avatar movie review rating

Cameron retains his crown

Watching “Avatar,” I felt sort of the same as when I saw “Star Wars” in 1977. That was another movie I walked into with uncertain expectations. James Cameron ‘s film has been the subject of relentlessly dubious advance buzz, just as his “ Titanic ” was. Once again, he has silenced the doubters by simply delivering an extraordinary film. There is still at least one man in Hollywood who knows how to spend $250 million, or was it $300 million, wisely.

“Avatar” is not simply a sensational entertainment, although it is that. It’s a technical breakthrough. It has a flat-out Green and anti-war message. It is predestined to launch a cult. It contains such visual detailing that it would reward repeating viewings. It invents a new language, Na’vi, as “Lord of the Rings” did, although mercifully I doubt this one can be spoken by humans, even teenage humans. It creates new movie stars. It is an Event, one of those films you feel you must see to keep up with the conversation.

The story, set in the year 2154, involves a mission by U. S. Armed Forces to an earth-sized moon in orbit around a massive star. This new world, Pandora, is a rich source of a mineral Earth desperately needs. Pandora represents not even a remote threat to Earth, but we nevertheless send in ex-military mercenaries to attack and conquer them. Gung-ho warriors employ machine guns and pilot armored hover ships on bombing runs. You are free to find this an allegory about contemporary politics. Cameron obviously does.

Pandora harbors a planetary forest inhabited peacefully by the Na’vi, a blue-skinned, golden-eyed race of slender giants, each one perhaps 12 feet tall. The atmosphere is not breathable by humans, and the landscape makes us pygmies. To venture out of our landing craft, we use avatars–Na’vi lookalikes grown organically and mind-controlled by humans who remain wired up in a trance-like state on the ship. While acting as avatars, they see, fear, taste and feel like Na’vi, and have all the same physical adeptness.

This last quality is liberating for the hero, Jake Sully ( Sam Worthington ), who is a paraplegic. He’s been recruited because he’s a genetic match for a dead identical twin, who an expensive avatar was created for. In avatar state he can walk again, and as his payment for this duty he will be given a very expensive operation to restore movement to his legs. In theory he’s in no danger, because if his avatar is destroyed, his human form remains untouched. In theory.

On Pandora, Jake begins as a good soldier and then goes native after his life is saved by the lithe and brave Neytiri ( Zoe Saldana ). He finds it is indeed true, as the aggressive Col. Miles Quaritch ( Stephen Lang ) briefed them, that nearly every species of life here wants him for lunch. (Avatars are not be made of Na’vi flesh, but try explaining that to a charging 30-ton rhino with a snout like a hammerhead shark).

The Na’vi survive on this planet by knowing it well, living in harmony with nature, and being wise about the creatures they share with. In this and countless other ways they resemble Native Americans. Like them, they tame another species to carry them around–not horses, but graceful flying dragon-like creatures. The scene involving Jake capturing and taming one of these great beasts is one of the film’s greats sequences.

Like “Star Wars” and “LOTR,” “Avatar” employs a new generation of special effects. Cameron said it would, and many doubted him. It does. Pandora is very largely CGI. The Na’vi are embodied through motion capture techniques, convincingly. They look like specific, persuasive individuals, yet sidestep the eerie Uncanny Valley effect. And Cameron and his artists succeed at the difficult challenge of making Neytiri a blue-skinned giantess with golden eyes and a long, supple tail, and yet–I’ll be damned. Sexy.

At 163 minutes, the film doesn’t feel too long. It contains so much. The human stories. The Na’vi stories, for the Na’vi are also developed as individuals. The complexity of the planet, which harbors a global secret. The ultimate warfare, with Jake joining the resistance against his former comrades. Small graceful details like a floating creature that looks like a cross between a blowing dandelion seed and a drifting jellyfish, and embodies goodness. Or astonishing floating cloud-islands.

I’ve complained that many recent films abandon story telling in their third acts and go for wall-to-wall action. Cameron essentially does that here, but has invested well in establishing his characters so that it matters what they do in battle and how they do it. There are issues at stake greater than simply which side wins.

