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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.

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Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)

Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence and intense action, partial nudity and some strong language.

192 minutes

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

• James Cameron

Writer (story by)

• Amanda Silver
• Josh Friedman
• Shane Salerno

Cinematographer

• Russell Carpenter
• Stephen E. Rivkin
• David Brenner
• John Refoua
• Simon Franglen

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

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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.

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 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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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 2 Is History’s Most Costly Nature Documentary

The sequel’s drama may not be as compelling as its fictional marine wildlife, but wait till you get a load of these space whales..

In late 2009, when James Cameron’s record-breaking blockbuster Avatar was released, the relationship of the average movie viewer to digital technology was subtly but profoundly different than it would be 13 years later. Smartphones had existed for a few years, but they were nowhere near as ubiquitous nor as powerful in shaping everyday behavior as they have since become. (Like many people I knew, I bought my first one that year.) Social media, too, was a relatively new cultural force: 2009 was the year that Facebook’s user count first began to surpass that of MySpace, and also the year Twitter became a key organizing tool in the Iran uprising known as the “Green Revolution” (or, sometimes, the “Twitter revolution”). When the first Avatar came out, the notion of virtual reality still seemed cool and somehow philosophical, a Matrix -style upending of dull everyday reality, rather than the banal product it has become in the age of Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse, a joyless zone where, Zuck promises, one day we will get to go to work meetings in the guise of our bland cartoon selves, maybe even with legs .

Avatar: The Way of Water is the first of four projected Avatar sequels, and the first film of any kind Cameron has directed since the original came out. All that time he has been immersed in Pandora, the utopian planet he invented, not only planning and shooting the first two sequels at once but consulting on the creation of Avatar -related attractions and rides for Disney theme parks. In the nonfictional realm, Cameron also became a deep-sea explorer, using some of his massive profits from the first Avatar to construct a single-person submarine in which he became the first person to descend alone to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the earth’s ocean floor.

When it comes to water, in short, the director of Titanic and The Abyss has a well-established penchant for going hard, which is why the most satisfying stretches of his new 3-hour-plus epic about the imperiled Na’vi people are those that take place in and around the oceanic home of the Metkayina people, a Na’vi tribe that lives in close contact with the sea and has evolved to survive for long periods underwater. The design of the teal-green Metkayina characters is beautifully differentiated from the familiar giant-blue-cat look of the Omaticayas, the forest-dwelling tribe that was the focus of the first film, and there are some transporting sequences in which members of both tribes explore the marvels of Pandora marine life: sentient whale-like creatures called tulkun, shimmering schools of bioluminescent fish, and a wonderfully imagined pink stingray that, attached to the shoulders of a swimmer like fairy wings, enables the user to breathe underwater. Rendered in crisp 3D with details to discover in every corner of the frame, these sequences are thrilling to watch, even if—or maybe because—they bring the film’s mostly pedestrian story to a halt.

If this review, too, seems to have taken its time to get around the actual plot of Avatar: The Way of Water , that’s because the experience of viewing the movie often seems only tangentially connected to the story of Jake Sully (a motion-captured Sam Worthington), the human hero who at the end of the first film had his consciousness uploaded into a genetically engineered Na’vi body, and his Na’vi family. He and his wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) have three biological children: golden-boy eldest son Neteyam (Jamie Flatters), perpetual screwup Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), and adorable tween Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss). They also have an adopted teenage daughter, the daydream-prone Kiri (played, in a clever bit of age-blind casting, by 73-year-old Sigourney Weaver, who played the character’s mother in the first film). To round out the cute-kid ensemble there is Spider (Jack Champion), a human boy who was abandoned by the colonizing forces that left Pandora at the end of the first film and who has grown up as a kind of self-sufficient wild child.

This azure Brady Bunch has lived in peaceful harmony with their forest surroundings for what looks to be, from the children’s ages, around 15 years when Pandora is once again invaded by the marauding Earthlings the Na’vi call “Sky People.” The leader of the new colonizing forces, bent on extracting value from Pandora’s ecosystem and, most particularly, on tracking down and killing Jake Sully, is an upgraded version of the first movie’s villain. Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who was killed at the end of Avatar , has sneakily uploaded his own consciousness to some sort of futuristic hard drive and had it reimplanted in a genetically engineered Na’vi body. (All this is somewhat hastily clarified in a data dump as the movie begins, and you don’t need to grasp all the specifics in order to understand that big blue bad guy wants to kill big blue good guy and, if possible, his big blue family as well.)

