be a stronger protagonist/antagonist line through a film that discards both Jake & Quaritch for long periods, I would counter that those terms are intentionally vague here. The protagonist is the entire family and even the planet on which they live, and the antagonist is everything trying to destroy the natural world and the beings that are so connected to it.

Viewers should be warned that Cameron’s ear for dialogue hasn’t improved—there are a few lines that will earn unintentional laughter—but there’s almost something charming about his approach to character, one that weds old-fashioned storytelling to breakthrough technology. Massive blockbusters often clutter their worlds with unnecessary mythologies or backstories, whereas Cameron does just enough to ensure this impossible world stays relatable. His deeper themes of environmentalism and colonization could be understandably too shallow for some viewers—and the way he co-opts elements of Indigenous culture could be considered problematic—and I wouldn’t argue against that. But if a family uses this as a starting point for conversations about those themes then it’s more of a net positive than most blockbusters that provide no food for thought.

There has been so much conversation about the cultural impact of “Avatar” recently, as superheroes dominated the last decade of pop culture in a way that allowed people to forget the Na’vi. Watching “Avatar: The Way of Water,” I was reminded of how impersonal the Hollywood machine has become over the last few decades and how often the blockbusters that truly make an impact on the form have displayed the personal touch of their creator. Think of how the biggest and best films of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg couldn’t have been made by anyone else. “Avatar: The Way of Water” is a James Cameron blockbuster, through and through. And I still believe in him.

Available only in theaters on December 16th.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

Sam Worthington as Jake Sully
Zoe Saldaña as Neytiri
Sigourney Weaver as Kiri
Stephen Lang as Colonel Miles Quaritch
Kate Winslet as Ronal
Cliff Curtis as Tonowari
Joel David Moore as Norm Spellman
CCH Pounder as Mo'at
Edie Falco as General Frances Ardmore
Brendan Cowell as Mick Scoresby
Jemaine Clement as Dr. Ian Garvin
Jamie Flatters as Neteyam
Britain Dalton as Lo'ak
Trinity Bliss as Tuktirey
Jack Champion as Javier 'Spider' Socorro
Bailey Bass as Tsireya
Filip Geljo as Aonung
Duane Evans Jr. as Rotxo
Giovanni Ribisi as Parker Selfridge
Dileep Rao as Dr. Max Patel

Writer (story by)

Amanda Silver
James Cameron
Josh Friedman
Shane Salerno
David Brenner
John Refoua
Stephen E. Rivkin

Cinematographer

Russell Carpenter
Simon Franglen

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Avatar 2 marks a dramatic step forward for director James Cameron

But The Way of Water is a step back for the endlessly distracting HFR presentation

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by Jordan Hoffman

There are two thoughts that you never want to cross your mind at a movie theater. One is “Did I just step in gum?” The other is “Is this supposed to look this way?”

Avatar: The Way of Water , James Cameron’s fundamentally enjoyable and exciting sequel to the 2009 blockbuster Avatar , is meant to represent a major technological advance in cinematic exhibition. Time will tell whether that’s the case. But the fact is that many viewers will have a vexing experience if they see the picture in what’s considered the optimum format.

The first press screenings of the long-delayed 192-minute opus, which reportedly cost somewhere between $250 million and $400 million to make, were held at theaters equipped to project the film in a high frame rate (HFR). You may have experienced this with Gemini Man , Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk , or Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy. It’s fair to say that HFR hasn’t really taken off, unlike the wave of 3D that temporarily changed the cinema landscape when Avatar was released. But director/explorer Cameron boasted in October that he’d found a “simple hack” that would work as a game-changer. In short, he used advanced technology to essentially toggle The Way of Water between 48 frames per second and the traditional 24.

On paper, this sounds like a nice compromise. But three-plus hours of the shifting dynamic, without the ability to just settle into one or the other, is actually worse than simply watching an entire HFR movie. To use an old expression, you can’t ride two horses with one behind. And this is all the more upsetting because so much of the film is truly splendid.

Avatar: The Way of Water tells a simple but engaging story in an imaginative, beautiful environment. It’s more than three hours long, and it unfortunately takes close to a full third of that time to get rolling. But once it does — once former human Marine turned Pandoran native Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), his Na’vi mate Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), and their brood of four half-Na’vi, half-Avatar children take refuge from the forest in a watery part of the world — the sense of wonder hits like a tidal wave.

The story setup is simple: Sky People (the rapacious, militarized humans of the Resources Development Administration) are back on Pandora after the events of Avatar , and this time, they want something even more unobtainable than the element unobtainium. No spoilers, but let’s say that extracting this stuff from Pandora isn’t just dangerous, it’s a crime against everything the Na’vi hold dear. Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), reborn in a cloned Na’vi Avatar body, is leading the charge to kill that turncoat/insurgent Jake Sully, and won’t let anything stand in his way. Oorah!

In the second hour, the action picks up. Jake and Neytiri’s family becomes a collective fish out of water, almost literally, moving in with an aquatic tribe of Na’vi and adapting to its aquatic lifestyle. This is where Cameron’s rich soak in his invented world is most fulfilling. There’s about an hour of just floatin’ around a reef. The Sully kids have scuffles with the local bullies; the oddball daughter learns how to plug her hair into sponges and reefs; the adorable runt puts on translucent floaty wings and zooms around. It goes on for a quite a while, and the display of visual creativity is breathtaking.

Hour three is when things get wild. Cameron, an action director with few equals, is in conversation with himself, upping the stakes and testing his own resume. There’s a thrilling, emotional chase, and then a daylight battle sequence that’s propulsive, energetic, and original. It involves a gargantuan sea beast coming in off the top rope in a way that left my theater cheering.

Cameron isn’t generally known as a comic director, but there’s always been a humorous element to his action sequences. Think of Jamie Lee Curtis caterwauling and mugging during the causeway rescue in True Lies , or Robert Patrick’s T-1000 rising up from behind a soda machine as killer checker-patterned goop in Terminator 2: Judgment Day . What, we weren’t supposed to laugh at that first reveal of Sigourney Weaver in the mech suit in Aliens ? But the battle in the last third of The Way of Water is different.

Maybe Cameron reacquainted himself with the work of Sam Raimi. Maybe he’s drinking from the same cup as S.S. Rajamouli , who made the magnificent, absolutely ludicrous Indian import RRR . In The Way of Water , Cameron leans all the way into manic mayhem, smash-cutting from one outrageous image to the next. The final act of this movie shows off a freeing attitude he’s never fully embraced before in his action — even action that’s strikingly similar, like the massive sinking ship sequence in Titanic . James Cameron has some expertise in this arena, but this time out, it feels like he’s having a lot more fun.

It’s unlikely that The Way of Water will be a financial watershed on the same level as 2009’s Avatar . The 3D tech was so new back then, and the world-building and the use of CGI environments were both so unprecedented. It was a once-in-a-lifetime move forward for film technology and immersive storytelling. Much like Disney’s recent sequel Disenchanted , The Way of Water is arriving in a cinematic environment that was completely reshaped by its predecessor — and there are no tricks here that move filmmaking forward in the same way.

The closest Cameron comes is that shifting HFR trick, which winds up being more of a distraction than a bonus. Think about the change you notice at the perimeter of the screen when watching a Christopher Nolan or Mission: Impossible movie in an IMAX theater. The material shot in the large IMAX format blows out to fill the whole frame, changing the aspect ratio. The back and forth of the masking at the top and bottom can be intrusive. Eventually, you get used to it, or you recognize it isn’t that big a deal. The change back and forth with HFR — an enormous screen toggling with a “motion smoothing” effect — is not something the eye and brain can get used to.

What’s more, this is Avatar. Most of the time, what’s in the frame is computer-generated imagery (a telepathic alien whale the size of an aircraft carrier, primed for vengeance!), so it already looks unusual. If the whole movie were in HFR, perhaps one would settle in, but jumping between the two — often from shot to shot in the same action sequence, or even within the same shot , as it is being projected in some cinemas — is simply an aesthetic experiment that fails.

This is not just being picky. The changes mean that the tempo of the action on screen looks either sped up or slowed down as the switches occur. Shots in higher frame rate couched between ones that are lower (and there are many) look like a computer game that gets stuck on a render, which then spits something out super fast. To put it an old-school way, it looks like The Benny Hill Show .

It’s just fascinating that Captain Technology, James Cameron, would want it this way. And it’s unfortunate. Because the entire message of the Avatar films is about environmentalism and preservation, about respecting the world as it is. It seems like Pandora’s creator would recognize that sometimes the best move is to leave well enough alone, instead of looking for ways to fix something that didn’t need fixing in the first place.

Avatar: The Way of Water will be released Dec. 16 in theaters.

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Review: An exercise in Na’vi gazing, ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ will cure your moviegoing blues

A CGI image of a blue man riding on the back of a winged creature over a body of water

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In “Avatar: The Way of Water,” the director James Cameron pulls you down so deep, and sets you so gently adrift, that at times you don’t feel like you’re watching a movie so much as floating in one. From time to time he brings you to the bottom of an alien sea, shot with stunning hyper-clarity in high-frame-rate 3D and teeming with all manner of surreally strange fish — all oddly shaped fins, decorative tentacles and other vestiges of an otherworldly, faintly screw-loose evolutionary timeline.

You can imagine the fun (and the headaches) that Cameron and his visual-effects wizards must have had designing this brilliant ocean-floor nirvana. You can also see an astronomical budget (reportedly north of $350 million) and an extraordinarily sophisticated digital toolkit at work, plus a flair for camera movement that, likely shaped by the director’s hours of deep-sea diving, achieves an exhilarating sense of buoyancy.

Much as you might long for Cameron to keep us down there — to give us, in effect, the most expensive and elaborate underwater hangout movie ever made — he can’t or won’t sustain all this dreamy Jacques-Cousteau-on-mushrooms wonderment for three-plus hours. He’s James Cameron, after all, and he has a stirringly old-fashioned story to tell, crap dialogue to dispense and, in time, a hell of an action movie to unleash, complete with fiery shipwrecks, deadly arrows and a whale-sized, tortoise-skinned creature known as a Tulkun. All in all, it’s marvelous to have him back (Cameron, that is, though the Tulkun is also welcome). He remains one of the few Hollywood visionaries who actually merits that much-abused term, and as such, he has more on his mind than just pummeling the audience into submission.

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Cameron wants to submerge you in another time and place, to seduce you into a state of pure, unforced astonishment. And he does, after some visual adjustment; the use of high frame rate (a sped-up 48 frames per second) tends to work better underwater than on dry land, where the overly frictionless, motion-smoothed look might put you briefly in mind of a Na’vi soap opera (“The Blue and the Beautiful,” surely). But then he can captivate you with something as lyrically simple — but actually, as painstakingly computer-generated — as a shot of his characters sitting beside the water at night, their faces and bodies reflecting the digital phosphorescence below. Any hack can make stuff blow up real good; Cameron makes stuff glow up real good.

In this long-running, long-gestating sequel to his 2009 juggernaut, “Avatar,” Cameron returns you to that distant moon called Pandora, though most of the action unfolds far from the first movie’s majestic floating mountains and verdant rainforests. We encountered that dazzling, soon-to-be-despoiled Eden through the eyes of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a square-jawed, soft-hearted ex-Marine sent by his ruthless corporate overlords to infiltrate the Na’vi, a powerful race of blue-skinned, yellow-eyed, cat-tailed humanoids who lived in astonishing oneness with all living things. Transplanted into his own genetically tailored Na’vi body, or avatar, Jake didn’t take long to switch allegiances and turn against humanity, having fallen hopelessly in love with Pandora’s beauty and also with a Na’vi warrior princess, Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña).

