Avatar: The Way of Water

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.

Cameron invites viewers into this fully realized world with so many striking images and phenomenally rendered action scenes that everything else fades away.

Watching The Way of Water, one rolls their eyes only to realize they’re welling with tears. One stretches and shifts in their seat before accepting, with a resigned and happy plop, that they could watch yet another hour of Cameron’s preservationist epic. Lucky for us—lucky even for the culture, maybe—that at least a few more of those are on their way.

As with most Cameron blockbusters, “The Way of Water” has a way of pulling you in, surrounding you with gorgeous, violent chaos and finishing with a quick rinse to get the remnants of its teeny-tiny plot out of your eyes by the final credits.

Its plot is hacky; it’s got some really clunky characters; the dialogue is, at times, unthinkably stupid. (“The way of water connects all things” is the kind of line that sounds profound until you really think about it.) But this new Avatar filled an awe-shaped void in my heart, and for that, I thank James Cameron.

Watching Avatar: The Way of Water is like binging a season of television all at once, not because you don’t want to stop, but because you know that if you do stop you’ll never pick it back up again.

For all its world-building sprawl, The Way of Water is a horizon-narrowing experience – the sad sight of a great filmmaker reversing up a creative cul-de-sac.

Cons: Literally none. Pros: Somehow this movie is better than the first Avatar movie. That is quite a feat to pull off considering how groundbreaking the first one was. In this movie, Jake and Neytiri sort of take a backseat as their 4 children are introduced and lead most of the story. But I'm not complaining, getting to know the Sully family is such a treat. Also, a new area of Pandora is introduced and thoroughly explored as the Sully family moves in with a tribe of water Na'vi. The end of this movie is probably one of my favorite action sequences of all time. Jake and Neytiri vs. Colonel Miles Quaritch and his soldiers is an epic fight for the books. Overall, this sequel to Avatar lives up to its predecessor by expanding the world of Pandora and the Sully family as well as building up the antagonist threat. I honestly can't wait for the next installment. It will be worth the wait.

Could be far better, why using the old antagonist again. It's like nonsense for me right now, will see if the next parts are going to give me a good answer to that.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

An uninspired copy of the first film. The story is like-for-like the same. The water visuals are great, but at the end of the day, it's just water. At 3 hours long, this movie really overstays its welcome.

i liked the first one when i saw it in theaters on release, it’s not the most interesting story-wise, but it was very imaginative and the visuals were simply stunning for the time. however, it seems like they expected the same thing to work again? the film climate is very different these days, and most people are actually getting bored of over the top cgi. this movie has a shallow story, uninteresting characters. and awkward acting, all even more so than the first one. i don’t know how they plan on making a larger franchise of this…it’s only popular because it’s nostalgia bait.