To hide out from the murderous invaders, the Sullys trek across Pandora to the Metkayina’s watery kingdom, where they are at first greeted with mistrust by the tribal leader Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and his pregnant shaman wife Ronal (Kate Winslet) but are gradually accepted into the community and taught the eponymous “way of water,” including spiritual pilgrimages to a sacred underwater tree and psychic bonding with the hyper-intelligent tulkun. (One character informs us that these whale-like beasts have not only their own music and mathematics but their own philosophy, creating in this viewer at least the desire for a future spinoff set at a tulkun university.) The mid-film sequences that familiarize both the Sullys and the audience with the biodiversity of Pandoran marine life are gorgeous, imaginative, and placid. When the movie cuts back to the doings of the earthly bad guys, including Edie Falco as a no-nonsense commander in an Alien -style mech exoskeleton, it’s a jarring reminder that this dreamy utopian planet does indeed contain conflict beyond the bullying of teens daring each other to swim farther out than their parents allow.

In the final third of the film, the battle between the earthlings and the Na’vi takes over the story, with a series of exciting if not always logical action set pieces that includes a heart-pounding chase on a whaling vessel and an extended sinking-ship sequence that may bring to mind another movie about a certain doomed ocean liner. Neither dialogue nor character development are the strong points of this visually dazzling plunge, but you don’t need fine shadings of meaning to grasp the stakes of these scenes. Not unlike Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy—which, like The Way of Water , was filmed mainly in New Zealand with the help of the WETA visual-effects workshop— Cameron’s Avatar movies are grand-scale event pictures that are still somehow as simple as storytelling gets.

“The most dangerous thing about Pandora is that you may grow to love her too much,” Jake Sully tells us in voiceover near the film’s beginning, and even if not every viewer runs the risk of falling as far down the Mariana Trench of Na’vi lore as James Cameron has, The Way of Water is nothing if not a triumph of world-building. Fans of fantasy, speculative sci-fi, and YA romance are sure to be drawn in by the flying-crocodile-riding adventures of the squabbling teens who are for all practical purposes the movie’s main characters. A stickler for logic might question why, while their parents are heard speaking with a Na’vi accent, the next generation are all shown addressing one another in the frat-boy slang of American suburban teenagers, with lots of “bro,” “dude,” and “This is sick!” And I would be interested to read the thoughts of a critic of color, especially someone of indigenous origin, on the racialized traits of various Pandoran characters, including the Na’vi women’s cornrow braids and, in an unfortunate styling choice, the blond dreadlocks of the feral white boy Spider. Cameron’s loving gaze upon the world of his own creation is complicated by his exoticized idealization of what he clearly sees as the Na’vi’s spiritual superiority to humans and their role as preservers of their world’s ecological balance. His passion is infectious and his enthusiasm for environmental causes commendable, but the movie’s metaphysical and sociological aspirations sometimes come off as cringe-inducingly similar to those that might be expressed by a white lady running a healing-crystal shop in a seaside town.

At times—as with the intermittent high-frame-rate scenes that unexpectedly drop us into a hyperreal visual world that I for one found distracting—Cameron seems almost to have overspent, like a host laying out a football-field-length table with more food than his guests can even visually take in all at once, let alone eat. But the beauty of the world he creates, evoked in lush detail by cinematographer Russell Carpenter, is enough, most of the time, to make you forgive the hokiness of the screenplay by Cameron, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver. This 3-hour-and-10-minute movie cost something in the realm of $350 million, much of it poured into special effects. As Cameron has been boasting in press interviews, it will need to be one of the top-grossing movies of all time merely to earn its budget back. Given that this seems sure to be one of the few must-see-it-in-a-theater movie releases of the year, and that the tickets will be sold at a higher price point than those for your average 2D blockbuster, it seems like a safe bet that Avatar: The Way of Water will set another box-office record. What that will mean for the future of moviegoing is a lot less clear than the pristine oceans of Pandora, but if you want to get a peek at what might be coming next, you might as well dive in.