“Avatar” was a thrilling moviegoing experience and a pioneering showpiece for performance-capture technology, which allowed Cameron and his actors to endow their Na’vi characters with astonishingly detailed and lifelike gazes, gestures and physiognomies. The movie was also built on a consciously thin story, with thudding echoes of anti-imperialist westerns like “Dances With Wolves” and the fondly remembered eco-conscious animation “FernGully: The Last Rainforest.” But then, Cameron’s cutting-edge technophilia has always been married to, and complemented by, an unapologetic cornball classicism. And if it was easy to snicker at “Avatar’s” hippy-dippy sincerity, it was also easy to surrender to its multiplex transcendentalism, its world of synthetically crafted natural wonders. Here was the rare studio picture that seemed enlivened, rather than undermined, by its contradictions.

If anything, those contradictions hit you with even greater force in “Avatar: The Way of Water,” which fully and subtly immerses you in the Na’vi world from start to finish. The level of computer-generated artifice on display in every landscape and seascape is cumulatively staggering, in ways to which even the first movie, toggling insistently between Jake’s human and Na’vi experiences, didn’t aspire. Just as crucially, the stakes have risen, the emotions have deepened and the brand-extension imperatives that typically govern sequels are happily nowhere in evidence.

A blue, CGI woman holding a bow and arrow while interacting with a blue, CGI man in a fiery landscape

That might seem remarkable, considering that the “Avatar” series (at least three more movies are planned), like all properties of the former Fox Studios, now belongs to Disney, speaking of ruthless corporate overlords. But then, it’s no surprise that the director of “Aliens” and “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” two of the most indelible sequels in action-cinema history, knows a thing or two about intelligent, expansive franchise building. And as “The Abyss” and “Titanic” bore out, Cameron also knows a thing or two about water, which is where this latest sequel finds its sweet spot: Welcome to Pandora’s beach.

But first, there’s a truckload of exposition to get through. As in the first movie, Jake obliges with the kind of grunting film-noir-gumshoe voiceover that reminds you, in ways more endearing than irritating, that snappy exposition will never be one of Cameron’s strong suits. (He co-wrote the script with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver.) Several years after shedding his own avatar and being reborn as a full-blown Na’vi, Jake has mastered his post-human way of life. He and Neytiri are parents to four Na’vi children: two teenage sons, Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) and Lo’ak (Britain Dalton); an 8-year-old daughter, Tuk (Trinity Bliss), and an adopted teenage daughter of mysterious provenance named Kiri. She’s played by Sigourney Weaver, a casting choice that naturally ties her to Dr. Grace Augustine, Weaver’s deceased scientist from the first movie, initiating a mystery that will presumably be unraveled further down the franchise road.

Weaver’s casting also raises some odd, potentially discourse-sowing questions about Kiri’s chaste (for now) bond with a young human male and fellow foundling named Spider (Jack Champion), who likes to run, bare of chest and foot, with the Sully clan. But if their friendship makes for an optimistic portrait of interspecies harmony, Cameron doesn’t linger on it for long. Instead, he unleashes a grave threat that drives Jake and Neytiri from their Omaticayan jungle home and sends them fleeing to the ocean, where they seek refuge with a civilization of Na’vi reef dwellers known as the Metkayina.

It’s a shrewd narrative gambit that not only refreshes the scenery (and how!) but also forces Jake, Neytiri and their family to adapt to an entirely new way of life, cueing a second-act training regimen that allows Cameron to show off every square inch of his aquatic paradise. (His key collaborators include his longtime cinematographer, Russell Carpenter, and production designers Dylan Cole and Ben Procter.)

Led by the kind, welcoming Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and his less hospitable wife, Ronal (a glaring Kate Winslet), the Metkayina are a highly evolved clan of water dwellers, as underscored by their aquamarine skin (in contrast to the Omaticayans’ cerulean tones), seashell-and-fishnet jewelry and intricate tattoos, reminiscent of Maori body art. They also boast unusually thick, long tails built for underwater propulsion. For Jake, Neytiri and especially their children, learning to navigate the watery wilderness just outside their new beach-bum paradise will prove a difficult challenge. It’ll also earn them some mockery from the locals, especially Tonowari and Ronal’s own teenage children, in a story that sometimes plays like a teen surfing movie by way of “Swiss Family Robinson.”

Even coming from a filmmaker used to setting intimate relational sagas against large-scale tragedy, the tenderness and occasional sentimentality with which Cameron invests this drama of family conflict and survival feels unusually personal. It can also feel a bit thinly stretched at three hours, but even that seems more an act of generosity than indulgence on Cameron’s part; his attachment to this family is real and in time, so is yours. Audiences expecting propulsive non-stop action, rather than the director’s customary slow build, may be surprised to find themselves watching a leisurely saga of overprotective parents and rebellious teens, biracial/adoptive identity issues and casual xenophobia. They’ll also be treated to some lovely whalespeak courtesy of those mammoth Tulkuns, who turn out to be engaging conversationalists as well as formidable fighters.

If you’re impatient, sit tight: The action is still to come, much of it dispensed by a snarling reincarnation of the first movie’s ex-military villain, Col. Miles Quaritch, here reborn — and played once more by the ferocious Stephen Lang — as a Na’vi avatar implanted with a surviving packet of the colonel’s memories. Bigger, badder and bluer than before, Quaritch 2.0 isn’t looking for unobtainium, the first movie’s stupidly, wonderfully named mineral MacGuffin. All he really wants is revenge against Jake and his family. (It’s personal for him, too.) His Na’vi transformation leaves only a handful of human characters, some of them old friends (Joel David Moore, Dileep Rao), though most of them are puny, inconsequential villains who rain down destruction on the Metkayina and their delicate ecosystem, only to reap destruction in return. Like its predecessor, “Avatar: The Way of Water” is both an environmental cautionary tale and a madly effective opportunity to root against our own kind; by the time the third act kicks in, you’ll be screaming for human blood.

Cameron’s return trip to Pandora has been long in the making and nearly as long in the mocking. Over 13 years of ever-shifting industry buzz about possible sequels, sequels to sequels and countless changes of plan, more than a few have expressed exasperation with the director’s ever-outsized ambitions and even cast doubt on the first “Avatar’s” pop-cultural legacy. It’s hardly the first time Cameron has been dinged in advance for an Olympian folly, and if the pattern holds, this latest and most ambitious picture will stun most of his naysayers into silence. “Never underestimate James Cameron” has become something of a mantra of late when, in fact, the underestimation is crucial. It’s part of the director’s hook, his wind-up showmanship, his belief that moviegoing can be a religious and even redemptive experience. The more he suffers, the more he can thrill us, and the more fully the wonder of cinema can be reborn.

You don’t have to buy into that self-mythologizing to surrender, even if only intermittently, to the lovely, uneven, transporting sprawl of “Avatar: The Way of Water.” Certainly it’s hard not to feel moved and even heartened by the conviction of Cameron’s filmmaking, the unfeigned sincerity with which he directs a young Metkayina woman to solemnly intone, “The way of water has no beginning and no end.” That could be interpreted as a dig at the running time, but it also nicely articulates Cameron’s sense of visual continuity. As with the first “Avatar,” the immersive fluidity he achieves here feels like an organic outgrowth from his premise, a reminder that all life flows harmoniously together.

Where it will flow next is a mystery, and it’d be disingenuous of me to suggest I’m not eager to find out. Until then, Pandora, so long, and thanks for all the fish.

‘Avatar: The Way of Water’

In English and Na’vi dialogue with English subtitles Rated: PG-13, for sequences of strong violence and intense action, partial nudity and some strong language Running time: 3 hours, 10 minutes Playing: Starts Dec. 16 in general release

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‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ Review: Big Blue Marvel

James Cameron returns to Pandora, and to the ecological themes and visual bedazzlements of his 2009 blockbuster.

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By A.O. Scott

Way back in 2009, “Avatar” arrived on screens as a plausible and exciting vision of the movie future. Thirteen years later, “Avatar: The Way of Water” — the first of several long-awaited sequels directed by James Cameron — brings with it a ripple of nostalgia.

The throwback sensation may hit you even before the picture starts, as you unfold your 3-D glasses. When was the last time you put on a pair of those? Even the anticipation of seeing something genuinely new at the multiplex feels like an artifact of an earlier time, before streaming and the Marvel Universe took over.

The first “Avatar” fused Cameron’s faith in technological progress with his commitments to the primal pleasures of old-fashioned storytelling and the visceral delights of big-screen action. The 3-D effects and intricately rendered digital landscapes — the trees and flowers of the moon Pandora and the way creatures and machines swooped and barreled through them — felt like the beginning of something, the opening of a fresh horizon of imaginative possibility.

At the same time, the visual novelty was built on a sturdy foundation of familiar themes and genre tropes. “Avatar” was set on a fantastical world populated by soulful blue bipeds, but it wasn’t exactly (or only) science fiction. It was a revisionist western, an ecological fable, a post-Vietnam political allegory — a tale of romance, valor and revenge with traces of Homer, James Fenimore Cooper and “Star Trek” in its DNA.

All of that is also true of “The Way of Water,” which picks up the story and carries it from Pandora’s forests to its reefs and wetlands — an environment that inspires some new and dazzling effects. Where “Avatar” found inspiration in lizard-birds, airborne spores and jungle flowers, the sequel revels in aquatic wonders, above all a kind of armored whale called the tulkun.

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Avatar: The Way of Water review: A whole blue world, bigger and bolder than the first

Thirteen years on, James Cameron takes Pandora under the sea in an astonishing, at times overwhelming sequel.

In The Terminator , Arnold Schwarzenegger's cyborg assassin is famously sent back from 2029 to rain death and cool Teutonic one-liners on the good people of 1984. For nearly four decades now, that film's creator, James Cameron , has also seemed like a man outside of time, an emissary from a near-future where movies look like something we've only imagined them to be: liquid metals, impossible planets, boats bigger than the Ritz. Avatar: The Way of Water (in theaters Friday) brings that same sense of dissociative wonder. What fantastical blue-people oceania is this? How did we get here? And why does it look so real ?

The answer to that first question, as several hundred million fans of the original 2009 Avatar already know, is a mythical place called Pandora. The next two land somewhere between vast technology, sweat equity, and God (and, at this New York press screening at least, a slightly smudgy pair of 3D glasses). The Way of Water is, indeed, spectacularly aquatic, though not quite in the way that the six-time Oscar winner's eerie deep-sea thriller The Abyss was, or even the vast, ruthless North Atlantic that swallowed Leonardo DiCaprio and 1,500 other doomed souls in his Titanic . This is circa-2022 James Cameron, which is to say he makes it seem a lot like 2032 — a world so immersive and indubitably awesome, in the most literal reading of that word (there will be awe, and more awe, and then some more) that it feels almost shockingly new.