Cameron promised he’d unveil the next generation of 3-D in “Avatar.” I’m a notorious skeptic about this process, a needless distraction from the perfect realism of movies in 2-D. Cameron’s iteration is the best I’ve seen — and more importantly, one of the most carefully-employed. The film never uses 3-D simply because it has it, and doesn’t promiscuously violate the fourth wall. He also seems quite aware of 3-D’s weakness for dimming the picture, and even with a film set largely in interiors and a rain forest, there’s sufficient light. I saw the film in 3-D on a good screen at the AMC River East and was impressed. I might be awesome in True IMAX. Good luck in getting a ticket before February.

It takes a hell of a lot of nerve for a man to stand up at the Oscarcast and proclaim himself King of the World. James Cameron just got re-elected.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

Stephen Lang as Col. Miles Quaritch
Joel David Moore as Norm Spellman
Wes Studi as Eytukan
CCH Pounder as Moat
Dileep Rao as Dr. Max Patel
Giovanni Ribisi as Parker Selfridge
Sam Worthington as Jake Sully
Zoe Saldana as Neytiri
Michelle Rodriguez as Trudy Chacon
Laz Alonso as Tsu'tey
Sigourney Weaver as Grace
Matt Gerald as Corporal Lyle Wainfleet

Written and directed by

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‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ Review: Big Blue Marvel

James Cameron returns to Pandora, and to the ecological themes and visual bedazzlements of his 2009 blockbuster.

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By A.O. Scott

Way back in 2009, “Avatar” arrived on screens as a plausible and exciting vision of the movie future. Thirteen years later, “Avatar: The Way of Water” — the first of several long-awaited sequels directed by James Cameron — brings with it a ripple of nostalgia.

The throwback sensation may hit you even before the picture starts, as you unfold your 3-D glasses. When was the last time you put on a pair of those? Even the anticipation of seeing something genuinely new at the multiplex feels like an artifact of an earlier time, before streaming and the Marvel Universe took over.

The first “Avatar” fused Cameron’s faith in technological progress with his commitments to the primal pleasures of old-fashioned storytelling and the visceral delights of big-screen action. The 3-D effects and intricately rendered digital landscapes — the trees and flowers of the moon Pandora and the way creatures and machines swooped and barreled through them — felt like the beginning of something, the opening of a fresh horizon of imaginative possibility.

At the same time, the visual novelty was built on a sturdy foundation of familiar themes and genre tropes. “Avatar” was set on a fantastical world populated by soulful blue bipeds, but it wasn’t exactly (or only) science fiction. It was a revisionist western, an ecological fable, a post-Vietnam political allegory — a tale of romance, valor and revenge with traces of Homer, James Fenimore Cooper and “Star Trek” in its DNA.

All of that is also true of “The Way of Water,” which picks up the story and carries it from Pandora’s forests to its reefs and wetlands — an environment that inspires some new and dazzling effects. Where “Avatar” found inspiration in lizard-birds, airborne spores and jungle flowers, the sequel revels in aquatic wonders, above all a kind of armored whale called the tulkun.

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Avatar Reviews

It is every bit the technical achievement that Cameron promised it would be. However, there is no dodging its weak, underwhelming story. And I don't go back to rewatch The Terminator, Aliens or T2 time after time for the special effects.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 7, 2024

“Avatar” remains a transporting experience – an entertaining blend of old-fashioned adventure and technological wonder.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 8, 2024

'Avatar' is not just a visual display. It contains heart, humor, and all the aspects needed to make it a well-rounded story. Sure, the script could have been punched up with something more poetic and less obvious. Still, it’s not a bad egg.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jan 9, 2024

To be sure, this is an engaging experience in every sense, from the dramatic to the visual to the visceral. This is how blockbusters should be.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 28, 2023

STUNNING epic. Zoe Saldana performance… A fantastic one

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

It’s the world of Pandora married to the groundbreaking technology used to bring it to life that makes "Avatar" impressive, but it otherwise comes across as hollow, spectacle for the sake of it with little else to offer.

Full Review | Jul 6, 2023

Cameron is a master filmmaker whose movies will endure long after he stops making movies.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jun 23, 2023

While the visuals might rate four stars, the screenplay guarantees this falls well below more compatible marriages of substance and style found in such ground-breakers as the original King Kong, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Cameron’s own Terminator films.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 16, 2023

A groundbreaking technical achievement in filmmaking. The impressive visual effects and amazing world building more than make up for one of Cameron's weaker stories. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 8, 2023

Combining cutting-edge technology with classic, earnest storytelling is firmly the hallmark of this series, and it honestly gave me almost everything I wanted from it.