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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: The Way of Water (United States, 2022)

It’s finally here. After years of missed release dates related to postproduction issues, James Cameron’s oft-delayed sequel to 2009’s Avatar has finally arrived. Was it worth the 13-year wait? Unquestionably. It’s difficult to overstate how impressive and potentially game-changing this motion picture is. Nothing before has prepared audiences for the immersion offered by Avatar: The Way of Water when seen in optimal circumstances. The film’s straightforward narrative (which isn’t going to garner any writing nominations) plays a distant second fiddle to the amazing technical leap forward that this movie offers. If theatrical movies are going to survive, this is the future – the kind of experience that will get me off my sofa and into a well-upholstered theater seat. The Way of Water gave me three-plus hours like no other three-plus hours I have spent in a multiplex. By alternating fast-paced action sequences with slower, more contemplative stretches, Cameron calms the blood pressure before repeatedly elevating it. Those in search of a rich emotional experience or complex storyline won’t find either here, but those things have never been the director’s bread-and-butter. He offers enough of both to allow his vision and his team’s technical bravura to smooth out any pacing inconsistencies and take the viewer down a dizzying rabbit hole. Awesome.

The sequel starts between 15 and 20 years after the first Avatar ended. During the peaceful interval between movies, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) have been raising a family: eldest son Neteyam (Jamie Flatters), adopted daughter Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), younger son Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), and youngest daughter Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss). Also hanging around is Spider (Jack Champion), a human left behind (babies couldn’t be put into cryo-sleep for the journey home) who has “gone native.” Their idyllic lifestyle with the Forest Na’vi is shattered when a new group of Earthlings arrive in the skies of Pandora. Their objective this time isn’t stip-mining; it’s colonization. But, before they can tame (and terraform) the planet, they have to pacify the natives…by force. Led by General Ardmore (Edie Falco), the marines are given a “by any means necessary” mandate, which suits Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) just fine. A Na’vi avatar implanted with the memories of the original Quaritch, this soldier has the same personality and intends to avenge himself upon the killer of his predecessor: Jake Sully.

No matter how many words I could use, I’d never be able to adequately describe the leap forward that The Way of Water takes. It’s as close to Virtual Reality as can be obtained in a movie theater. The visual effects are impressive on their own – CGI used in new ways to flesh out the first-rate world building begun in Avatar . The action sequences are cleanly choreographed and expertly shot – there’s no confusion about what’s going on. Cameron does what he has always done in ratcheting up the tension because it’s never a certainty who’s going to live and who’s going to die. The motion capture is top notch. There are very few humans in this film, making The Way of Water more of a hybrid animated/live-action movie. But when it comes to the 3D…

A quick comparison of The Way of Water with the most recent MCU release (which also has numerous underwater scenes), Wakanda Forever , illustrates how much bolder Cameron is when it comes to world-building, character arcs, and narrative trajectory. Compared to this film, even the best recent superhero entries feel stale and rote. The Way of Water excites both in terms of its visual presentation and the way in which it has been fashioned. There’s an energy here that has been sadly absent from too many recent Hollywood blockbusters. For 2022, The Way of Water may not be the most intricately made or intellectually rigorous motion picture, but it exemplifies what “cinematic” means today.

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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
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• Sam Worthington
• Zoe Saldana
• Sigourney Weaver
• 3.3K User reviews
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• 75 wins & 150 nominations total

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• Trivia According to James Cameron , Kate Winslet performed all of her underwater stunts herself.
• Goofs During the fight when Jack and Neytiri rescued their children, they kill 4 soldiers from a party of 6. Yet at the extraction scene, all 6 soldiers are present.

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

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• Jan 28, 2023

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James Cameron has another hit on his hands according to Avatar: The Way of Water 's early reviews and their very positive nature. The filmmaker has spent more than 10 years developing the sequel to Avatar , and that passage of time created some doubt that the sequel would be worth the wait. The first trailers helped erase some of that doubt due to the impressive CGI displayed in Avatar 2 's footage. And while there has been much debate about if the sequel can possibly be a box office success (especially in comparison to the highest-grossing movie ever), questions about whether Avatar: The Way of Water 's story will match the visuals remained.

Following the film's world premiere and the first Avatar 2 reactions surfacing online, the review embargo has now lifted, resulting in some early Avatar: The Way of Water reviews being posted. Here is a SPOILER-FREE round up of what critics are saying about James Cameron's new movie:

Mae Adbulbaki, Screen Rant

Cameron, who co-wrote the script with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, returns to Pandora, offering viewers even more stunning visuals, a personal, more emotional story, and incredible underwater sequences that put every other film’s technical achievements to shame. 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.