It's also very much a Cameron movie in that the plot is, at root, blood simple: good, evil, the fate of the free world. Former Marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington ) has permanently shed his human form to become full Na'vi, the extreme ectomorphs with Smurf-colored skin whose peaceful pantheistic ways have long clashed with their would-be conquerors from Earth, the rampaging, resource-greedy "sky people." There's still an American military base there, led by the brusque, efficient General Frances Ardmore (a bemused Edie Falco , incongruous in a uniform). But the Na'vi largely run free, hunting and cavorting and swooping through the air on their dragon-bird steeds, singing the songs of the rainforest and raising little blue babies with swishy tails.

Jake and his Na'Vi princess, Neytiri ( Zoe Saldaña ), now have three offspring of their own, along with an adopted teenage daughter named Kiri ( Sigourney Weaver ), the child of the late Dr. Grace Augustine (whom Weaver plays once again in flashbacks), and an orphaned human boy called Spider (Jack Champion), a loinclothed Mowgli they treat more like a stray cat than a son. Jake is the stern patriarch, still a soldier to the bone, and Neytiri is the gentle nurturer; the children, beneath their extraterrestrial skin, are just happy, jostling kids. But when the DNA imprint of Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) is recovered by science after his fiery defeat in the first film and poured into the healthy body of an Avatar, the resurrected officer vows revenge: While Ardmore & Co. continue to efficiently strip-mine Pandora, he will settle for nothing less than his former protegé's dishonorable death.

And so Sully and his family are forced to flee, hiding out among the reef-people clan of Metkayina. The taciturn chieftan ( Fear the Walking Dead 's Cliff Curtis ) and his wary wife (congratulations if you can tell that's Kate Winslet ) are reluctant to let strangers into their world, especially when they come trailing danger and forest dirt behind them. Socially, most Metkayina are only as welcoming as they strictly need to be, and the Sully family soon finds that living in harmony with the sea also means a steep learning curve for land-bound Na'vi — new customs, new modes of transportation, new ways of breathing.

But that, of course, is where Cameron and his untold scores of studio minions get to shine: The world both above and below the waterline is a thing to behold, a sensory overload of sound and color so richly tactile that it feels psychedelically, almost spiritually sublime. The director, who penned the script with married screenwriting duo Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver ( Jurassic World , Mulan ), tends to operate in the grand, muscular mode of Greek myth (or if you're feeling less generous, the black-and-white clarity of comic books). The storytelling here is deliberately broad and the dialogue often tilts toward pure blockbuster camp. (Not every word out of the colonel's mouth is "Oorah," but it might as well be; Jake speaks fluent Hero Cliché, and the Na'vi boys say "bro" like they just escaped from Point Break .)

And yet the movie's overt themes of familial love and loss, its impassioned indictments of military colonialism and climate destruction, are like a meaty hand grabbing your collar; it works because they work it. The actors, performing in motion capture, do their best to project human-scale feelings on this sprawling, sensational canvas, to varying degrees of success. Saldaña's mother-warrior makes herself ferociously vulnerable, and Weaver somehow gets us to believe she's an outcast teen; Worthington often sounds like he's just doing his best to sound 10 percent less Australian. Even the non-verbal creatures — bioluminescent jellyfish as delicate as fairy wings; whales the size of aircraft carriers, with four eyes and flesh like an unshelled turtle's — have an uncanny anthropomorphic charm, stealing several moments from their speaking counterparts.

By the third hour, Cameron has shifted into battle mode, and the movie becomes a sort of rock opera, or a sea-salted Apocalypse Now ; the "Ride of the Valkyries" thunder rarely feels far behind. The scale of mortal combat in those moments is, one could say, titanic, though it turns out to be a more personal reckoning for Sully and his family too. The final scenes are calculated for maximum impact and not a little bit of emotional manipulation; at 192 minutes, the runtime is almost certainly too long. It's strange, maybe, or at least wildly uncritical, to say that none of that really matters in the end. The Way of Water has already created its own whole-cloth reality, a meticulous world-building as astonishing and enveloping as anything we've ever seen on screen — until that crown is passed, inevitably, in December 2024, the projected release date for Avatar 3 . Grade: A–

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‘avatar: the way of water’ review: james cameron’s mega-sequel delivers on action, emotion and thrilling 3-d visuals.

Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña return to Pandora with a Na’vi family to protect as the “Sky People” menace follows them to a bioluminescent ocean hideout.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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James Cameron knows his way around a sequel. With Aliens and Terminator 2: Judgment Day , he showed he could build on the strengths of franchise starters with brawny action, steadily ratcheted tension and jaw-dropping technological invention. He’s also a storyteller very much at home in H2O, harnessing both the majestic vastness of the oceans and the icy perils of the deep in Titanic and The Abyss .

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Avatar: The Way of Water Reviews

James Cameron’s long-awaited blockbuster sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, is a big, boisterous, beautiful return to Pandora.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 13, 2024

Avatar: The Way of Water, the long awaited sequel to Cameron’s Avatar - the highest grossing film of all time - was ultimately mesmerizing and a mind-blowing immersive visual experience taking audiences on a epic adventure unlike anything seen before.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Jul 8, 2024

Overall, Avatar: The Way of Water is a colossal disappointment on a story and character level, saved only by its stunning visuals (at least when they’re not too garish).

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Jul 7, 2024

The first Avatar was a spectacular display of technical prowess. It utilized Cameron’s brilliant populist instincts to capture the imagination of the planet. By comparison, The Way of Water feels like a pale imitation.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Jul 3, 2024

Did I think this movie would be made? No. Did I think it would crack my Top 10? Also no. But here we are.

Full Review | Feb 27, 2024

'Avatar: The Way of Water' pops with well-rendered images and vibrant colors. It's like you’re witnessing Cameron film a National Geographic documentary on an alien planet. It evokes all the senses.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Jan 9, 2024

James Cameron's Avatar sequel has stunning visuals that get elevated on a big IMAX screen. However, the plot is less than engaging, the dialogues are clunky, and you wish it was shorter.

Full Review | Oct 4, 2023

The preservation of our woods is the central topic of the first Avatar film and the topic of Avatar: The Way Of Water is ocean preservation. To summarize, don’t doubt James Cameron.

Full Review | Sep 26, 2023

The special effects are breathtaking...Like all sequels, the original was a bit better.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Aug 10, 2023

Technology used to make the film is so compelling and masterful that everything else is an afterthought.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Aug 9, 2023

Whatever may be wrong with it, Avatar: The Way of Water is pure, unabashed cinema, with some of the most glorious visuals ever put to screen and an endlessly absorbing soundtrack.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 6, 2023

The Way of Water is somehow even better than its already masterful antecedent.

Full Review | Aug 2, 2023

The Way of Water clearly sets itself apart from other blockbusters, building on 13 years of preparation to deliver a memorable cinema experience. A visually, technically breathtaking adventure, particularly in the truly stunning underwater sequences.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jul 25, 2023

The Way Of Water is not just one of the best sequels ever created… it’s a god damn masterpiece. Breathtaking, visually stunning, & epic in every single way. I’m truly speechless by what James Cameron has crafted

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

Would you like to go on venture number three in the world of Pandora? After the first one, I would have said, “no, thanks”, but now, bring it on.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Jul 25, 2023

As with the first film, it’s impossible to deny that audiences will be treated to a visual feast in The Way of Water, but those looking for a more character-driven movie will be left adrift in the open water.

Full Review | Jul 24, 2023

Unlike every CGI-heavy theme park ride, the fact that the spectacle and the action sequences never undermine the narrative or emotionally stirring moments is mind-boggling.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 23, 2023

We’re nowhere close to Cameron at his best, but I feel we’re approaching something worth experiencing.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Jun 20, 2023

We can accept a barebones revenger because it lets us reacquaint ourselves with Pandora. Cameron is easing us back in with a conflict we don't need to expend too much energy on so we can absorb everything else in the background.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | May 12, 2023

I’ll say this for James Cameron: At this point, he can slap his name on an old print of Plan 9 From Outer Space, re-release it as Avatar 3: The Way of Outer Space, and incessantly hype it until it crosses the billion-dollar mark and racks up the awards.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 18, 2023

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Movie review: 'avatar: the way of water'.

Bob Mondello

Filmmaker James Cameron's sequel to the biggest worldwide box office hit of all time, "Avatar: The Way of Water," has been in the works for more than a decade.

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“Avatar: The Way of Water,” Reviewed: An Island Fit for the King of the World

Fifteen years separated “The Godfather Part II” from “Part III,” and the years showed. The series’ director, Francis Ford Coppola , enriched the latter film with both the life experience (much of it painful) and the experience of his work on other, often daring and distinctive films with which he filled the intervening span of time. By contrast, James Cameron , who delivered the original “ Avatar ” in 2009, has delivered its sequel, “ Avatar: The Way of Water ,” thirteen years later, in which time he has directed no other feature films—and, though he doubtless has lived, the sole experience that the new movie suggests is a vacation on an island resort so remote that few outside visitors have found it. For all its sententious grandiosity and metaphorical politics, “The Way of Water” is a regimented and formalized excursion to an exclusive natural paradise that its select guests fight tooth and nail to keep for themselves. The movie’s bland aesthetics and banal emotions turn it into the Club Med of effects-driven extravaganzas.

The action begins about a decade after the end of the first installment: the American-born Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) has cast his lot with the extraterrestrial Na’vis, having kept his blue Na’vi form, taken up residence with them on the lush moon of Pandora, and married the Na’vi seer Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), with whom he has had several children. The couple’s foster son, Spider (Jack Champion), a full-blooded human, is the biological child of Jake’s archenemy, Colonel Miles Quaritch, who was killed in the earlier film. Now Miles has returned, sort of, in the form of a Na’vi whose mind is infused with the late colonel’s memories. (He’s still a colonel and still played by Stephen Lang.) Miles and his platoon of Na’vified humans launch a raid to capture Jake, who, with his family, fights back and gets away—all but Spider, whom Miles captures. The Sully clan flees the forests of Pandora and reaches a remote island, where most of the movie’s action takes place.

The island is the home of the Metkayina, the so-called reef people, who—befitting their nearly amphibian lives—have a greenish cast to contrast with Na’vi blue; they also have flipper-like arms and tails. They are an insular people, who have remained undisturbed by “sky people”—humans. The Metkayina queen, Ronal (Kate Winslet), is wary of the newcomers, fearing that the arrival of Na’vis seeking refuge from the marauders will make the islands a target, but the king, Tonowari (Cliff Curtis), welcomes the Sullys nonetheless. Unsurprisingly, the foreordained incursion takes place. An expedition of predatory human scientists arrive on a quest to harvest the precious bodily fluid—the sequel’s version of unobtainium—of giant sea creatures that are sacred to the Metkayina. The invading scientists join the colonel and his troops in the hunt for Jake, resulting in a colossal sequence that combines the two adversaries’ long-awaited hand-to-hand showdown with “ Titanic ”-style catastrophe.