Full Review | Dec 16, 2022

Three hours breeze into deep relationships, action-packed sequences, and a tale that deserves to be repeatedly seen in cinema. #diandrareviews

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 14, 2022

It’s not just that we’ve seen the tale before… it’s that every aspect of the screenplay is terrible.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Dec 7, 2022

Cameron’s epic can still thrill the audience with breathtaking set pieces, bring them to tears with moving moments, and amaze people willing to explore a fantasy land like no other.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Oct 12, 2022

Avatar still elicits much of the same wide-eyed wonderment.

Full Review | Oct 5, 2022

The emotional stakes presented in the final battle make it so powerful, going beyond the physical scale of the sequence and what the visual effects artists achieved to create a stunning, rousing piece of filmmaking.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Sep 30, 2022

Thirteen years after its release, 'Avatar' still proves to be an exceptional blockbuster that makes the most of a simple and predictable story, to develop a visually awesome and emotional experience that must be had in the cinema. Full review in Spanish.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Sep 28, 2022

The standard in modern blockbuster filmmaking. I don’t make the rules.

Full Review | Sep 26, 2022

A meaningful blockbuster that fails to play ignorant to craft or soul, it is no wonder that so many have fallen in love with the world of Pandora and the drama that takes place on it.

[W]atching Avatar‘s 4K HDR format on IMAX 3D looks more incredible and visually stunning than the original 3D version in 2009.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Sep 25, 2022

...still a gorgeous sci-fi epic, but the characters are nowhere near as detailed.

Full Review | Sep 24, 2022

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‘avatar’: film review.

A dozen years later, James Cameron has proven his point: He is king of the world.

By Kirk Honeycutt

Kirk Honeycutt

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As commander-in-chief of an army of visual-effects technicians, creature designers, motion-capture mavens, stunt performers, dancers, actors and music and sound magicians, he brings science-fiction movies into the 21st century with the jaw-dropping wonder that is “ Avatar .” And he did it almost from scratch. The Bottom Line A titanic entertainment -- movie magic is back!

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Avatar: The Way of Water First Reviews: A Magical, Visually Sublime Cinematic Experience Well Worth the Wait

Early reviews of james cameron's long-in-the-making sequel say it feels like an immersive theme park thrill ride with interesting characters, breathtaking action, and a better story than the first..

TAGGED AS: First Reviews , movies , news

The first of Avatar’ s sequels is finally here, 13 years after the release of the record-breaking original. For those who’ve been anxiously looking forward to Avatar: The Way of Water and those who have been doubting its necessity, the good news is that the movie is worth the wait and another work of essential theatrical entertainment from James Cameron. The first reviews of the follow-up celebrate its expected visual spectacle as well as its slightly improved script and new cast members. You’re going to want to return to Pandora after reading these excerpts.

Here’s what critics are saying about Avatar: The Way of Water :

Does it live up to expectations?

The Way of the Water is a transformative movie experience that energizes and captivates the senses through its visual storytelling, making the return to Pandora well worth the wait. – Mae Abdulbaki, Screen Rant

Spending more than a decade pining for Pandora was worth it. Cameron has delivered the grandest movie since, well, Avatar . – Johnny Oleksinski, New York Post

This latest and most ambitious picture will stun most of his naysayers into silence. – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

Is it better than the original?

Like all great sequels, The Way of Water retrospectively deepens the original. – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

Avatar: The Way of Water is as visually exhilarating and sweepingly told as its predecessor; the plot is more emotionally vigorous. – Johnny Oleksinski, New York Post

(Photo by ©Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

So it’s not just more of the same?

Any “been here, actually do remember this” déjà vu washes all the way off the minute the action finally plunges under the surface. – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

[It is] meticulous world-building as astonishing and enveloping as anything we’ve ever seen on screen. – Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly

The brand-extension imperatives that typically govern sequels are happily nowhere in evidence. – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

Does it have a better script?

The sequel’s story is spread a bit thin, though there is certainly more depth than the first film. – Mae Abdulbaki, Screen Rant

In terms of narrative sophistication and even more so dialogue, this $350 million sequel is almost as basic as its predecessor, even feeble at times. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

The story is still just okay. – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

Will we care enough about the story and characters regardless?