Dan Bayer, Next Best Picture

The film represents a decade of behind-the-scenes work: innovations in visual effects technology, digital cinematography, and performance capture, in addition to untold millions of dollars in production costs. Every cent and every second spent on making this film can be seen onscreen. “The Way of Water” is the magic of movies made manifest, a three-hour-plus epic that brings us to a new world and makes it thrillingly tactile in ways that no other film has done before. In other words: James Cameron has done it again.

William Bibbiani, The Wrap

After some pacing issues in the first act and some odd story decisions in the second, the film’s breathtaking climax completely sneaks up on you. You might think the film has a lot more twists and turns to go, since there’s lot of running time left, but Cameron stages the finale of “Avatar: The Way of Water” like an incredible, ever-evolving action sequence where locations, dangers and imminent threats shift dramatically, sometimes on a dime. It’s like watching a tidal wave start miles in the distance as a tiny bump in the ocean. By the time it crests, whatever the film’s many other flaws may be, we are invested, and we are ultimately rewarded with a truly spectacular, awe-inspiring finale.

David Rooney, THR

In terms of narrative sophistication and even more so dialogue, this $350 million sequel is almost as basic as its predecessor, even feeble at times. But the expanded, bio-diverse world-building pulls you in, the visual spectacle keeps you mesmerized, the passion for environmental awareness is stirring and the warfare is as visceral and exciting as any multiplex audience could desire.

Nick De Semlyen, Empire

The result, Avatar: The Way Of Water, is so dazzling to behold that adjectives like “dazzling” seem too anaemic to apply. It’s a leap beyond even what he pulled off with the first film, a phantasmagorical, fully immersive waking dream of a movie in which something impossible is happening on-screen at almost every moment. It’s a lot to process. And a timely reminder of what cinema is capable of when it dares to dream big.

David Ehrlich, IndieWire

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.

Chris Evangelista, Slashfilm

"Avatar" is back in a big way with "Avatar: The Way of Water," Cameron's massive, overstuffed, overlong, exciting, eye-watering sci-fi adventure. It is a spectacle in every sense of the word; an imaginative, gorgeous, action-packed endeavor that thrills us while also having us occasionally checking our watches and wondering how much more is left. It is pure Cameron movie magic; a visual feast with some of the best blockbuster action you're likely to see. It's also a lopsided, meandering film — one starts to get the sense that for once, Cameron isn't all that interested in big action. Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of big action here — the final hour of the three-hour film is essentially one long action sequence. But with "The Way of Water," Cameron is more focused on the beauty and grandeur of Pandora, a place that doesn't even exist.

Leah Greenblatt, EW

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.

Germain Lussier, io9

Now, Avatar: The Way of Water finally arrives, and guess what? It delivers. While not quite on the same level as Aliens or T2 (at least on a single watch), The Way of Water is a sequel that expands and improves upon the original in almost every way. It’s an enthralling, exhilarating, emotional story of a family in peril, with the most advanced digital effects in the history of cinema. Is it a little bit overindulgent? Maybe too drawn out at times? Sure. But the scope, ambition, and heart of the film more than make up for any of its flaws.

Ross Bonaime, Collider

The Way of Water is one of the most breathtaking moviegoing experiences of 2022, a master learning from the mistakes of the previous film, and making a spectacle unlike we ever see at the movies anymore. Simply put, we should’ve never bet against Cameron.

Related: Avatar 2 Is Establishing A James Cameron Sequel Trend

What Avatar 2's Reviews Tell Us About The Movie

It is no surprise that the visuals of Avatar: The Way of Water is the talk of the film from this first wave of reviews. One of the reasons James Cameron took 13 years to make the sequel is that he was developing new technology to properly capture the water-heavy story. This was necessary as a key part of Avatar: The Way of Water 's story takes place with a clan of Na'vi who live underwater. It was only after Cameron was confident that technology would be able to make the water and VFX believably blend together. All reactions to the movie have left no doubt that Avatar 2 's CGI visuals will impress any viewer.

While there are some mixed results from Avatar: The Way of Water 's script and characters, it does sound like James Cameron sticks the landing ultimately with a thrilling third act. The film's marketing has teased portions of the action-packed finale by showing the Na'vi going to war with the RDA in a fiery water setting. Of course, how much investment audiences have in the characters' journeys at this point will play a significant role in whether the action-packed ending also delivers on an emotional level. That could depend not only on one's enjoyment of Avatar 2 's first two acts, but also how viewers feel about the original movie.