The interstellar military conflict is the mainspring of the story, and a link in what is intended to be an ongoing series. (The next installment is scheduled for release in 2024.) But it’s the oceanic setting of the Metkayina that provides the sequel with its essence. Cameron’s display of the enticements and wonders of the Metkayina way of life is at once the dramatic and the moral center of the movie. The Sullys find welcoming refuge in the island community, but they also must undergo initiations, ones that are centered on the children and teen-agers of both the Sullys and the Metkayina ruling family. This comes complete with the macho posturing that’s inseparable from the cinematic land of Cameronia. Two boys, a Na’vi and a Metkayina, fight after one demands, “I need you to respect my sister”; afterward, Jake, getting a glimpse at his bruised and bloodied son, is delighted to learn that the other boy got the worst of it. Later, when, during combat, trouble befalls one of the Na’vi children, it’s Neytiri, not Jake, who loses control, and Jake who gives her the old locker-room pep talk about bucking up and keeping focus on the battle at hand. The film is filled with Jake’s mantras, one of which goes, “A father protects; it’s what gives him meaning.”

What a mother does, beside fighting under a father’s command, is still in doubt. Despite the martial exploits of Neytiri, a sharpshooter with a bow and arrow, and of Ronal, who goes into battle while very pregnant, the superficial badassery is merely a gestural feminism that does little to counteract the patriarchal order of the Sullys and their allies. Jake’s statement of paternal purpose is emblematic of the thudding dialogue; compared to this, the average Marvel film evokes an Algonquin Round Table of wit and vigor. But there’s more to the screenplay of “The Way of Water” than its dialogue; the script (by Cameron, Rick Jaffa, and Amanda Silver) is nonetheless constructed in an unusual way, and this is by far the most interesting thing about the movie. The screenplay builds the action anecdotally, with a variety of sidebars and digressions that don’t develop characters or evoke psychology but, rather, emphasize what the movie is selling as its strong point—its visual enticements and the technical innovations that make them possible.

The extended scenes of the Sullys getting acquainted with the life aquatic are largely decorative, to display the water-world that Cameron has devised, as when the young members of the family learn to ride the bird-fish that serve as the Metkayina’s mode of conveyance; when one of them dives to retrieve a shell from the deep; and when the Sullys’ adopted Na’vi daughter, Kiri (played, surprisingly, by Sigourney Weaver, both because she’s playing a teen-ager and because it’s a different role from the one she played in the 2009 film), discovers a passionate connection to the underwater realm, a function of her separate heritage. The watery light and its undulations are attractions in themselves, but the spotlight is on the flora and fauna with which Cameron populates the sea—most prominently, luminescent ones, such as anemone-like fish that light the way for deep-sea swimmers who have a spiritual connection to them, and tendril-like plants that grow from the seafloor and serve as a final resting place for deceased reef people.

Putting the movie’s design in the forefront does “The Way of Water” no favors. Cameron’s aesthetic vision is reminiscent, above all, of electric giftwares in a nineteen-eighties shopping mall, with their wavery seascapes expanded and detailed and dramatized, with the kitschy color schemes and glowing settings trading homey disposability for an overblown triumphalist grandeur. It was a big surprise to learn, after seeing the film, that its aquatic settings aren’t entirely C.G.I. conjurings—much of the film was shot underwater, for which the cast underwent rigorous training. (To prepare, Winslet held her breath for over seven minutes; to film, a deep-sea cameraman worked with a custom-made hundred-and-eighty-pound rig.) For all the difficulty and complexity of underwater filming, however, the movie is undistinguished by its cinematographic compositions, which merely record the action and dispense the design.

Yet Cameron’s frictionless, unchallenging aesthetic is more than decorative; it embodies a world view, and it’s one with the insubstantiality of the movie’s heroes, Na’vi and Metkayina alike. They, too, are works of design—and are similarly stylized to the point of uniform banality. Both are elongated like taffy to the slenderized proportions of Barbies and Kens, and they have all the diversity of shapes and sizes seen in swimsuit issues of generations past. The characters’ computer-imposed uniformity pushes the movie out of Uncanny Valley but into a more disturbing realm, one featuring an underlying, drone-like inner homogeneity. The near-absence of characters’ substance and inner lives isn’t a bug but a feature of both “Avatar” films, and, with the expanded array of characters in “The Way of Water,” that psychological uniformity is pushed into the foreground, along with the visual styles. On Cameron’s Edenic Pandora, neither the blues nor the greens have any culture but cult, religion, collective ritual. Though endowed with great skill in crafts, athletics, and martial arts, they don’t have anything to offer themselves or one another in the way of non-martial arts; they don’t print or record, sculpt or draw, and they have no audiovisual realm like the one of the movie itself. The main distinctions of character involve family affinity (as in Jake’s second mantra, “Sullys stick together”) and the dictates of biological inheritance (as in the differences imposed on Spider and Kiri by their different origins).

Cameron’s new island realm is a land without creativity, without personalized ideas, inspirations, imaginings, desires. His aesthetic of such unbroken unanimity is the apotheosis of throwaway commercialism, in which mystery and wonder are replaced by an infinitely reproducible formula, with visual pleasures microdosed. Cameron fetishizes this hermetic world without culture because, with his cast and crew under his command, he can create it with no extra knowledge, experience, or curiosity needed—no ideas or ideologies to puncture or pressure the bubble of sheer technical prowess or criticize his own self-satisfied and self-sufficient sensibility from within. He has crafted his own perfect cinematic permanent vacation, a world apart, from which, undisturbed by thoughts of the world at large, he can sell an exclusive trip to an island paradise where he’s the king. ♦

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Avatar: The Way of Water First Reactions: We Never Should Have Doubted James Cameron

Critics on social media say the long-awaited sequel is a visually astounding technical marvel (as expected), but also a complex, emotionally resonant story with breathtaking action..

TAGGED AS: First Reactions , movies

Here’s what critics on social media are saying about Avatar: The Way of Water :

How does it compare to the original?

Light years better than the first. – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

Considering how I found Avatar to be all style, no substance, I’m completely taken aback by how much Avatar: The Way of Water rules. – Ross Bonaime, Collider

Avatar: The Way of Water is better than its predecessor in that there’s more going on with the story and characters and its ASTOUNDING technological advancements. – Courtney Howard, Fresh Fiction

I like The Way of Water more than Avatar 2009, if for nothing else because it has less in-your-face white saviorism than the original. – Amon Warmann, Empire Magazine

About on par with the first. – Clayton Davis, Variety

(Photo by 20th Century Studios)

So we should we have trusted James Cameron from the beginning?

James Cameron truly doesn’t miss. – Germain Lussier, io9.com

Avatar: The Way of Water might be James Cameron’s sweetest, gentlest, most personal film. Possibly even his most emotional. It revisits all his greatest hits, but it’s always totally sincere. He is never leaving Pandora. He loves this family. By the end, I did, too. – Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture

James Cameron is that dying breed of filmmaker who can package the most accessible of human emotions & a beautifully coherent story inside a spectacular & innovative Hollywood package. – Tomris Laffly, AV Club

James Cameron now has not two but THREE of the best sequels ever made. – Kevin L. Lee, AwardsWatch

Yeah never bet against James Cameron. – Mike Ryan, Uproxx

How is the story?

As for the story, it’s A LOT of movie… a mighty effective exploration of community and family dynamics. – Perri Nemiroff, Collider

It is the story this time that’s the beating heart. It’s more personal, complicated, emotional. – Kevin L. Lee, AwardsWatch

Cameron really puts the focus on character this time–which does even more for building this world than VFX. – Ross Bonaime, Collider

It does suffer from a thin story and too many characters to juggle, yet James Cameron pulls it together for an extraordinary final act. – Ian Sandwell, Digital Spy

James Cameron’s dialogue still struggles but his storytelling soars as he emotionally invests us in the new characters and creatures. – Matt Neglia, Next Best Picture

It’s a better, more complex story than the first with solid emotion but the characters could grow a bit more. – Brandon Davis, ComicBook.com

And how are the visual effects?

Unsurprisingly, Avatar: The Way of Water is a visual masterpiece with rich use of 3D and breathtaking vistas. – Ian Sandwell, Digital Spy

Avatar: The Way of Water is one of the most visually stunning films I have seen. – Tori Brazier, Metro.co.uk

It is absolutely mind-boggling that none of this stuff exists. I can’t wrap my head around it… At some point you remember that it’s all VFX, and your brain collapses. – Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazin/Vulture

I’ve never seen anything like this from a technical, visual standpoint. It’s overwhelming. Maybe too overwhelming. Sometimes I’d miss plot points because I’m staring at a Pandora fish. – Mike Ryan, Uproxx

It’s so impressive on a technical level, it’s like almost offensive? – Kevin L. Lee, AwardsWatch

I had faith James Cameron would raise the bar w/ the effects but these visuals are mind-blowing. One stunning frame after the next. But the thing I dug most is how the technical feats always feel in service of character & world-building. – Perri Nemiroff, Collider

What about the action?

The action is pretty incredible (especially in the final act). – Amon Warmann, Empire Magazine

The action is breathtaking. – Kevin L. Lee, AwardsWatch

[It has] some of the most impressive sustained action scenes I’ve ever seen. – Germain Lussier, io9.com

Are there any standout performances?

The performances are incredible too, especially by all the kids. – Germain Lussier, io9.com

The kids are stars. – Clayton Davis, Variety

The newcomers are major standouts, particularly Britain Dalton as Lo’ak. – Perri Nemiroff, Collider

Credit to Sam Worthington for honing his acting skills over the past thirteen years. A world of difference here. – Rob Hunter, Film School Rejects

Is the film too long?

Avatar: The Way of Water , being more than 3 hours long, is both fulfilling and indulgent. – Brandon Davis, ComicBook.com

[It] earns every minute of its running time. – Tomris Laffly, AV Club

A lot of people have been asking me if Avatar: The Way of Water feels long, and oddly enough… not really? It’s a HUGE movie – not just visually, but in terms of all the storylines it’s juggling too – but there’s never a moment where I wasn’t wholly engaged. It’s hypnotic, honestly. – Zoë Rose Bryant, Next Best Picture

Do we need to see it in a theater?

Easily one of the best theatrical experiences in ages. – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

There’s no overstating how visually impressive Avatar: The Way of Water is in Dolby 3D. – Brandon Davis, ComicBook.com

What about the high frame rate?

This is the first movie I’ve ever seen use the high frame rate trick that I’ve actually liked. Yeah, leave it to James Cameron to crack that one. – Mike Ryan, Uproxx

The high frame rate was hit and miss for me. – Amon Warmann, Empire Magazine

Watching Avatar: The Way of Water reminds me of the first time I watched anything on an OLED television, but also double that. The frame rate is so high I wished I was. – John Negroni, InBetweenDrafts

Should we be excited for more Avatar sequels?

I can’t *wait* to see Avatar 3 . that’s basically all I wanted out of this and it delivered in a big way. – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

I don’t know if the world needs Avatar 3 , 4 , and 5 , but I’m glad we got Avatar 2 . – Tori Brazier, Metro.co.uk

Avatar: The Way of Water opens in theaters everywhere on December 16, 2022.

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'Avatar: The Way of Water' Is Breathtaking and Clunky All at the Same Time

Review: James Cameron's Avatar 2, in theaters now, is a gorgeous sci-fi blockbuster and an even better nature documentary.

Avatar: The Way of Water takes us back to Pandora.

"The way of water has no beginning," explains a doe-eyed blue alien, "and no end."

Given that the Avatar franchise began 13 years ago and has three more sequels in the works, that's the truth. Not to mention that the new movie, Avatar: The Way of Water, clocks in at a near-endless 3 hours and 12 minutes, which sure is a long time to wear 3D glasses.

