Review of Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) by Inshane — 26 Dec 2022

"Avatar: The Way of Water" was beautiful but a bit by the books, in terms of the narrative. I'll get the obvious stuff outa the way quickly. This movie is visually breathtaking! All of the CGI and VFX felt seamless with any "real people" acting, there were points where I honestly could not decipher weather or not I was looking at a computer image or a real person. The 3-D was also amazing, normally, I don't care about 3-D at all, but it was a real treat in this movie. Definitely don't wait to stream "The Way of Water" home, watch it at the best movie screen you can watch it on.

That said, the bulk of the story was very similar to the first movie. A lot of the same story beats, except Jake is doing everything with a family instead of by himself and in a water setting instead of a forest setting. Another issue I had with the story was the underutilization of Neytiri. It felt like she didn't exist for 2/3 of the movie up to a point where she was "needed" for specific events to unfold. This may be due to giving all the new characters plenty of spot light so they can flesh out properly, which I feel like the movie did well.

While I feel "Avatar: The Way of Water" certainly doesn't live up to 13 years of expectations, it delivers in spectacle, immersion and emotion. You can really feel James Cameron's creativity and passion with this sequel. The world of Pandora has been expanded on just enough to make you hungry for the next movie.