Furthermore, it is no surprise that Avatar: The Way of Water 's three-hour-plus runtime is one of the movie's biggest pitfalls. It sounds like Cameron takes his time reintroducing viewers to Pandora and the key conflict. The action-heavy ending might help audiences leave on a high note, but those already skeptical about the story demanding Avatar 2 's long runtime could be more turned off by the film's slow pacing early on. Ultimately, it is up to each individual to make their opinions on the movie regardless of what the Avatar: The Way of Water reviews say.

More: Avatar 2 Is Already Fixing 3 Big Problems From 2009

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Avatar: The Way of Water

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Watch Avatar: The Way of Water with a subscription on Disney+, Max, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

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Narratively, it might be fairly standard stuff -- but visually speaking, Avatar: The Way of Water is a stunningly immersive experience.

Avatar: The Way of Water 's story is predictable, but the visual effects are so spectacular that it hardly matters.

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Avatar: The Way of Water is a visual masterpiece let down by familiar story

We're finally back in Pandora.

13 years have passed since the release of Avatar and the sequel was affected by so many release-date changes that it started to feel like a myth. In the years since, Avatar and its planned sequel have become an easy target for mockery, but the first movie remains the biggest movie of all time.

One factor behind that movie's success was its groundbreaking visual effects and use of 3D, delivering a cinematic experience that few had seen before. Though 3D has largely receded in recent years, if anybody can bring it back, it's James Cameron , who again has pushed the boundaries of technology for the sequel.

But has it all been worth the 13-year wait for Avatar: The Way of Water ? It's certainly a visual masterpiece that's often beautiful to behold, but one that doesn't always have the substance to go with its considerable style.

As much as Avatar: The Way of Water is a sequel to Avatar , you might be better viewing it as the opening act of a new saga. It's the first of four planned sequels that, when viewed together, will tell one epic story about the Sully family – which has expanded significantly.

In the decade or so since the events of Avatar , Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri ( Zoe Saldaña ) have had three children: Neteyam (Jamie Flatters), Lo'ak (Britain Dalton) and Tuktirey (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss). They've also adopted teenager Kiri ( Sigourney Weaver ) and their children hang out with Spider (Jack Champion), a human left on Pandora.

Their new life is interrupted by the return of the RDA to Pandora, but for a while, the Omatikaya (their tribe of Na'vi) successfully fight back, thanks to Jake's military expertise. When it becomes clear that Jake himself is the target, he makes the tough decision to step down as leader and seek refuge elsewhere on Pandora.

It's a breathless first act that doesn't make allowance for anybody who doesn't have Avatar fresh in their minds. Cameron appears to be setting up a chase movie as Colonel Miles Quaritch ( Stephen Lang ), now a recombinant (a Na'vi avatar with the memories of a human), relentlessly hunts the man he blames for his death.

But Cameron isn't interested in delivering the movie you think you're going to get, which ultimately ends up to the detriment of the sequel.

When the Sully family arrive at the home of the Metkayina clan, led by Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and Ronal (Kate Winslet), Cameron switches his attention to the children. We spend more time with the likes of Neteyam, Kiri and Tsireya ( Bailey Bass ), Tonowari and Ronal's daughter, than we do Jake or Neytiri.

On top of establishing the new culture of the Metkayina, the sequel also tries to flesh out each of these new characters who will become central to the series. It's most successful with Kiri who is intriguingly different, although the decision to have Sigourney Weaver voice a teenager doesn't work (even if there is a logical in-world reason).

Even with a runtime of more than three hours, establishing all of these new characters sidelines the strongest characters from the original: Neytiri and Quaritch. Neytiri pops up every now and then when the children do something wrong, while Quaritch is off on his hunt across Pandora, which we see sporadically.

Zoe Saldaña and Stephen Lang were the stand-out performers of the first movie and they excel again here, both given different edges to their characters to explore. They're just not given enough time to do so, and you'll be left wanting a movie just with Neytiri and Quaritch going head-to-head.

It results in a sequel that feels similar to the first movie: rather than developing the characters we know, we're watching new characters explore a culture on Pandora, much like Jake did in the first movie. Specific beats are even repeated albeit with slight changes, such as Lo'ak bonding with a tulkun, a whale-like creature important to the Metkayina.

What saves the movie is the craft that's gone into this new corner of Pandora. At times, it's more like watching a nature documentary as we delve into the oceans, the sheer scale brought to life with superb use of depth in the 3D. It's frequently breathtaking and truly immersive, unrivalled this year as a cinematic experience.