But director James Cameron's epic sequel, in theaters now, has a lot to pack in: It's a decent sci-fi blockbuster, a visual effects master class and the best nature documentary you'll ever see.

Before Avatar 2 you can refresh your memory of the original 2009 Avatar on Disney Plus (or just catch up with our handy guide ). The first movie showed former marine Jake Sully ( Sam Worthington ) arriving on the lush green planet of Pandora to be plugged into a giant blue alien body (or avatar) that could walk among the giant blue aliens who live there. Instead of helping his human comrades strip-mine Pandora, however, he falls for the Na'vi and their oneness with the planet's beautiful but bitey plants and animals. Specifically, he falls in love with tribal princess Neytiri ( Zoe Saldana ). Fast-forward to the sequel, and the now married couple lead guerrilla raids against the greedy human capitalists, while raising a family of young Na'vi children and teenagers.

The new film unfolds from the viewpoint of these kids, each of whom struggles with their part-human/part-Na'vi background. When the troubled teens run into some new and distinctly unfriendly avatars, the Sully family jump on their flying lizards and wing their way across the sea to seek shelter with a new tribe of Na'vi who live in harmony with the ocean.

It's on new shores that Avatar soars. Some early scenes of aliens in combat gear scoping out the environment look exactly like a video game, but that feeling disappears as we spend time with families of Na'vi in and around the ocean. These scenes in the sea are just breathtakingly beautiful. In footage that would make David Attenborough proud (if you sent him off into space), lithe Na'vi dive in crystal clear water and frolic with coruscating sea creatures, dappled by shafts of sunlight.

Moments like this look incredible in 3D.

Even a moment as simple as a character dangling their feet in the water is teeming with layers of bioluminescent movement. In probably the most delightful use of 3D I can remember, fish and Na'vi dart out of the screen toward you before dancing away into the depths. You can almost reach out and splash your hand in the sparkling water. It's utterly hypnotic.

As you explore this beguiling underwater realm alongside the Na'vi, these CG characters become completely real and far more fleshed out than the real actors over on the human side of things. As in the first film, there's a divide between human actors in real sets and computer-generated aliens in impossible imagined environments, although it's a lot of fun when they meet in battle and the difference in their sizes means an arrow in the hand of a Na'vi becomes a giant spear impaling a puny human.

Humans tumble from exploding vehicles like action figures scattered across a sandbox, but the battles are more than empty spectacle because you've come to identify so much with the Na'vi's harmonious existence with the planet's ecosystem as they stand against the humans' brutal, greedy and pointless exploitation.

The biggest interaction between these two worlds is the growing relationship between a grizzled combat vet in a big blue avatar body and a human child raised on Pandora. They're stubborn enemies and yet have something in common, as they're each torn between both human and Na'vi worlds. The combat vet is played by Stephen Lang (the brutal soldier from the first movie) returning in blue CG form, and his villainous character has a far more interesting story than Jake and Neytiri do.

The Avatar sequel introduces sea-dwelling Na'vi.

The focus on the kids means the grown-up characters are left underdeveloped. For Jake and Neytiri, being guerrilla warriors and parents should be a deeply intriguing internal conflict. What if fighting for your children's future means you don't get to see that future – or worse, what if fighting for everybody else's children costs you your own kids?

You might end up thinking about these questions, but there's hardly any suggestion that either Jake or Neytiri are wrestling with such considerations. They seem to be constantly arguing, but not really about anything. The strain that their crusade places on their marriage and their love is at least as interesting as all the teen hormones flying around. But I couldn't tell you if they hold opposing viewpoints about any of the big questions you'd think they'd be grappling with.

Neytiri is particularly short-changed. She's a "strong female character" in that she can shoot a bow and arrow while somersaulting through an explosion, which is cool. But it isn't particularly clear what she thinks about anything. It's jarring that Jake, the newcomer to Na'vi society, not only becomes chief of the tribe but -- even when on the run -- continues to speak for her. The first movie was heavily criticized for its "white savior" tropes. And while Way of Water's heart seems to be in the right place, Jake is still continually the one telling the Na'vi how things are.

There are plenty of big fish moments.

The abundance of creativity in so many areas makes it particularly disappointing when the plot insists on wheeling out assorted hoary old cliches. Teen bullies taunting a troubled newcomer. A knife-to-the-throat hostage standoff. These are such clanging cliches that their inclusion must surely be deliberate, like a wink at the audience to reassure us so that we'll go along with the goofier stuff (subtitled whalesong, anyone?). Yes, scenes like this have a certain universal clarity, and younger viewers may be seeing them for the same time. But it seems baffling that such an otherwise imaginative film would recycle such well-worn tropes.

The first film was basically Dances With Wolves crossed with Cameron's Aliens . This time around, the director throws in more elements from his films The Abyss , Terminator 2 and Titanic . There's even a moment involving a fish and a bigger fish that was kinda cringe when George Lucas did it in The Phantom Menace 23 years ago.

Still, the parental anguish and the engaging journeys of the young characters give The Way of Water emotional heft. The sci-fi action is cathartic and exciting, the environmental message is irresistible, and the visuals are just incredible.

Even at over three hours -- and again, those 3D glasses can get uncomfortable -- it's hard to think of anything that could be cut. The section that wanders around underwater could probably do with a stern tightening, except it's probably the best part of the whole film.

3D glasses aside -- once it's begun, you might not want this movie to end.

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‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ Review: James Cameron’s Sequel Is What the Theatrical Experience Was Made for

David ehrlich.

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To paraphrase a woman once known as Rose DeWitt Bukater: “Outwardly, I’ve spent the last 13 years insisting that only a total moron would ever bet against ‘ Avatar ‘ mastermind James Cameron . Inside, I was screaming.”

Screaming at the idea that modern Hollywood’s most all-or-nothing visionary was going to waste the twilight of his career — and possibly the last gasp of The Movies themselves — on a series of sequels to his least compelling work. Screaming at the notion that the only person with the resources and cachet to create massive new film worlds from scratch had decided to semi-permanently entrench himself in one that I’d already seen and wasn’t particularly itching to revisit. Screaming at the far-fetched prospect that he’d be able to mine fresh pockets of either from a planet that he’d previously (and vividly) terraformed into the most basic of settler-adoption space fantasies.

“Aliens,” “Terminator 2,” and even the disavowed “Piranha” sequel prove that Cameron has always had a gift for building radical new sights atop pre-existing bedrock, but I was skeptical that another epic worthy of his ego could be constructed on the bones of such brittle colonization tropes, or that the Na’vi offered him the opportunities he needed to revolutionize movie-going yet again (for better or worse).

On the latter point, of course, Cameron knew that it did. Pandora was conceived as a giant playground for the technology that he wanted to bring to movie theaters — and as the weapon that would force them to go digital or die — and Cameron’s plan for it always extended beyond lithe blue cat people selling the masses on saving the rainforest. His heart belongs to the ocean, after all, and the ones on Pandora are virtually impossible to beat.

Cameron has always treated story as a direct extension of the spectacle required to bring it to life, but the anthropocenic relationship between narrative and technology was a bit uneven in the first “Avatar,” which obscured the old behind the veil of the new where his previous films had better allowed them to intertwine. An out-of-body theatrical experience that makes its predecessor feel like a glorified proof-of-concept, “ Avatar: The Way of Water ” is such a staggering improvement over the original because its spectacle doesn’t have to compensate for its story; in vintage Cameron fashion, the movie’s spectacle is what allows its story to be told so well.

The adventures of Jake Sully (of the Jarhead clan) are probably never going to escape their sub-“Lawrence of Arabia” underpinnings or achieve the kind of popcorn-flavored poignancy that inspired this critic to list “Titanic” as one of the 10 greatest films ever made, but I’ll say this much: When “Avatar” ended, I couldn’t imagine caring about its characters enough to sit through a sequel, let alone four of them. When “The Way of Water” finally ebbed out to sea after 192 spellbinding minutes — receding into darkness with the gentlest of cliffhangers at the end of a third act defined by some of the clearest and most sensationally character-driven action sequences this side of “True Lies” — I found myself genuinely moved by the plight of Jake’s tall blue family, and champing at the bit to see what happened to them next. Never doubted Big Jim for a minute!

Here is a silly movie that works so well because it uses dazzling new tools to satisfy our nostalgia for classic entertainment. Seeing “Avatar: The Way of Water” in 3D VFR at High Dynamic Range doesn’t feel like watching any other movie you’ve seen before. This thing is a categorically and phenomenologically different experience than everything else that’s ever played at your local multiplex, including the original “Avatar” — it’s as many light years removed from the year’s other great blockbusters (“Nope,” “RRR,” and “Top Gun: Maverick”) as the extrasolar moon of Pandora is from Earth.

To some degree, that’s because “The Way of Water” iterates and improves upon technology that’s been tried before. As you would expect from an “Avatar” sequel, the main cast largely consists of 10-foot-tall aliens who mind-meld with nature through the anemone-like tendrils that wiggle out of their braids, only this time the Na’vi look more realistic than most of the human actors you’ll find in other Hollywood fare, especially during the ultra-vivid close-ups that Cameron uses to lend this film an emotional depth that its predecessor lacked the time and technology to achieve.

Like all great sequels, “The Way of Water” retrospectively deepens the original, and while that may not be much of a challenge here, it’s one that Cameron meets all the same. Now that the table-setting is out of the way and paraplegic-marine-turned-alien-clan-leader Jake Sully ( Sam Worthington ) has been at home in his new world and body for more than a decade, Cameron is free to move beyond $250 million “Pocahontas” fanfic and get a little freaky with the formula.

Jake and his Na’vi huntress mate Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) have produced four recom/Na’vi hybrid children when the sequel begins, which is enough to suggest that all of the “Avatar” series’ latent horniness is probably a bit less latent when Disney audiences aren’t watching. In fairness, the couple’s least annoying child was adopted when the Avatar that Sigourney Weaver ’s Dr. Grace Augustine used during the first movie somehow became pregnant while floating inside its test tube coffin after the scientist’s death.

And while the father’s identity remains something of a mystery, he must have been a pretty cool guy/spirit god because inquisitive teenage Kiri — also played by Weaver in one of the most affecting turns that performance-capture has ever made possible — instantly becomes the series’ best character (the other Sully kids range from “cute” to “under-written middle child” to “oh no it’s basically the idiot son from ‘War of the Worlds’”).

An outcast in a story teeming with them, Kiri depends on a degree of nuance that didn’t seem possible of the Na’vi in the previous film, and the character transcends her “chosen one” mystique with a warmth and curiosity that sets her apart from the rest of the cast, even as her interspecies hybridity and search for belonging find her in good company. She’s the bridge between human and Na’vi, analog and digital, that “Avatar” sorely needed, and her centrality to the next chapter of Cameron’s overarching narrative bodes well for the future of this franchise.

The same can’t quite be said of Miles “Spider” Socorro (Jack Champion), a shredded human teenager who was born on Pandora before the events of the first film, and is so determined to be accepted by/as one of the Na’vi that he runs around in his skivvies with stripes of blue painted over his skin. He’s a Newt for a new generation, and his very old school Cameron-ian goofiness wouldn’t be so worrying if not for the fact that Spider is almost immediately revealed to be the late Col. Quaritch’s son.

