Avatar: The Way Of The Water (2022)

 

Genre: Sci-fi/Adventure

Time: 3h 12m

Director: James Cameron

Quick Summary: Jake Sully and Ney'tiri have formed a family and are doing everything to stay together. However, they must leave their home and explore the regions of Pandora. When an ancient threat resurfaces, Jake must fight a difficult war against the humans.

If you haven't seen this yet, I very strongly suggest you do.

Let me first absolutely praise this film for its CGI. It's visually stunning and immersive, you honestly forget it's CGI within 10 minutes. The landscapes are absolutely breathtaking and there is always something to look at in awe. Especially the underwater scenes. It's dreamy, full of vibrancy and life. I fully forgot I was watching a movie nearly enough entirely done in CGI, that's how much of a treat it was to look at.  

The film tells us an important message about the environment and our responsibility to protect it through our viewing experience. The Navi need it to survive, and they strive to protect it from people trying to destroy it. It encourages the viewer to be more mindful of their actions impact on the environment and to think about the consequences of their decisions, which is a great message currently. It doesn't shove it in your face either, and it manages to hit all the right emotions. It manages to keep the right balance so that you still have an amazing viewing experience. 

Unfortunately, I found a lot of the (many) characters one-dimensional and I didn't get to fully view some of their personalities. And also being someone who hasn't watched the first Avatar recently, I struggled to remember some of the returning cast. It doesn't really give good explanations of who they were before, it just expected you to know. Honestly, I understand they did that to save time but it became a bit confusing for the first quarter. It tries to flesh out too many characters at once and fails a bit since this film crams so much in at the wrong times. It spends way too much time letting us look at how pretty this film is and focusing on a single subplot for way too long. Which is very surprising, since it's three hours long. 

Its way of telling us the plot is a bit clunky too, and you can honestly really tell a lot of time went into the middle part of the film and the world-building through imagery. I felt like the pacing shifted way too much and the action doesn't really kick in until the end of the middle part, so it can be quite boring at times to sit and watch these characters talk almost endlessly or endlessly float around in the water for an hour.

Don't get me wrong, I very much enjoyed this movie and really recommend it to people. It's just it's slow in all the wrong places, and could have used some more editing within the pacing. Visually, it's an absolute masterpiece and how it has reached this is amazing.

8/10

"The way of water has no beginning and no end."

"The thing about happiness is that it can vanish in a heartbeat."