The visual effects are flawless too, a considerable step up from the first movie with the motion capture showcasing even minute expressions. If you see the sequel with variable frame rate though, it's hit and miss as there are times when you feel like you're watching a TV with motion smoothing on, something that's especially apparent whenever humans are on screen.

As astonishing as the visuals are, your tolerance of the meandering middle act will depend on how much you love being in that world. Plot-wise, it's thin as Cameron focuses on an emotional response, such as in a hard-to-watch hunting sequence which doubles down on the environmental themes of the first movie.

In another echo of the first movie, the sequel builds to a final showdown between the Na'vi and the RDA. Here though, you'll allow the familiarity as Cameron delivers an extraordinary final act full of thrilling action and emotion. It's every bit the equal of Top Gun: Maverick 's climax in terms of blockbusters this year.

Cameron knows how to please a crowd and the climax has several beats, including a Titanic homage, that would count as the money shot in other movies. What's most impressive though is that even though we know more movies are on the way, there are stakes here and you never feel like any character is safe.

With the origin story for this expansion of the Avatar world complete, the finale will leave you excited for what's to come in Avatar 3 . Our return to Pandora is far from perfect, but there's nobody out there doing it like James Cameron.

Avatar: The Way of Water is out now in cinemas.

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Movies Editor, Digital Spy  Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor.  Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies , attending genre festivals around the world.   After moving to Digital Spy , initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.  

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Things to do | an exercise in na’vi gazing, ‘avatar: the way of water’ will cure your moviegoing blues, thirteen years after the first ‘avatar,’ james cameron finally returns to the distant moon of pandora in this transporting, radiantly personal sequel.

20th Century Studios

Jake Sully in 20th Century Studios' AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. ©2022 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Tuk (played by Trinity Bliss) in the movie "Avatar: The Way of Water."

Neytiri (played by Zoe Saldana) and Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) in the movie "Avatar: The Way of Water."

Ronal (played by Kate Winslet) and Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) in the movie "Avatar: The Way of Water."

A Tulkun in the movie "Avatar: The Way of Water."

Jake Sully in 20th Century Studios' AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. ©2022 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

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.

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.

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.

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This Behind-the-Scenes Look at ‘Avatar 2’ Proves Acting Is Still Central to the Movie (Video)

A new promotional featurette for ‘Way of Water’ also gives fans a glimpse of the newer, younger cast members

The latest behind-the-scenes look at “Avatar: The Way of Water” offers a glimpse at the actors acting their hearts out within motion-capture performances.

The 249-second clip, released on 20th Century Studios’ YouTube channel, offers explicit evidence, if any such thing is still needed, that performance capture performances are still about actors honing their skills and the technology supplementing their work.

“What we’re interested in,” notes writer/director James Cameron, “is the totality of the performance. The actor creates the emotion, the actor creates the moment.”

We then see a slew of split-screen sequences where we see the actor giving the in-film performance while covered in motion-capture gear (including the facial dots which serve as guides for computer rendering and related animation) side-by-side with the finished sequence in the film. As Sam Worthington states at the 0:33 second mark, “Everything that Jake Sully as a Na’vi has done, Sam has done.”

Beyond just providing an educational and entertaining behind-the-scenes glimpse into the making of the global blockbuster, the featurette serves to show off that the moments of physical strain and high emotion are rooted in old-school acting. It should go without saying, but it bears reminding and it is always fun to see the before-and-after comparisons, such as the (for example) the Blu-ray supplemental material on “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” which shows Andy Serkis performing as Supreme Leader Snoke in the flesh.

The featurette, and others like it, reminds viewers that actors and on-set performances are the first and most important building block. Producer Jon Landeau helpfully offers a brief explanation that, yes, since Pandora doesn’t exist and nine-foot-tall Na’vi don’t exist, the performance capture and volume technology allows for 100% of the actors’ physical, on-set performances to be, well, captured and replicated in the digital world.

As a secondary benefit, the later portions of this clip offers the film’s newer, younger cast members discussing their craft and their experience. While most audience members know what Zoe Saldana, Kate Winslet or Stephen Lang look in human form, this could be the first time that audiences will see Jamie Flatters (Neteyam), Britain Dalton (Lo’Ak) or Bailey Bass (Tsireya) sans their in-movie appearance.

When your big breakout role is in an “Avatar” movie, it’s not like you can send a movie still to agents or producers and say, “This is me.”