Well late-ish, anyway, as the cigar-chomping Quaritch (Stephen Lang) is back in Na’vi form. Earth is uninhabitable, people need a new planet, and a tall blue clone of the genocidal colonist from the last movie is in charge of clearing out the hostiles from humanity’s new home. That nü-Quaritch isn’t human himself adds a curious dynamic to his mission — a wrinkle dramatized by a wonderful “Avatar” take on Hamlet’s “Alas poor Yorick” speech — as does the fact that his own child is fighting alongside the natives.

Whether Spider is a strong enough character to carry that kind of story weight remains to be seen, but the intention alone points the plot towards resonant notes of acceptance and belonging; notes that help “The Way of Water” pivot away from the colonialist overtones that its predecessor wasn’t prepared to handle, and instead towards broader questions about man’s destructive instinct for survival at all costs, in perpetuity, throughout the universe. Quaritch’s war against the Na’vi mirrors the one against his own nature, a war that Jake Sully finds worth fighting in the service of protecting the people he loves and the planet that sustains them.

With Quaritch determined to slaughter Jake’s entire clan in order to put his head on a pike, our hero makes the decision to leave the jungle and flee with his family to the distant atolls of Pandora. That’s where they seek refuge with the sea green Metkayina clan and try to adapt to the life aquatic as they wait for the inevitable third act showdown with Quaritch’s military goons (fingers crossed that Kate Winslet gets more to do in the third movie as the Metkayina’s chief matriarch).

It’s during the film’s leisurely middle stretch that Cameron pioneers the use of underwater performance-capture, which is the kind of thing that only sounds like a big tech bro wank until the moment you see it in action. If parts of the story’s first chapter suggest that audiences are in for a simple retread of a sci-fi adventure that everyone on our planet saw twice and pretends to have forgotten, any “been here, actually do remember this” déjà vu washes all the way off the minute the action finally plunges under the surface and submerges us in an oceanic world so clear and present that you might instinctively start holding your breath.

It’s the most rapturous, awe-inducing, only in theaters return to the cinema of attractions since Godard experimented with double exposure 3D in “Goodbye to Language,” whether swimming with schools of alien fish or introducing us to the four-eyed, 300-foot-long whale-like tulkun (who prove central to the plot and communicate in subtitled Papyrus), these scenes have more in common with VR or lucid dreaming than whatever rinky-dink CGI we’re forced to swallow with every new superhero movie, and Cameron lets us soak up every frame. If we can fall in love with this world and be compelled by the fight to save it, why can’t we do the same with our own?

Complicating the illusion in a way that alternately enhances “The Way of Water” and risks interrupting its flow is a variable frame rate that switches between 24 and 48fps from one shot to the next, as if God (or Eywa) were speed-ramping life itself. There are times when the magic of it all fails to transcend the motion-smoothed memories that may continue to haunt my fellow survivors of “Gemini Man” and “The Hobbit,” and it can seem as if the screen has once again been set to soap opera mode.

There are other times — and your mileage on this will itself prove variable — when it can seem as if there isn’t a screen at all, and that the action is unfolding right in front of you. Either way, almost everything you see looks real (avatar-ized Stephen Lang is the only aspect that caused my brain any cognitive dissonance), or at least it all looks equally unreal , which is the same thing as far as your eyes are concerned.

The experience simply isn’t comparable to whatever else is playing at the local AMC, and yet the most impressive thing about “The Way of Water” might be how it captures the age-old spirit of the multiplex so well that it doesn’t even need to star Tom Cruise. This is a Movie with a capital “M,” its $400 million tech and ecological messaging all in service of a tulkun-sized adventure so transportive that I quickly stopped caring how Cameron made it. It’s certainly always obvious that no one else could have or did, as “The Way of Water” finds new charm in many of the director’s most groan-worthy fetishes and cliches: Stiff heroes, mouth-foaming villains, military jerk-offs, the emasculating insults they spew like bullets (“cupcake,” “buttercup,” other tasty morsels like that), scruffy engineers wearing stupid t-shirts, and enough boomer chutzpah to raise the Titanic are all present and accounted for in unapologetic fashion. Edie Falco walking around in a giant exoskeleton? That’s just a free bonus.

Using cutting-edge technology to recreate something that always seems on the brink of being lost forever, “The Way of Water” effectively marries the “what the hell am I eating?” experience of gastronomy with the full-bellied satisfaction of the first Big Mac you’ve had after a brutal fast. Frustratingly — if also most exciting of all — this feast of a movie left me with the feeling that Cameron is still holding back. Massive and monumental as “The Way of Water” is, there’s little doubt that you’re being served the most expensive appetizer of all time.

Be that as it may, this serving is still more than enough to make your mouth water. By the time the film arrives at its harrowing finale (a sublime reminder that “James Cameron + sinking ships” is one of the best combinations the movies have ever come up with), I couldn’t believe how involved I was by this larger than life cartoon epic about characters I was ready to leave for dead 13 years ago.

Does it matter if “The Way of Water” doesn’t elicit the same response when I watch it at home? Not really — I know that it won’t. Does it matter that Cameron is continuing to “save” the movies by rendering them almost unrecognizable from the rest of the medium? His latest sequel would suggest that even the most alien bodies can serve as proper vessels for the spirits we hold sacred. For now, the only thing that matters is that after 13 years of being a punchline, “going back to Pandora” just became the best deal on Earth for the price of a movie ticket.

20th Century Studios will release “Avatar: The Way of Water” in theaters on Friday, December 16.

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‘Avatar 2’ Stuns Press in Rave First Reactions: ‘Visual Masterpiece,‘ ‘Mind-Blowing,’ ’Never Doubt’ James Cameron

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After 13 years of anticipation, James Cameron ‘s “ Avatar: The Way of Water ” has finally been unveiled for members of the press following the movie’s world premiere in London. The first reactions to the film are overwhelmingly positive, with many journalists blown away once again by Cameron’s boundless imagination and pristine visual effects.

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“I had faith James Cameron would raise the bar with the effects but these visuals are mind-blowing,” Collider’s Peri Nemiroff added. “One stunning frame after the next.”

“Avatar: The Way of Water” once again centers on Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), now parents who are forced to protect their family from a new threat to Pandora. The cast also includes Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang and Kate Winslet.

Even before “The Way of Water” screened for press, it earned a rave first reaction from none other than Guillermo del Toro. The Oscar winner wrote on Twitter that the “Avatar” sequel is “a staggering achievement,” adding, “It’s a chock-full of majestic vistas and emotions at an epic, epic scale. A master at the peak of his power.”

While the film’s three-hour-and-10 minute runtime has been making headlines for weeks, it doesn’t appear anyone was too bothered by the length. Cameron himself has said he doesn’t care if viewers leave the theater to use the bathroom.

“Avatar: The Way of Water” opens in theaters nationwide Dec. 16 from Disney. Check out first reactions to the film below.

Someone texted me, “what’s the most visually impressive part of the movie?” And I responded, “The whole thing honestly.” — Mike Ryan (@mikeryan) December 6, 2022

Happy to say #AvatarTheWayOfWater is phenomenal! Bigger, better & more emotional than #Avatar , the film is visually breathtaking, visceral & incredibly engrossing. The story, the spectacle, the spirituality, the beauty – this is moviemaking & storytelling at its absolute finest. pic.twitter.com/RicnpDghrx — Erik Davis (@ErikDavis) December 6, 2022

James Cameron once again shows filmmakers how it’s done. I’ve said it a thousand times. Never doubt him. AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER is how you do epic blockbuster-ing. Emotional, visceral, and as big as movies get. @officialavatar — Josh Horowitz (@joshuahorowitz) December 6, 2022

Unsurprisingly, #AvatarTheWayOfWater is a visual masterpiece with rich use of 3D and breathtaking vistas. It does suffer from a thin story and too many characters to juggle, yet James Cameron pulls it together for an extraordinary final act full of emotion and thrilling action. pic.twitter.com/opr6CRyOwk — Ian Sandwell (@ian_sandwell) December 6, 2022

As for the story, it's A LOT of movie & I'm eager for a 2nd viewing to revisit some details, but on 1st watch, it's a mighty effective exploration of community & family dynamics. Returning cast is great, but the newcomers are major standouts, particularly Britain Dalton as Lo'ak. pic.twitter.com/OtZXNr6zMw — Perri Nemiroff (@PNemiroff) December 6, 2022

As an Avatar stan, I had high hopes for #AvatarTheWayofWater and for me it totally delivers. Sure it's a little long, but worth it for the gorgeous visuals, wonderful new characters. A total thrill. — Kara Warner (@karawarner) December 6, 2022

Have now seen #Avatar twice and am overwhelmed by both its technical mastery and unexpectedly intimate emotional scope. Yes the world is expanded and sequels teased but the characters are most important. Cameron is in top form, especially in final act. Good to have him back. 🐟 pic.twitter.com/PR9drN5Zph — Drew Taylor (@DrewTailored) December 6, 2022

I saw you #AvatarTheWayOfWater – if you think you've seen #Avatar think again. Only repeat from the OG is that 'never experienced anything like it' awe. Better than 1st? Easily. The 3D water world & creatures are so surreal it is downright moving. There's a major Titanic homage. pic.twitter.com/EInKRDeumD — Nikki Novak (@NikkiNovak) December 6, 2022

Avatar: The Way of Water is a never-ending visual spectacle. It’s a better, more complex story than the first with solid emotion but the characters could grow a bit more. It’s definitely long, running on incredible visuals & techniques which are 3D’s best. #AvatarTheWayOfWater pic.twitter.com/ezySHunXOe — BD (@BrandonDavisBD) December 6, 2022

A staggering achievement- AVATAR TWOW is chokefull of majestic Vistas and emotions at an epic, epic scale. A master at thepeak of his powers… https://t.co/tG6I16JlhM — Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) November 24, 2022

Avatar: The Way of Water – Like remembering you can dream. To breathe, cry. To believe in hope again. What was once lost is found again. #InCameronWeTrust — Alex B. (@firstshowing) December 6, 2022

So, #AvatarTheWayOfWater : Liked it, didn't love it. The good news is that 3D is good again (yay!), and the action is pretty incredible (especially in the final act). But many of the storylines feel like they have to stop and start, and the high frame rate was hit & miss for me. pic.twitter.com/eY4G76R1AJ — Amon Warmann (@AmonWarmann) December 6, 2022

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User reviews

Avatar: The Way of Water

Jake Sully lives with his newfound family formed on the extrasolar moon Pandora. Once a familiar threat returns to finish what was previously started, Jake must work with Neytiri and the arm... Read all Jake Sully lives with his newfound family formed on the extrasolar moon Pandora. Once a familiar threat returns to finish what was previously started, Jake must work with Neytiri and the army of the Na'vi race to protect their home. Jake Sully lives with his newfound family formed on the extrasolar moon Pandora. Once a familiar threat returns to finish what was previously started, Jake must work with Neytiri and the army of the Na'vi race to protect their home.

James Cameron
Amanda Silver
Sam Worthington
Zoe Saldana
Sigourney Weaver
3.3K User reviews
388 Critic reviews
67 Metascore
75 wins & 150 nominations total

Top cast 70

(as Zoe Saldaña)

General Ardmore

All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Trivia According to James Cameron , Kate Winslet performed all of her underwater stunts herself.
Goofs The main characters leave their home village so that the bad guys coming after them will no longer target the village. But the bad guys don't know any of this, and no effort is made to tell them. This defeats the stated purpose of leaving.