Avatar: The Way of Water is such a staggering improvement over the original because its spectacle doesn’t have to compensate for its story; in vintage Cameron fashion, the movie’s spectacle is what allows its story to be told so well. – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

The movie’s overt themes of familial love and loss, its impassioned indictments of military colonialism and climate destruction, are like a meaty hand grabbing your collar; it works because they work it. – Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly

Watching The Way of Water , one rolls their eyes only to realize they’re welling with tears. – Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair

I’m sorry, but as I watched The Way of Water the only part of me that was moved was my eyeballs. – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

Are there any standout performances?

Saldaña and Winslet have poignant moments…and Dalton and Champion are standouts among the young newcomers. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

The most dynamic portrayal probably belongs to Lang, whose Quaritch is so relentless in his pursuit of Jake that he becomes a force of nature. – Tim Grierson, Screen International

How is the action?

The open-water clash that dominates the final hour is a commandingly sustained feat of action filmmaking. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

Any hack can make stuff blow up real good; Cameron makes stuff glow up real good. – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

Are the visuals as spectacular as they’re supposed to be?

One can’t say enough good things about the film’s visuals — each frame is more breathtaking and magical than the last. – Mae Abdulbaki, Screen Rant

The world both above and below the waterline is a thing to behold, a sensory overload of sound and color so richly tactile that it feels psychedelically, almost spiritually sublime. – Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly

What’s most astonishing about The Way of Water is the persuasive case it makes for CGI. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

(Photo by Mark Fellman/©Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

But how is that high frame rate?

It’s a rather soulless feel, as it was in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit films. But it can make you feel like you’re sharing the same space with the characters. – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

While the approach can sometimes prove distracting, the film is far more persuasive than Ang Lee’s recent experiments in the form. – Tim Grierson, Screen International

The use of high frame rate (a sped-up 48 frames per second) tends to work better underwater than on dry land, where the overly frictionless, motion-smoothed look might put you briefly in mind of a Na’vi soap opera. – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

Does it feel like more than just your average movie?

At times you don’t feel like you’re watching a movie so much as floating in one. – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

There are times when it can seem as if there isn’t a screen at all, and that the action is unfolding right in front of you. – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

It’s truly a movie crossed with a virtual-reality theme-park ride. – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

Do we need to see it in a theater?

It’s the most rapturous, awe-inducing, only in theaters return to the cinema of attractions since Godard experimented with double exposure 3D in Goodbye to Language . – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

Will it leave us excited for Avatar 3 ?

Where it will flow next is a mystery, and it’d be disingenuous of me to suggest I’m not eager to find out. – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

Avatar: The Way of Water opens everywhere on December 16, 2022.

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Avatar: The Way of Water Review

Judgment spray..

Avatar: The Way of Water hits theaters on Dec. 16, 2022. Below is a spoiler-free review.

I think it was right about when a Pandoran whale lamented, in Papyrus-subtitled dialogue, that its past was “too painful” to recount that I realized I had totally bought into Avatar: The Way of Water. The success of 2009’s Avatar heavily influenced the direction of digital filmmaking and distribution, and though the world has changed a lot in the 13 years leading up to this sequel, some things never do… like how when James Cameron decides to make a sequel, he expands and embellishes the preceding story in surprising, engaging ways. Avatar: The Way of Water isn’t afraid to be weird as hell, as it doubles down on the naked sentimentality of the first movie, refocuses the plot on more interesting characters, and yes, it has to be said, sets the high water mark for visual effects in film all over again.

The Way of Water bridges the long gap between movies with a dense prologue that explains what happened after the resource-hungry humans of the RDA retreated from Pandora. Defecting Avatar pilot and now full-time Na’vi Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) start a family as the new leaders of the Omaticaya tribe. That family grows to include three biological and two adopted children, and it’s the driving force behind Jake and Neytiri’s decision to exile themselves after the RDA return to resume their plundering, led by the practically non-existent General Ardmore (Edie Falco). These early scenes deliver a lot of exposition, and breeze over important details about the status quo and the nature of certain relationships. At a bladder-busting 190 minutes, The Way of Water almost always finds the time to circle back to reinforce the most crucial plot elements, but it does mean that there will be times where you’ll be searching for a character’s name or their place in the social hierarchy. Cameron’s betting that you’ll be too bowled over by what a decade of technological advancement has done for realizing Pandora on screen, and the results speak for themselves.

What's the best James Cameron movie?

