Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)

Genre: Fantasy
Directed by: James Cameron
Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver
Running Time: 192'
Verdict: ⊗⊗⊗⊗⊗

Many years after the events of the first movie, Jake Sully is raising his four Na'vi children, as humans return with another invasion. This drives his family away from their tribe, in search of a new home. So Avatar: The Way of Water moves from forests of Pandora to the oceans and introduces a new race of people, one in harmony with the water and water creatures. The movie is beautiful and visually impeccable. Perfect animation and a great, almost magical worldbuilding are the definite highlights of the film, surpassing the original. The nature is surreal yet familiar and even industrial scenes on human settlements are impressive to look at. However, this comes at expense of the story, as there is nothing original or creative about it, and some characters suffer for it. Interestingly, the villain is (more or less) the same one as in the first movie, but with more compelling character development. Even though the story centers around Jake Sully, his mate and his nemesis, to me the story is about their children and some shitty parenting. It is the children that are trying to find themselves a place in the new surroundings and their parents are ones who are pulling them back. Also, while I might be racist for saying this, for a good part of the movie it is hard to differentiate the blue people, most importantly Jake Sully's children. But after a few hours, you learn to. You don't get much choice, as the movie is over three hours long. I don't usually mind that for epic movies of this scale. The movie is strongest in the second act, when is introducing a lot of new worldbuilding elements and displaying many gorgeous scenes, but doesn't rush through the first and third act which are significantly less entertaining, and maybe it should. In the meantime you can try to watch barely dressed blue bodies for nip slips. I wouldn't say Avatar: The Way of Water feels like 13 years of progress, but it is an improvement, or at least is more entertaining, although still somewhat predictable. For example, it finishes most plot points, but still obviously stays open enough for the sequel(s).

Rokin