Tsireya : [to Lo'ak] The way of water has no beginning and no end. Our hearts beat in the womb of the world. The sea is your home, before your birth and after your death. The sea gives and the sea takes. Water connects all things: life to death, darkness to light.

Crazy credits The first half of the end credits highlight Pandoran sea creatures.
Alternate versions Like its predecessor, which is present 1.78 : 1 aspect ratio, this film presents 1.85:1 aspect ratio for home video releases, although there can be no widescreen versions of this film as James Cameron intended to watch the full format.
Connections Featured in AniMat's Crazy Cartoon Cast: Watching the Weird Way of Water (2022)
Soundtracks Nothing Is Lost (You Give Me Strength) Performed by The Weeknd Lyrics and Melody by The Weeknd (as Abel "The Weekend" Tesfaye) Music by Simon Franglen and Swedish House Mafia Produced by Simon Franglen and Swedish House Mafia The Weeknd Performs Courtesy of XO/Republic Records

User reviews 3.3K

LonelyGhost
Dec 13, 2022

Women in Science Fiction

How long is Avatar: The Way of Water? Powered by Alexa
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December 16, 2022 (United States)
United States
Official Site
Avatar: El Camino Del Agua
Stone Street Studios, Wellington, New Zealand
20th Century Studios
TSG Entertainment
Lightstorm Entertainment
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$350,000,000 (estimated)
$684,075,767
$134,100,226
Dec 18, 2022
$2,320,250,281

Technical specs

Runtime 3 hours 12 minutes
Dolby Atmos
IMAX 6-Track
Dolby Surround 7.1
D-Cinema 96kHz Dolby Surround 7.1

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Why Avatar: The Way of Water's Reviews Are So Positive

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Transformers R-Rated Movie Chances Addressed By Longtime Franchise Producer

One obi-wan kenobi line set up the rise of skywalker's palpatine twist 36 years earlier, joey king's netflix ya movie continues star's dismal rotten tomatoes streak.

The first wave of reviews for Avatar: The Way of Water is in, and so far the movie is getting mostly positive reviews and is certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with an 82 percent score. With over 160 reviews submitted to Rotten Tomatoes so far, the movie's score is exactly the same as the original Avatar 's 82 percent score from 2009.

A sequel 13 years in the making after the original Avatar revolutionized 3D and visual effects and became the top-grossing movie of all time, James Cameron is looking to do it all again with Avatar: The Way of Water. As one of the most expensive movies of all time , with multiple sequels planned, Cameron has said Avatar 2 will need to set box office records just to break even, so strong reviews are an important first step to that performance.

Related: Can Avatar 2 Actually Earn Enough At The Box Office To Be Profitable?

Avatar: The Way of Water Reviews Praise Visuals and Improved Story

As should be expected, most of the reviews for Avatar: The Way of Water praise the visual effects, design, and world-building of Pandora and the Na'vi, but many also mention that the movie improves on the story and characters of the first film, which is commonly criticized for its script. Cameron is known for creating big theatrical experiences, and the positive reviews all agree the movie is thrilling on the big screen.

"The Way of Water is overlong and stretched thin on story, but the Avatar sequel is beautiful, with lush world-building and characters that add depth."

"Avatar: The Way of Water feels like a fresh start for this series, as Cameron address the weaknesses of the first film, improves the script and characters, while also creating one of the most extraordinary experiences one can have at the theaters."

RogerEbert.com

"This wildly entertaining film isn't a retread of Avatar, but a film in which fans can pick out thematic and even visual elements of Titanic, Aliens, The Abyss, and The Terminator films."

Hollywood Reporter

"Ultimately, it’s the sincerity of Cameron’s belief in this fantastical world he’s created that makes it memorable."

"Avatar: The Way of Water is a clear improvement on its predecessor and, though its story isn’t breaking new ground, its jaw-dropping visuals make this an irresistible return to Pandora."

Avatar: The Way of Water's Negative Reviews Criticize Weak Story (But Still Praise Visuals)

With an 83 percent score in Rotten Tomatoes, the vast majority of the reviews for Avatar: The Way of Water are Fresh, but the Avatar sequel still has some negative reviews. Ironically, most of the negative reviews still acknowledge the movie's impressive visuals ; however, they either disagree with the story improvement claims cited in positive reviews or don't think the script improvements are significant enough to earn a thumbs up. Overall, these criticisms are generally in-line with the criticisms for the first movie, which went on to earn more at the box office than any movie in history, but the real test will be Avatar: The Way of Water 's audience reception.

"The floatingly bland plot is like a children’s story without the humour; a YA story without the emotional wound; an action thriller without the hard edge of real excitement."

"The only part of me that was moved was my eyeballs."

"Like the original, it’s “Dances with Wolves” in outer space. Only dumber."

"Cameron loses track of his characters, snarls his story, squanders his star power, and then dizzies 3D audiences with so much whiz-bang that they might feel attacked in lieu of awed."

Overall, most reviews agree Avatar: The Way of Water is a visual spectacle even grander in scope than the original Avatar and many reviews say the story is also a big improvement. Of course, all reviews are subjective, but the vast majority of critics are praising the movie . The box office performance will be the only true test of whether or not Avatar: The way of Water can repeat the success of Cameron's other movies , but as it stands, James Cameron appears to have another big hit on his hands.

More: Avatar 2’s Rotten Tomatoes Score Highlights 3 Things About The Sequel

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Avatar: The Way of Water

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Every Time Aang Appeared in The Legend of Korra

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In the The Legend of Korra , the new Avatar is the Southern Water Tribe native Korra: the officual successor to Aang in the long-standing Avatar Cycle . While Aang is long-gone and Korra is a totally different character, Aang still has a presence in the sequel cartoon in other ways. Aang is no longer saving the world, but he can help Korra save it – and save Korra from her own greatest fears and weaknesses.

Avatar Aang's spirit appeared twice in Book One: Air when Korra needed his help the most, and briefly appeared one last time in Book Two: Spirits during a moment of crisis for the entire Avatar Cycle. These three appearances accomplished quite a few things for Korra's character development, from giving her hints about the story's darkest secrets to reminding her that she is never alone. Aang's flashbacks even served as a subtle preview for the struggles that Korra would overcome much later in Book Four: Balance.

Aang's First Appearance Provided Insight and Helped Korra Feel Less Isolated

The avatar is a team of people in one body (book one, episode 9: "out of the past").

The Legend of Korra: This Oscar-Winning Actor is One of the Best Parts of the Series

The Legend of Korra boasts excellent production values from top to bottom but one of the greatest highlights that takes the spotlight: J.K. Simmons.

When Book One: Air began, Korra had a variety of personal themes in play, in particular being alone versus having friends. This theme was reinforced by two facts: her semi-isolation in the Southern Water Tribe compound, and the fact that she never contacted any of the previous Avatars. Korra was painfully aware of both facts and was eager to change them in Republic City, which she did when the real fighting started. She formed her own team with Mako, Bolin, and Asami Sato, but when Tarrlok captured Korra, she was alone once again and held prisoner. This was when Korra made her most serious effort yet to contact Avatar Aang.

Korra saw a flashback where a 40-year-old Aang confronted a bloodbending crime lord named Yakon, with Yakon scheming to take over all of Republic City from the bottom up. Yakon gained the edge over Aang and Toph, only for Aang to catch up, capture him, and rid him of his bending for good. Aang's memory provided Korra with a key clue about Tarrlok, which later led to the truth about Amon. Aang gave Korra his memories to help her realize that councilman Tarrlok was one of Yakon's sons, explaining Tarrlok's abilities and motives alike. Korra hit a wall in her attempts to learn the truth about Amon and defeat him, so Aang's flashback came in handy in a big way.

Avatar Aang Appeared Once Again to Restore Korra's Bending

Korra recovered from her low point, a preview of book four's events (book one, episode 12: "endgame").

The Legend of Korra Ending, Explained

Unlike Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Legend of Korra's final episode didn't neatly conclude the story and left many open threads & unfinished arcs.

Aang's first flashbackw was all Korra needed to pursue the truth behind Tarrlok and Amon, which led to Amon's defeat. Korra saved the day, but she suffered a personal loss when Amon stole her bending abilities. Korra had learned airbending around this time, but she still felt like a total failure with three elements missing. She'd hit her lowest point yet, pushing everyone else away because they couldn't undestand or help her. When an Airbender reached out to her, Korra realized to her shock that it was not Tenzin, but his late father Aang who had arrived. Aang summoned all the previous Avatars to back him up,and speak some words of wisdom. When someone is at their lowest point, they're the most open to change. Korra learned a lesson about humility that made her worthy of Aang's next gift: restoring her missing elements.

It can be argued that Aang's intervention at the end of Book One: Air was a borderline deus ex machina. This marked the second time in the franchise when the Avatar faced a hopeless situation and needed someone else to bail them out of trouble, robbing them of a chance to grow or make hard decisions. Such was the case when Aang beat Fire Lord Ozai without killing him , and later spared Korra the trouble of either regaining her elements on her own or learning to make do with air alone. Aang's invervention was necessary for the plot's sake, , but it still felt like an easy last-minute save. Fortunately, Aang's wise words about being open to change helped balance things out, since there's nothing contrived about inspirational wisdom.

Aang's Final, Wordless Appearance Pushed Korra to Master a New Kind of Bending

Korra became a kaiju because aang wasn't there to help (book two, episode 13: "darkness falls").

The Role of Politics in The Legend of Korra, Explained

The Legend of Korra shifted the focus and honed in on the political nature of the story for a more mature audience.

Avatar Aang only appeared one more time in The Legend of Korra. Strangely enough, his final appearance almost served as a counterpoint to his first two. Previously, Aang supported Korra from beyond the grave, which is to be expected from any previous Avatar. Korra succeeded in Book One because she had Aang by her side, but in Book Two, Korra succeeded because Aang was not there. Korra had arrived in the Spirit World once again to confront her uncle Unalaq, only for Unalaq to fuse with Vaatu and destroy Korra's connection to all previous Avatars. Aang was wiped out first, followed by Roku, Kyoshi, and so on until Wan himself was erased from Korra's mind. This was the last time Korra ever saw Aang and the other Avatars.

Korra was devastated to see Aang and the other Avatars vanish before her eyes and was convinced that all was lost. Unavaatu stepped out of the Spirit World to wreak havoc in Republic City's harbor, while Korra felt powerless to stop him all on her own. Aang's departure wasn't a reason to give up – it was a reason to move on and grow even stronger in new ways. It may seem backwards for Aang to strengthen Korra by being there and then strengthen her by leaving, but that means Korra simply needed a nudge early on and always had what it took to complete her growth on her own.

Although Aang was gone, his son Tenzin was still ready to help and taught Korra how to use use energybending on herself in the Tree of Time. This became Korra's substitute for the Avatar State and her connection to all previous Avatars, wielding the power of her soul itself to defeat Vaatu as a kaiju-sized hero. Korra was forced to say goodbye to Aang too soon, but she at least grew from the few times they met. To her credit, Korra had what it took to become a full-fledged Avatar without Aang.

The Legend of Korra

Avatar Korra fights to keep Republic City safe from the evil forces of both the physical and spiritual worlds.

'Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom' Review: The Best and Worst of the DCEU

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The Big Picture

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom embraces the silliness of the original film, making it a charming and light-hearted take on the source material.
The buddy comedy dynamic between Momoa and Wilson is delightful, adding charm and energy to the film.
The film showcases the strengths and weaknesses of the DCEU, with fun and relatable character moments but poorly directed and muddled fight sequences.

While the film industry has become inundated with cinematic universes that studios hope will go until the end of time, it’s rare that we get to see one actually end. Sure, every once in a while, there’s a Dark Universe that ends before it even has the chance to begin , or a Fantastic Beasts , which just fizzles out of existence , but a cinematic universe rarely ends with us knowing that it’s concluding. But that’s not the case with the DC Extended Universe , which began with 2013’s Man of Steel and has sputtered along for the last decade—with the occasional bright spot along the way . With the announcement that James Gunn and Peter Safran would be restructuring DC Studios, beginning in 2025 (and with a few characters crossing over to this new vision ), the much-maligned and often exhausting DCEU would finally be coming to a close .

With that, the DCEU finds its ending with Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom , the 16th film in this universe (and the fourth DCEU film this year), and the sequel to the most financially successful film in this franchise, 2018’s Aquaman . In some ways, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is an anticlimactic conclusion to this world, a standalone story that clearly wasn’t filmed to wrap up an entire phase of this comic world series. But in regards to the larger DCEU, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is emblematic of what worked and didn’t work over the last decade of DC films, almost making it an unexpectedly decent place to say goodbye to this world.

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom

Arthur Curry, also known as Aquaman, embarks on an epic quest to a mysterious lost kingdom that could hold the key to saving Atlantis from a looming danger. Teaming up with allies old and new, he faces powerful adversaries and uncovers secrets long buried beneath the ocean's depths.

Taking place several years after the events of the first Aquaman , we find Arthur Curry ( Jason Momoa ) now as the king of Atlantis—a job he finds boring when he'd rather be making change via taking out illegal underwater cage fighting rings with his bare hands. Since Aquaman , Arthur is now married to Mera ( Amber Heard ), and the pair have had a baby, who also has the ability to speak to fish, like Arthur. However, Arthur has to protect Atlantis when he finds that David Kane/Black Manta ( Yahya Abdul-Mateen II ) has gained more power with the help of the Black Trident. To stop his old foe, Arthur teams up with his imprisoned brother, Orm ( Patrick Wilson ) and the two try to put their pasts behind them to save their city.

James Wan Goes All-In on Aquaman's Silliness

Director James Wan embraces the goofiness that made the original film one of the more charming , light-hearted takes on the source material. However, since most of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom doesn’t take place under the sea, Wan instead makes this an assemblage of B-movie tropes. For example, David Kane and his crew utilize ancient technology, which seems right out of a 50s sci-fi film, complete with underwater costuming that seems intentionally hilarious. As Arthur and Orm try to hunt down David and his team, they come to a land where giant insects have started to take over—thanks to the harmful energy the villains are burning to ruin the planet. This area is packed with gigantic butterflies, massive rats, and hungry bugs, which Arthur and Orm have to escape from, that can’t help but remind of the nuclear monster films of the 1950s like Them! or even the original King Kong .

Wan is no stranger to silliness in his films—this is the man who made cars fall from the sky in Furious 7 and created the bonkers horror of Malignant . Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, like the first film, is best when it wholeheartedly leans into the craziness that Wan is going for. We know that this is a goofy story and Wan seemingly does too. Because of that, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom can be fun when it allows the absurdity to take the reins. This is a movie where Jason Momoa is introduced riding a giant seahorse, and where Martin Short plays an underwater gangster fish. If anything, Lost Kingdom could use more of this energy.

'Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom' Is a Mismatched Buddy Comedy at Its Core

Patrick Wilson as Orm & Jason Momoa as Arthur Curry standing in an open forest in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom also excels when it’s essentially a buddy comedy between Momoa and Wilson. Their dynamic is charming, as in any given situation, Momoa plays the brawn, while Wilson is the brains. Wilson is fantastic as the straight man here, and he gives Momoa a place to focus his manic energy. The two are particularly delightful when thrown into a situation where they’re clearly over their heads, whether with the aforementioned giant bug land, with the Martin Short fish, or when Aquaman—along with the octopus-drummer from the first film—has to save Orm from a desert prison. Again, these moments seize the weirdness of this world and allow it to be the focus. Considering this world looks like a Windows 95-ass screensaver, complete with characters whose heads don’t look like they go on their bodies, Wan is smart to heighten the ludicrous nature of this underwater world.

But maybe most important is that writer David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick ( Orphan , The Conjuring 2 ) mostly keeps the story as small as he can. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is most interesting when it’s just Arthur and Orm goofing on each other and escaping peril. One thing the DCEU never quite understood was that these films weren’t terrible when the stakes were low, despite the penchant for always attempting to blow up the world at every turn. It’s far more exciting to watch Peacemaker and Rick Flag come to blows in The Suicide Squad or have Harley Quinn go on a breakfast sandwich-fueled adventure in Birds of Prey than it is to watch major cities get destroyed in Man of Steel and any number of other DCEU films. The DCEU almost always worked best on a smaller scale, and the moments where Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom play with the brother dynamic of Arthur and Orm can’t help but remind of that.

'Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom' Also Reminds of What the DCEU Does Poorly

And yet, as the last film in the DCEU, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom also, naturally, has to remind us of the universe’s flaws—namely, over-the-top, absurd fight sequences that are poorly directed, muddled, and lack the excitement they should have. Oddly, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is mostly a slog when it goes underwater, as Wan throws the viewer into colossal battles that feel like a necessary evil. Beyond the possibility of getting to see Nicole Kidman riding a robotic underwater creature, there’s no real joy in these moments. In the opening minutes of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom , Arthur tells a story to his child about a fight he was in, where he slams his son’s action figures at each other, and there may not be any better metaphor for DCEU’s action sequences than that.

It’s also in these fight sequences in the third act where Johnson-McGoldrick’s script goes from fairly straightforward to muddled with mythology, plot machinations, and too many villains. But in this third act, it becomes even more clear where the film's failures and successes are. While the underwater armies clash against each other, we get smaller moments between Arthur and Orm, and we’re reminded of just a few minutes prior, when this film wasn’t as convoluted and far more fun. Sixteen films in, it still feels like DC never understood what didn’t work in their films.

'Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom' Shows the Good and the Bad of the DCEU

Because of that, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is kind of the perfect note to end the DCEU with. It reminds us that this universe was always best when it focused on the silliness of these characters, the goofy nature of these superheroes, and embraced the wild worlds that they’re in. As we see with the Arthur and Orm scenes, these stories excel when they focus on these characters as humans, rather than as unstoppable gods. We might not be able to relate to Superman, but we can with Clark Kent, and that’s something the DCU never quite grasped. Similarly, the exasperating, jumbled fight scenes of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom also remind that this universe always struggled with what actually makes an action scene interesting. Throwing a bunch of action figures at each other isn’t something worth going to the theater for—even if Momoa looks like he’s having fun doing it.

With Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom , we get the best and worst of the DCEU, but also a reminder that there’s still hope for these characters, with a bit more focus, and a reminder of what works and what doesn’t with this world. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom isn’t the wet fart of an ending that it seemed like the DCEU might be going out on, but it also shows that a decade in, the DCEU never quite learned the lessons it needed to. The DCEU is dead, long live the DCU.

Rating: 5/10

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom comes to theaters in the U.S. on December 22. Click below for showtimes.

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Avatar: The Way of Water movie review (2022)
Cameron invites viewers into this fully realized world with so many striking images and phenomenally rendered action scenes that everything else fades away. Maybe not right away. "Avatar: The Way of Water" struggles to find its footing at first, throwing viewers back into the world of Pandora in a narratively clunky way.
Avatar: The Way of Water
Drew D Love it, but just a tick below the original. Rated 4/5 Stars • Rated 4 out of 5 stars 06/19/24 Full Review First name L The way of watered down storytelling. Rated 1.5/5 Stars • Rated 1 ...
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Avatar: The Way of Water review: A whole blue world, bigger and bolder than the first. Thirteen years on, James Cameron takes Pandora under the sea in an astonishing, at times overwhelming sequel.
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Avatar: The Way of Water is a thoughtful, sumptuous return to Pandora, one which fleshes out both the mythology established in the first film and the Sully family's place therein. It may not be ...
Avatar: The Way of Water First Reviews: A Magical, Visually Sublime
The first of Avatar's sequels is finally here, 13 years after the release of the record-breaking original.For those who've been anxiously looking forward to Avatar: The Way of Water and those who have been doubting its necessity, the good news is that the movie is worth the wait and another work of essential theatrical entertainment from James Cameron.
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Unsurprisingly, Avatar: The Way of Water is a visual masterpiece with rich use of 3D and breathtaking vistas. - Ian Sandwell, Digital Spy. Avatar: The Way of Water is one of the most visually stunning films I have seen. - Tori Brazier, Metro.co.uk. It is absolutely mind-boggling that none of this stuff exists. I can't wrap my head around ...
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Review: James Cameron's Avatar 2, in theaters now, is a gorgeous sci-fi blockbuster and an even better nature documentary. ... Not to mention that the new movie, Avatar: The Way of Water, clocks ...
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The experience simply isn't comparable to whatever else is playing at the local AMC, and yet the most impressive thing about "The Way of Water" might be how it captures the age-old spirit of ...
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It's truly a movie crossed with a virtual-reality theme-park ride. Another way to put it is that it's a live-action film that casts the spell of an animated fantasy. But though the faces of ...
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Avatar: The Way of Water
2022. PG-13. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Argentina. 3 h 12 m. Summary Set more than a decade after the events of the first film, Avatar: The Way of Water begins to tell the story of the Sully family (Jake, Neytiri, and their kids), the trouble that follows them, the lengths they go to keep each other safe, the battles they fight to stay ...
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Jake leads his family away from their people and to a new land as they try to escape the wrath of Quaritch and the constant threats of the "sky people.". As with the first Avatar, the look of ...
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Avatar: The Way of Water: Directed by James Cameron. With Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang. Jake Sully lives with his newfound family formed on the extrasolar moon Pandora. Once a familiar threat returns to finish what was previously started, Jake must work with Neytiri and the army of the Na'vi race to protect their home.
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The first wave of reviews for Avatar: The Way of Water is in, and so far the movie is getting mostly positive reviews and is certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with an 82 percent score. With over 160 reviews submitted to Rotten Tomatoes so far, the movie's score is exactly the same as the original Avatar's 82 percent score from 2009.. A sequel 13 years in the making after the original Avatar ...
Every Time Aang Shows Up in The Legend of Korra
In the The Legend of Korra, the new Avatar is the Southern Water Tribe native Korra: the officual successor to Aang in the long-standing Avatar Cycle.While Aang is long-gone and Korra is a totally different character, Aang still has a presence in the sequel cartoon in other ways. Aang is no longer saving the world, but he can help Korra save it - and save Korra from her own greatest fears ...
'Aquaman 2' Review: The Best and Worst of the DCEU
Movie Reviews. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023) Aquaman (2018) Your changes have been saved. Email is sent. Email has already been sent. close. Please verify your email address.

Avatar: The Way of Water

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Avatar: The Way of Water First Reactions: We Never Should Have Doubted James Cameron

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