Though we spend some brief time in the forests of the first film, the vast majority of The Way of Water takes place in the territory of the seafaring Metkayina tribe, and the vibrant underwater ecosystem is an even more dreamlike palette for Cameron to work with. Bioluminescent rainbows from the flora in the depths refract through the moving surface like the aurora, sunsets on the wide horizon bounce off the waves and cast the shores in a purple hue, the thoughtfully designed marine life all reinforce the sense that Pandora is a living, breathing world even more effectively than Avatar did. But when the time comes to blow up all that tranquility in favor of blockbuster action, it should come as little surprise that Cameron delivers the goods. Even the most chaotic action sequences are readable, thrillingly paced, and above all, impossible to take your eye away from. An early raid on an RDA cargo shipment features a train derailment that I smiled the whole way through, taken aback by how visceral the destruction felt.

Cameron’s environmentalist interests remain the backbone of the larger Avatar plot, and his heavy employment of familiar character archetypes and story devices feels like a clear message that the Na’vi good guys and military baddies are more important as a collective than individually. And if we’re talking archetypal characters, we have to talk about Cameron’s decision to (quite literally) revive Stephen Lang’s Miles Quaritch as The Way of Water’s primary villain. Quaritch’s hyper-macho drill sergeant persona felt dated in 2009, little more than a vessel for all the worst aspects of Avatar’s themes of colonialism, but Lang’s scene-chewing enthusiasm always kept the character interesting. Quaritch gets his second chance at revenge thanks to a Na’vi body of his own, and his newfound physical prowess gives him even more swagger than he already had. His personal vendetta doesn’t get fleshed out with long monologues about the nature of life or the expectations of a military man; it’s made manifest in the simple fact that, even given a new lease on life, he’s still gunning for the Sullys.

The Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy Movie of 2022

Lang manages to showboat without feeling like a showboat, with all the subtlety of Quaritch holding his own human skull aloft in grand Hamlet fashion, though there are some new wrinkles to the character that suggest a little more depth than The Way of Water has time for – yes, even at three-plus hours long. The Way of Water is in no rush to expand the franchise’s universe and, after a decade plus of seeing the pros and cons of interconnected storytelling, that serves the experience well.

Thanks in no small part to a shift in focus to the next generation, The Way of Water has far more room for levity than its self-serious forerunner. Jake and Neytiri’s kids bicker and tease, they get into scraps with their new tribemates, but above all, they stick together. Cameron invests a lot into middle kids Lo’ak and Kiri as the new representatives of the Na’vi’s warrior and spiritual leanings, with each struggling to understand their place. Spider, the Sullys’ adopted human child, doesn’t get quite as much time with his siblings because of how the story progresses, but his mix of feral energy and wisecracking attitude help him stand out. The eldest and youngest Sully children have little to do and get lost in the shuffle, apart from when someone needs to be endangered to keep the plot moving.

With the Sully kids taking center stage, Jake and Neytiri’s role in the story is proportionally diminished, and that’s okay. Jake is no more interesting a character than he was last time around, but he does have utility here as a tough father figure for his kids to struggle to live up to. Zoe Saldaña’s Neytiri feels like the legacy character with the least to do, mostly advocating for her kids to a distracted Jake. The leaders of the Metkayina tribe, played by Cliff Curtis and Kate Winslet, are cut from a very similar cloth to Jake and Neytiri and often end up feeling redundant as a result.

Though the vast majority of The Way of Water’s technical gambits pay off, missteps in that arena are more glaring. Specifically, Cameron overplays his hand in how he brings one of Jake and Neytiri’s children to life. Kiri, the eldest Sully daughter, is voiced and played in performance capture by Sigourney Weaver, and her connection to the late Dr. Grace Augustine (also Weaver) is an important story point, but the choice to have Weaver herself play this younger incarnation frequently distracts. It’s less to do with the idea of an adult playing a child via mo-cap and more the fact that… well, it’s Sigourney Weaver. Of course, Weaver’s game for the attempt, but pitching her voice up and shrinking her Na’vi body down isn’t quite enough to bridge the uncanny valley of hearing an icon – an icon in Cameron’s own filmography, no less – being transposed into an adolescent.

