Avatar: The Way of Water Review
After 13 years we are going back to the world of Pandora with Avatar: The Way of Water. The first James Cameron movie in 13 years. And I was excited but curious to check out this movie. I had only seen the first one for the first time back in November, so I’m basically brand new to this world. But how is the movie? Is it worth thirteen years of build-up? Or is it a disappointment? Thanks for reading!
The Good:
When it comes to the Avatar franchise you have to talk about the visual effects. And once again, James Cameron delivered some truly awesome looking visuals. When the original movie came out, it was so groundbreaking. There had never been visuals like it before, and you get to this movie and they are better than that movie. There is not one shot, one frame, one second of this movie that looked fake or close to fake. I mean this entire movie just looks gorgeous and stunning. Like at points the movie feels like a nature documentary set in Pandora because everythings looks so real. When you are watching it, you don’t know what is real and what’s not real. You don’t know what parts are CGI and what parts are practical. And I saw this movie in 3D, which I normally don’t go to see in 3D. The last movie I saw in 3D was The Avengers, 10 ½ years ago. And I think the Avatar movies are really designated to be seen in the movie theater on the biggest screen you can. Because the visuals are like nothing you’ve ever seen before. And I think watching it at home, you wouldn’t get the same experience.
Another thing working with this movie is that it’s filled with big emotions. This movie is probably one of the most emotional movies of 2022. Where this movie is about a family, it’s about Jake’s relationship with his wife and kids. And you care about them, you care about them as individuals and you care about them when they are together. So when one of them gets lost or something happens to them you feel it. And it just evokes these big emotions from you, especially in the finale of the movie. And I think part of that boils down to James Cameron’s masterful direction. Where he’s able to take very simple scenes and have big emotions play out from them.
And another thing with this movie is that I think the story here is much better than the first movie. The first movie had amazing visuals and was talked about for being the highest grossing movie of all time. But the weakest part of the movie was the story. The story was just not there for most of us. It’s so generic and familiar that way it plays out. It takes a very simple story template of the broken soldiers inhabiting the culture of a less advanced civilization and learns the way of them. The movie doesn’t fit into any specific story template and the movie goes in directions that I wasn’t expecting. And the trailers do a good job of not showing you the outline of the movie. Just based on the three trailers we got, about 6-7 minutes of the movie. I couldn’t piece together when certain events would happen. And since the trailers did a good job of hiding stuff, the movie can have some twists and turns that are surprising.
The movie also has a lot of really cool action inside of it and has big action set pieces in the film. And the movie has action sprinkled all through-out the movie. You get chases, gun battles, and hand to hand stuff. But each action scene kind of gets bigger and bigger as it goes along so when you get to the finale of the movie it’s this big epic action scene with a lot going on. It takes place on a boat that’s on fire that is also sinking. With Jake and his family stopping the villain of the movie and it’s just a lot of fun to watch. Once again, James Cameron knows how to shoot action to be fun, and immersive.
Finally, for a movie that has a run time of 3 hours and 12 minutes it moves at a faster pace than I thought it would. It moves from plot point to plot point quick enough but you can still understand everything that is happening. And while you can certainly feel the long runtime, I’m not saying it’s a three hour movie that feels like 90 minutes. But the runtime didn’t affect me. I thought the runtime fit this movie and fit the story that James Cameron was telling.
The Bad:
The first thing here is that since the movie has a bigger cast with a lot of characters. Some of the characters can feel sidelined a bit too much. The two big ones in this are Jake and Neytiri, who were the two leads of the first movie. And this movie kind of allows their kids to take more center stage with this movie. And so it felt like Jake and Neytiri are just along for the ride and they are in this movie because they were the leads of the first movie. It’s not that they are bad in this movie, but they aren’t given much to do, many memorable moments, or even any sort of arc in this film.
Another issue with this movie, and it’s not something that the movie did wrong but something that kind of bugs me. Do all Na'vi aliens look the same? So it took me about 30-45 minutes to realize who was who, and even in the finale I still couldn’t figure out who was who. Once again, not a big problem or anything that the movie should be blamed for. Honestly, maybe this shouldn’t even be in the bad section.
Final Thoughts: I had pretty middle of the road expectations going into this movie. Like I said earlier, I’m very new to this world. But I thoroughly enjoyed this movie and thought that James Cameron crafted a great blockbuster. James Cameron knows how to deliver movies that are fast paced, thrilling, and emotional films that take you on this journey. You feel satisfied and relieved when the credits roll.
The Score: 9.0/10 (A-)
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