Avatar: The Way of Water

Movie Review: In James Cameron's 'Avatar: The Way of Water,' Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) flee with their families to a distant ...

He channels his (and our) inchoate rage at the devastation of the natural world, and he delivers a fantasy of revenge — albeit one set on a strange shore in a distant galaxy, one that just happens to look like a heightened, trippy version of our own. Meanwhile, Jake’s military training still remains, and he runs his family like a hard-ass officer, using terms like fall in and dismissed when talking to his children, all the while expecting to be called “sir.” (When he grounds one of his sons, he literally grounds him: “No more flying for a month.”) Neytiri chastises Jake for being too hard on his boys. One of the (valid) knocks against the first Avatar is that the characters feel like cutouts, there largely to serve as vessels for exploring the fantastical setting. As a result, he spends a decidedly blockbuster-unfriendly amount of time establishing Jake’s family’s dynamics, the parents’ hopes and fears and the kids’ restlessness. If the first Avatar is remarkable because it shows us wondrous lands nothing like our own, The Way of Water is remarkable because it shows us that this world is, in fact, very much like our own. It’s hard not to lose oneself amid the gentle, flowing cadences of this exquisitely created undersea universe, where the water enveloping the characters gradually becomes a metaphor for the interconnectedness of all living beings. So now the Na’vi-hating psycho from the first movie is back as a psycho Na’vi, and he has a personal vendetta against Jake and his family. Although they’re roundly mocked for their incompetence in the ways of the sea, Jake’s kids make honest attempts to bond with the mostly uncooperative Metkayina and their whalelike compatriots, the tulkun. (“Yeah, colonel, get some!” his men yell in triumph when Quaritch finally manages to tame a banshee, one of the flying lizardlike creatures the Na’vi use to get around.) Just to make sure we get the point, Cameron cuts between Sully’s and Quaritch’s respective efforts to adapt. After a new round of sky people arrives, incinerating everything in their path, Jake comes to realize he’s being specifically targeted and flees with his family across the oceans of Pandora to Awa’atlu, a village of the Metkayina, a turquoise-colored reef people who regard the newcomers first with suspicion, then with contempt. Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), the cigar-chomping, leathery (human) villain of the first film, is also back, now as a Na’vi avatar apparently created before the first film’s climactic attack just in case Quaritch Version 1.0 didn’t survive. He has the authenticity and know-how to sell all that fake movie science and testosterone-fueled dialogue (not to mention the perversity and skill to pull off creatively violent set pieces), but he uses them toward explicitly emotional (read: family-friendly) ends.

Thirteen years in the making, James Cameron's insipid, overlong followup to his sci-fi record-breaker is a very expensive beached whale.

Frankly, there isn’t a single interesting visual image and the whole thing has the non-briny smell of a MacBook Pro. The submarine world of this film is, in its way, its chief character and its whole point. Now, after 13 years of unimaginably expensive pixel-crunching, the aquatic followup has arrived, with a third and a fourth on the way.

James Cameron takes us back to Pandora in Avatar: The Way of Water, the epic sequel to the highest grossing film of all time. Read our review.

Even with its flaws, The Way of Water is an immersive, gorgeous cinematic journey through Pandora. Perhaps the problem is that the film is so earnest in its approach to its themes and plot, the dialogue comes across as pretentious. The Way of Water is mostly about the Sully kids; Neteyam, Lo’ak, Kiri and the young Tuk. Everything in The Way of Water looks incredibly realistic, perhaps too much so. The opening shot of the Hallelujah Mountains is mighty and the 3D really brings the environment alive. James Cameron takes us back to Pandora in Avatar: The Way of Water.

It doesn't matter if you've spent a second of your life in the past 13 years thinking about what's happening on Pandora or how Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and ...

Is that the magic of the movies? But Cameron knows his way around a thrilling sequel, and the water for that matter (and references his own greatest hits in this film, too). And though we know there are more sequels coming, and one already wrapped, this is not the kind of franchise where anyone is guaranteed to get a fake superhero death. Sometimes we’re just sitting in the water with Kiri who is also sitting in the water. When the filmmaker is purposeful with that time, as Cameron is and many others have been before him, it’s a uniquely rewarding experience. The film isn’t just visually compelling, either, it’s spiritually rich as well — a simple but penetrating story about family and the natural world that is galaxies better than the first.

James Cameron has done it again with "Avatar: The Way of Water," a state-of-the-art exercise that rekindles that sense of wonder and demands to be seen by ...