Avatar: The Way of Water is a thoughtful, sumptuous return to Pandora, one which fleshes out both the mythology established in the first film and the Sully family’s place therein. It may not be the best sequel James Cameron has ever made (which is a very high bar), but it’s easily the clearest improvement on the film that preceded it. The oceans of Pandora see lightning striking in the same place twice, expanding the visual language the franchise has to work with in beautiful fashion. The simple story may leave you crying “cliché,” but as a vehicle for transporting you to another world, it’s good enough to do the job. This is nothing short of a good old-fashioned Cameron blockbuster, full of filmmaking spectacle and heart, and an easy recommendation for anyone looking to escape to another world for a three-hour adventure.

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Avatar: The Way of Water Might Be James Cameron’s Most Personal Film

James Cameron is never leaving Pandora. That much is certain after seeing Avatar: The Way of Water , his sequel to 2009’s ginormo-hit, Avatar . In the past, the director has teased the idea of making smaller, more personal projects after each of his big blockbusters. But The Way of Water makes clear that Cameron no longer needs to leave the confines of this (virtual) extrasolar moon in the Alpha Centauri system to create something closer to the heart. He can bend Pandora to his will, and now he’s bent it to make what might be his most earnest film to date.

Cameron has always been an artist divided: equal parts gearhead and tree hugger, swaggering stud and soft-focus softie. That’s the secret of his success as a showman. He has the authenticity and know-how to sell all that fake movie science and testosterone-fueled dialogue (not to mention the perversity and skill to pull off creatively violent set pieces), but he uses them toward explicitly emotional (read: family-friendly) ends. The Abyss nearly drowns in scientific jargon and macho bluster until it suddenly becomes a sweet movie about salvaging a failing marriage while peace-loving, glow-in-the-dark sea aliens save the Earth. Titanic is one-half wide-eyed teenage love story, one-half gnarly-death demo reel.

The first Avatar has this duality , too, on both a formal and narrative level. It’s a state-of-the-art environmental action movie, a film in which Hollywood’s best ones and zeros come together to sell a story about the dangers of runaway technology and our longing to become one with nature. At its center is a tough grunt who, tasked with impersonating an alien race in order to undermine them, ultimately transforms into an interstellar flower child, shedding his human body for good.

The existential divide that lies at the core of that picture has not disappeared. If anything, it’s expanded. If Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) spends much of that first movie trying to prove his bona fides to his new alien tribe, The Way of Water is filled with even more characters trying to claim their new identities while carrying shades of their former lives.

When we meet Jake again, he and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) have had three kids and effectively adopted two others: teenage Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), born in mysterious fashion to the dormant Na’vi avatar of Dr. Grace Augustine, Weaver’s late scientist character from the first film; and Spider (Jack Champion), a child born on the human base on Pandora who was too small to be transported back to Earth when the colonizers (or “sky people”) were driven off the moon. After a new round of sky people arrives, incinerating everything in their path, Jake comes to realize he’s being specifically targeted and flees with his family across the oceans of Pandora to Awa’atlu, a village of the Metkayina, a turquoise-colored reef people who regard the newcomers first with suspicion, then with contempt. (“They have demon blood!” one yells, noticing that Jake’s kids, unlike purebred Na’vi, have five fingers.) Soon, however, the Sully family, regarded as freaks by the others, start learning the ways of the Metkayina even as they’re told that, with their thin arms and weak tails, they will be useless in the water.

There’s a twisted kind of transformation happening on the bad guys’ side, too. Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), the cigar-chomping, leathery (human) villain of the first film, is also back, now as a Na’vi avatar apparently created before the first film’s climactic attack just in case Quaritch Version 1.0 didn’t survive. So now the Na’vi-hating psycho from the first movie is back as a psycho Na’vi, and he has a personal vendetta against Jake and his family.

It might sound ridiculous, and it is ridiculous — Quaritch even gets to contemplate the remnants of his human skull at one point before blithely crushing it in his huge Na’vi hands — but we can also sense a greater purpose at work as we watch our villain trying to become more like a Na’vi with all the brute-force gracelessness one might expect from an unrepentant oorah blowhard. (“Yeah, colonel, get some!” his men yell in triumph when Quaritch finally manages to tame a banshee, one of the flying lizardlike creatures the Na’vi use to get around.) Just to make sure we get the point, Cameron cuts between Sully’s and Quaritch’s respective efforts to adapt. On the one side is generosity, openness, and humility in the face of nature. On the other side is pure macho supremacy.