Cameron concludes the clip by stating that, while on-set, he’s most focused on the actors because “That’s all I have to worry about. I’m not distracted by the camera movement or the background extras, I’m just there for (the star performers).” As the filmmaker argues, “That’s the only way to make this film.”

And, yes, it’s amusing watching Sigourney Weaver portraying her own 14-year-old daughter.

Watch the video above.

Avatar 2: The Way of Water trailer, title, release date and everything we know so far

We finally have the first Avatar 2 trailer!

Believe it or not, but Avatar: The Way of Water is happening, and you can now watch the first full trailer of Avatar 2! We have the latest release date, and even some set photos. On top of that, James Cameron's hit 3D action movie isn't just having one sequel, either. 

The director's plotted out a series of films. The only thing getting in his way, has been production stoppages due to the pandemic. That said, we are still wondering if there's that strong a demand for Avatar 2. Only time shall tell.

But for those clamoring for more of what Avatar did right, the concept art and images shared look like we're getting another trippy adventure. Plus, the plot details shared by a producer suggest Avatar 2 will find a way to show new angles of the Na'vi world. 

Here's everything we know about Avatar 2, including its release date, plot and an early look at art from the film.

Avatar 2 trailer

In the first full Avatar trailer, we saw more of the new war between humans and Na'vi. It also shows us more of Jake and Neytiri's family, as well as tease the meaning of "the way of water."

In the Avatar 2 teaser trailer , we finally saw more of the titular water, as Jake flies over water on Toruk. We also see Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), and the two talk as if war is coming.

Avatar 2 title

At CinemaCon 2022, it was announced that Avatar 2's actual title is "Avatar: The Way of Water."

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Avatar 2 release date (as well as Avatar 3 through 5)

Avatar 2 is coming out on December 16, 2022, a year after its previous Dec. 2021 release date, which wasn't its first date. All production on the project was shut down.

Dec. 17 was the date previously published on 20th Century Films' Avatar.com website . Then, the official Avatar twitter account tweeted a letter from Cameron explaining how the film's holiday release has been cancelled "due to the impact the pandemic has had on our schedule."

Avatar 2 began production on April 22, 2017, according to a Facebook post made on the film franchise's official page . That page showed four release dates for the Avatar films that have been either scrapped our changed around, which claimed that Avatar 2 would release in December 2020. 

The full set of release dates is as follows:

• Avatar 2: December 16, 2022
• Avatar 3: December 20, 2024
• Avatar 4: December 18, 2026
• Avatar 5: December 22, 2028

Avatar 2 teaser trailer news

As reported by Jason Guerrasio of Insider, the first Avatar 2 teaser trailer was shown at CinemaCon 2022. When will we see it? Avatar: The Way of Water's first teaser will play exclusively in theaters at first. It will appear before Doctor Strange 2 .

Avatar 2 plot

Avatar 2 producer Jon Landau gave the New Zealand site RNZ a preview of the story of the new film, saying "This is the story of the Sully family and what one does to keep their family together. Jake and Neytiri have a family in this movie, they are forced to leave their home, they go out and explore the different regions of Pandora, including spending quite a bit of time on the water, around the water, in the water."

James Cameron confirmed the legitimacy of potential sequel titles to ET . Those film titles are (apparently in no order):

• Avatar: The Way of Water (the actual title for Avatar 2)
• Avatar: The Seed Bearer
• Avatar: The Tulkun Rider
• Avatar: The Quest for Eywa

Avatar 2 cast

Expect the whole Avatar 1 cast and a slew of A-list additions. Yes, we're going to get Sam Worthington back as Jake Sully, the soldier who fell in love with the Na'vi named Neytiri — and, yes, Zoe Saldana is returning to play that character as well. 

Giovanni Ribisi, Stephen Lang and Sigourney Weaver are all back as well, though the latter is playing a new role. 

Of the new cast, we're getting Kate Winslet as Ronal, a Na'vi free-diver of the Metkayina. Edie Falco, Michelle Yeoh and Jemaine Clement all have human roles, while Vin Diesel has been cast to play an undisclosed role.

Avatar 2 set photos

Avatar 2 producer Jon Landau shared the most adorable set photos of horses and actors, as well as a terrifically cute child walking around, and they're all in motion-capture costumes.

