Before we get started, I should definitely state that everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Some of you may hate what I am about to write, and others would agree with my ideas. I spent a solid half hour to an hour just looking at reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, Letterboxd, etc for Avatar: The Way of Water. Let me tell ya, some people absolutely DESPISED this movie while others claim it the best movie of the decade so far. There’s very few in between reviews. Well, I am going to give you one right here.
Avatar: The Way of Water is a continuation of the first Avatar movie in 2009 by the same director James Cameron. It follows the story of Jake Sully after he decided to fully become a part of the native people on the planet Pandora at the end of the first movie. He has married his lover Neytiri and has several children where the kids are a huge part of the plot in this movie. Going into this movie, I only saw maybe the first trailer for it which basically just showed how stunning it was going to look and didn’t really give too much away regarding the plot. This is something I wish movies did more of now. But that is for another time.
So, I wasn’t expecting to see Sully’s children in most of the movie. Jake Sully and his family are threatened again by the Sky People (Humans) which forces Sully, Neytiri and their children to move away from the forest, where their specific clan of Na’vi lives, and to the seacoast where a different clan called the Metkayina clan lives and have adapted to live in the water. I loved the attention to detail in this movie, especially how the different clans adapt. The forest Na’vi have tails suited to the forest while the Metkayina clan has a tail that helps them move in water. This sea clan teaches Sully’s family how to adapt and survive in their new home until the Sky People come to the seacoast and threaten them again, where all-out war ensues.
One thing that most of the critics and reviews as well as myself can agree on is the VFX and how absolutely stunning this movie looks. The first movie was also amazing for the time it came out but it just got better with this movie. You can clearly see the work the VFX team and James Cameron put into it. This is one of the main reasons why I think it does so well at the box office.
The story to me was decent. I actually enjoyed the story in the first movie better but this one was alright. There were points in the story where they dragged it on a little too much and something could just be handled in 10 minutes rather than taking 20 minutes of the movie to explain this small detail. They brought back a certain character which I also thought was a stretch at first but then it kind of grew on me. Until the end of the movie. Go watch this movie and then come back and you will know what I am talking about.
Final Thoughts
It’s Avatar and I know I am going into a long movie. However, it did not feel like a 3hr 12min movie. Yes I had to get up and use the bathroom once but overall the story and film was very solid and the pacing was well done. Honestly, if it wasn’t for the visual effects and the cinematography, I would rate this movie lower than I did. I feel like if Avatar even slightly interests you and you have seen the first one, you are stuck on the 5 movie train that James Cameron has already planned out and started filming.