Although they’re roundly mocked for their incompetence in the ways of the sea, Jake’s kids make honest attempts to bond with the mostly uncooperative Metkayina and their whalelike compatriots, the tulkun. And here Cameron can’t help himself. A longtime ocean nut, he’s created these imaginary seas, and he’s going to spend every minute of screen time he can exploring their digital wonders. But something else emerges during these sequences. If the first Avatar is remarkable because it shows us wondrous lands nothing like our own, The Way of Water is remarkable because it shows us that this world is, in fact, very much like our own. In creating Pandora’s forest world for the original movie, Cameron clearly borrowed liberally from existing marine ecosystems. And on land, floating tentacular spirits and bioluminescent creatures do in fact look otherworldly. But now, in this underwater setting, they look lovely, and, weirdly, almost ordinary. Indeed, among the many previous Cameron titles this new picture recalls (including, notably, Titanic ), foremost are his documentaries about undersea exploration, Ghosts of the Abyss (2003) and Aliens of the Deep (2005).

These languorously dreamy, whale-filled sequences constitute The Way of Water ’s make-or-break middle, when viewers will either become supremely bored or supremely enchanted. As an ocean obsessive myself , I was totally enraptured, but I suspect others will be onboard too. For starters, the effects work is unbelievable; I still haven’t entirely wrapped my head around the fact that none of this stuff actually exists, that it’s all a meticulously rendered digital environment. But, more important, Cameron hasn’t lost the ability to convey his dorky-sweet enthusiasm to the audience. It’s hard not to lose oneself amid the gentle, flowing cadences of this exquisitely created undersea universe, where the water enveloping the characters gradually becomes a metaphor for the interconnectedness of all living beings.

Good thing, then, that there are now living beings to care about. One of the (valid) knocks against the first Avatar is that the characters feel like cutouts, there largely to serve as vessels for exploring the fantastical setting. This time around, it feels as if Cameron has taken the criticism to heart. As a result, he spends a decidedly blockbuster-unfriendly amount of time establishing Jake’s family’s dynamics, the parents’ hopes and fears and the kids’ restlessness. Teenage rebels, outcast anxiety, warring cliques, budding intertribal romances, domineering parents — it’s all there. We get a montage of births, family portraits, kids’ changing heights carved on posts, even glimpses of “date night” with Jake and Neytiri.

Meanwhile, Jake’s military training still remains, and he runs his family like a hard-ass officer, using terms like fall in and dismissed when talking to his children, all the while expecting to be called “sir.” (When he grounds one of his sons, he literally grounds him: “No more flying for a month.”) Neytiri chastises Jake for being too hard on his boys. “This is not a squad. It is a family,” she reminds him as he sits there, grimly cleaning his gun. Again, why return to Earth to tell your stories when you can bring your Earth stories to Pandora? At times, one wonders if The Way of Water might be, among other things, Cameron’s version of a kitchen-sink family drama. Ultimately, all that time spent with these characters pays off. An early instance of Jake’s sons disobeying his orders feels fairly unremarkable; when it happens again later, we feel far more invested in these kids’ survival. By the end of the movie, all that talk of family actually starts to ring true.

None of this is particularly original, of course, but Cameron’s forte has never been originality. He likes to present familiar stories in bright new variations with more force and authority than ever before. In this sense, he resembles a silent-movie director, happy to play with archetypes and common tales and myths but in ways designed to captivate even the most jaded viewers. Cameron isn’t afraid to be corny because he can back up the outsize emotions with both sincerity and ruthlessness.

And all those drifting passages of communion with whales and patient portraits of characters seeking to belong set up the film’s spectacular final act with its seafaring battles full of harpooning, strangling, slicing, crushing, and drowning as well as one particularly crowd-pleasing amputation. But the sentimentality hasn’t entirely dissipated; the savagery has a purpose, and it’s a surprisingly cathartic one. Cameron’s divided self finds its fullest expression on Pandora not just because he can create vast new worlds and matrices of spiritually interconnected beings but also because he can fight battles he can’t fight elsewhere. For even here, he’s ultimately telling an Earth story. He channels his (and our) inchoate rage at the devastation of the natural world, and he delivers a fantasy of revenge — albeit one set on a strange shore in a distant galaxy, one that just happens to look like a heightened, trippy version of our own.

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Take the plunge: Avatar's underwater scenes are immersive and extraordinary

Justin Chang

Filmmaker James Cameron returns to the world of the Na'vi people in Avatar: The Way of Water. 20th Century Films hide caption

Filmmaker James Cameron returns to the world of the Na'vi people in Avatar: The Way of Water.