A post shared by Jon Landau (@jonplandau) A photo posted by on

Avatar 2 first look images

Variety got a handful of concept art images from Disney, which owns 20th Century Studios. The images, as seen below, back up producer Jon Landau's comments about the Sully family's aquatic adventures are definitely a major focus of the film.

Oh, and that car is a Mercedes-Benz concept vehicle called the Vision AVTR. 

Henry is a managing editor at Tom’s Guide covering streaming media, laptops and all things Apple, reviewing devices and services for the past seven years. Prior to joining Tom's Guide, he reviewed software and hardware for TechRadar Pro, and interviewed artists for Patek Philippe International Magazine. He's also covered the wild world of professional wrestling for Cageside Seats, interviewing athletes and other industry veterans.

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Avatar 2 Fans Fiercely Defend The Criticism That It's 'All Visuals And No Story'

Hearing the words "Avatar" and "basic story" is about as common a combination as hearing peanut butter and jelly. And die-hard "Avatar" fans are finally taking a stand against it. When James Cameron released his long-gestating science fiction fantasy epic "Avatar" in 2009, audiences were transported to a world like nothing they had ever seen before. The world of Pandora was so lush, full of detail, and eye-popping visually that it set a new precedent for cinematic fantasy worldbuilding that arguably has yet to be matched. However, despite the overwhelmingly stunning and groundbreaking 3D visuals on display that received endless praise and accolades, many viewers had an opposite viewpoint toward the film's overly simplistic narrative. For example, the Rotten Tomatoes consensus called the film " ... more impressive on a technical level than as a piece of storytelling ..." The reputation of the James Cameron-directed blockbuster has been cemented over the years as such.

Now, 13 years later, with the release of the long-awaited sequel "Avatar: The Way of Water," it seems more or less like the same merry-go-round. While far from a terrible rating, the film's 78% Rotten Tomatoes score is not much of a step up from its predecessor, with similar complaints from critics aimed at the sequel's stunning visuals outweighing its story by a country mile. But for fans who see more in the world and story of the "Avatar" saga than stunning 3D vistas and motion-captured cat people, enough is enough.

What's wrong with a simple story?

After having so much hate thrown at the "Avatar" franchise, fans are standing up to the critics and voicing why they feel the hate is unfounded. On a Reddit thread started by Redditor u/Dr-Oktavius , the user expresses their frustration, saying, "Sure, it is once again a relatively simple story but it is incredibly effective. All members of the main cast had clear motivations and character arcs. I loved seeing all of them grow up over the course of the movie ... Also the last hour of the movie is straight fire."

The storytelling in "Avatar" may be overly simple to many. Still, Redditor u/TappyCard sees it as one of their favorite aspects, commenting, "I just can't come to care about people tearing these movies down. I have heard it all and it's so repetitive ... For me personally, a simple story isn't a negative for 'Avatar.'" Meanwhile, u/lingdingwhoopy makes a similar statement on what makes the narrative qualities in the "Avatar" franchise stand out, expressing dissatisfaction at the fact that the franchise's visual storytelling aspects seem to be consistently underappreciated.

It's clear as water that "Avatar" fans deeply connect to and understand the franchise in a way that critics may not. And if there's anyone who understands what moviegoers are looking for, it's James Cameron.

Cameron believes if he likes it, moviegoers will follow suit

For nearly 40 years, James Cameron has been entertaining audiences the world over with his cinematic efforts. Whether he's providing mind-blowing action in "Aliens" and his "Terminator" duology or making our hearts break with "Titanic," James Cameron is the king of getting butts in seats and pleasing audiences. With both "Avatar" and "Avatar: The Way of Water," Cameron has once again prioritized grand-scaled filmmaking that practically all audiences can get invested in. And in an age where audiences constantly bicker about whether Marvel blockbusters are better or worse than indie A24 films, Cameron's "Avatar" franchise offers a refreshing experience that blends genuinely passionate filmmaking with crowd-pleasing spectacle.

In an interview with Variety , when the director is asked whether or not he is afraid of the film flopping at the box office, as many have been predicting, Cameron simply states, "I don't worry about it. I don't think anything one does artistically in life should be determined by the trolls and the naysayers. You just go where you think it makes sense." And thankfully for many audiences, Cameron's preferences aren't far off from the average moviegoer's. He continues his Variety statement, saying, " ... my tastes are so kind of blue-collar and general. They're not esoteric, my personal tastes. If I like my movie, I know other people are gonna like my movie. It's very simplistic, really, ultimately."