Ultimately, though, “The Way of Water” melts away any skepticism that it might be too late or too long in its return to Pandora. From the first striking 3D images that practically leap off the screen, “The Way of Water” basks in speed and movement, as if this was all an audition for the inevitable additions to Thirteen years later, braving much different theatrical tides, director [James Cameron](http://www.cnn.com/2022/12/12/entertainment/james-cameron-avatar-2-covid-19/index.html) has done it again with “Avatar: The Way of Water,” a state-of-the-art exercise that rekindles that sense of wonder and demands to be seen by anyone with lingering interest in watching movies in theaters. Fleeing, of course, will only delay the seemingly inevitable showdown, but it offers a chance to introduce a rich new culture as well as expose both parents and their progeny to the adjustment their new surroundings require. Out of concern for protecting his family, which Jake repeatedly describes as a father’s primary mission, he chooses to seek refuge with the aforementioned water clan, the Metkayina. [love of the ocean](https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/16/world/james-cameron-ocean-twilight-zone-c2e-spc-intl-scn/index.html) and its exploration, an impulse he’s been indulging since “Titanic” a quarter-century ago.

Ahead of Avatar: The Way Of Water's long-awaited theatrical release this weekend, many critics applauded the movie as a worthy sequel and a technical marvel ...

Avatar: The Way Of Water received two Golden Globes nominations Monday, for Best Motion Picture, Drama and Best Director. [The Atlantic](https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/12/avatar-2-way-of-water-movie-review-james-cameron/672448/) said the movie is a savior to hungry moviegoers and praised its “decadence,” writing, “for cinemas that have been starved of authentic spectacle, finally, here’s a gorgeous three-course meal of it,” and that the film’s emotional and visual aspects “blew me away.” [Variety](https://variety.com/2022/film/reviews/avatar-the-way-of-water-review-james-cameron-zoe-saldana-sam-worthington-1235451995/) disagreed slightly, and hailed the movie just for its technical feats, noting “there is almost zero dimensionality to the characters. Director James Cameron said the sequel needs to be “the third- or fourth-highest-grossing film in history” for it to break even. [The Hollywood Reporter](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/avatar-the-way-of-water-james-cameron-sequel-1235279758/) called The Way Of Water “hugely entertaining” and said it’s “a big movie, monumental even, that justifies its three hours-plus of screen time and its mammoth financial investment,” citing the film’s nine-figure production budget. That’s Avatar: The Way Of Water’s rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 81 reviews. The floatingly bland plot is like a children’s story without the humor; a YA story without the emotional wound; an action thriller without the hard edge of real excitement.”

In 2009, James Cameron's Avatar became the highest grossing film ever released. Thirteen years on, can his follow-up – starring Sam Worthington and Zoe ...

The Way of Water clocks in at 192 minutes, which is half an hour more than the first Avatar, but after the opening scenes, when the humans land on Pandora, the story is barely moved on at all. You won't find out here, because The Way of Water is now officially part of a Lord of the Rings-style continuing franchise, so it doesn't bother to stand up on its own. Yes, we may have had a 13-year wait for the first Avatar sequel, but apparently there are three more due to come out in 2024, 2026 and 2028. The stage is set for a rip-roaring adventure, a space opera sprinkled with debates on the ethics of colonialism and assimilation. If The Way of Water is anything to go by, that's not a prospect to relish, but let's hope Cameron uses those sequels to address one key point, at least. He is a stripy-blue Robin Hood - and he has a stripy-blue Sheriff of Nottingham to contend with. It's nice and scenic, of course, and all of Cameron's technological obsessions are on show. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), his mind now permanently installed in a blue alien Na'vi body, is the chief of his clan, and he and his wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) have four children. The invaders raze miles of jungle in a fiery apocalypse, much like the one at the start of Terminator 2. More importantly, it saps the narrative of the high-stakes urgency it had when he was leading his troops against the bad guys. One of Jake's sons bonds with a lonely whale. The villainous Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) was killed at the end of Avatar, but his memories were transferred to a Na'vi body, so now he is just as super-strong and super-tall as Sully.

Or at least that's what director James Cameron is banking on. The first sequel – yes, there are more on the way – to his 2009 blockbuster will reportedly have ...

“After 13 years of being a punchline,” he wrote, “‘going back to Pandora’ just became the best deal on Earth for the price of a movie ticket.” [a “breakthrough” for the way it utilised special effects](https://web.archive.org/web/20091213125500/http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F20091211%2FREVIEWS%2F912119998); it championed the use of 3D technology and was widely celebrated for [“extend[ing] the possibilities of what movies can do”. With Cameron working on the film since 2013 – and known to take “James Cameron’s soggy new digitised film has beached like a massive, pointless whale,” he wrote, before going on to label it a “trillion-dollar screensaver”. And with that much water on screen, you’ll definitely want to pee before you go in. That might seem like overkill (and it could certainly prove to be the case), but it’s also worth remembering what a big a deal the first film actually was. Both globally and here in Australia, Avatar is the highest-grossing film of all time. Although, since the global press embargo lifted on Wednesday morning, the film has received everything from five-star to two-star reviews. The story, in fact, could hardly be more basic.” While on his mission, however, Sully changes his allegiances and fights with the Na’vi to protect Pandora. We caught a sneak peek of the film to get you prepped. The blue people, for instance, are Na’vi: the native people of a moon called Pandora, 4.37 light years from Earth.