I wouldn't call Avatar: The Way of Water one of the year's best movies, but it's undoubtedly one of the best movie-going experiences I've had in a while. I had more or less the same reaction to James Cameron's first Avatar in 2009.

It told a thin but trippy Dances with Wolves -ian story about the colonizers v. the colonized, but the world building was spectacular: It was thrilling to visit the faraway moon called Pandora, with its immersive, digitally created jungle landscapes. It was thrilling, too, to root for the towering blue-skinned Na'vi people, brought to life through Cameron's pioneering use of performance-capture technology, which translates actors' movements and facial expressions into computer-generated imagery.

And so it's great to return to Pandora, although since many years have passed since the events of the first movie, there is some clunky exposition to get through. Sam Worthington again plays Jake Sully, a former human now reborn as a Na'vi man, and Zoe Saldaña returns as the fierce warrior princess Neytiri. They have four Na'vi children, including an adopted teenage daughter, Kiri. She's played, through the magic of performance capture, by the decidedly not-teenage Sigourney Weaver . And Weaver, as you might recall, played a human scientist who was killed in the first Avatar .

How the older and younger Weaver characters are connected is one of the new movie's mysteries, but it's clear that Kiri is a child of unique gifts. In one scene, she tells Jake that she feels acutely in tune with Eywa, the powerful deity who maintains balance among all living things on Pandora, saying, "I hear her heartbeat. She's so close. She's just ... there. Like a word about to be spoken."

For some viewers, a little of this Mother Earth stuff will go a long way, though I've always found Cameron's cornball sincerity hard to resist. He may push the technological envelope, but he's an earnest, old-fashioned storyteller at heart. For all its visual sophistication and its three-hour-plus running time, Avatar: The Way of Water tells a simple, straightforward story about a family in danger.

The villain here is once again Jake's archenemy, Col. Miles Quaritch, played by a ferocious Stephen Lang. You might recall that he died in the first Avatar , but Cameron's science-fiction conceit is elastic enough to get over that hurdle. And this time, Quaritch himself has been resurrected as a Na'vi, making him even more fearsome and powerful. He has a score to settle, and so Jake and Neytiri take their kids and flee to the sea, where they hide out among a group of Na'vi beach dwellers.

The movie's second act is basically a charming riff on Swiss Family Robinson , as Jake and Neytiri receive a wary welcome from the community leaders, one of them played by a glaring Kate Winslet . The family is forced to adapt to an entirely new way of life. That means becoming much better swimmers and learning to communicate with the local wildlife, including a giant talking whale-like creature called a Tulkun.

It may sound silly, but this is where the movie soars to life. Cameron knows a thing or two about underwater peril, as his movies Titanic and The Abyss bear out. He's also an accomplished diver, and here, he plunges you into the watery depths and surrounds you with the most surreal-looking alien fish specimens you've ever seen.

In these moments, I didn't feel like I was watching a movie so much as floating in one. In addition to the 3D, which I do recommend, Cameron has tried to heighten the level of detail by shooting at an unusually fast 48 frames per second. It looks a little too smooth at times, especially on dry land, but the effect is stunning underwater. I almost wished the movie would never leave the ocean floor, that it could just sustain this Jacques-Cousteau-on-mushrooms vibe for three hours.

'Avatar': Big-Picture Visions, Stirringly Realized

But that's not the Cameron way. He sometimes breaks his own spell by cutting away to Quaritch, which often feels jarring and not that interesting. And as superb as Cameron's eye is, his dialogue remains as tin-eared as ever. But everything does come together in the movie's action-heavy final act, which features extraordinarily well-orchestrated set-pieces both above and below water.

Quaritch is joined by some deadly human fighters too, and Avatar: The Way of Water encourages us — successfully — to root against humanity for all the destruction it's unleashed on the world. We've seen that before, including in the first Avatar , but it speaks to Cameron's real achievement, which is to bring us into total identification with these computer-generated Na'vi characters. I don't know if that will be enough to sustain the Avatar series over three upcoming sequels, but I'm already looking forward to another trip to this alien moon. Until then, Pandora, so long, and thanks for all the fish.

Review: An exercise in Na’vi gazing, ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ will cure your moviegoing blues

A CGI image of a blue man riding on the back of a winged creature over a body of water

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In “Avatar: The Way of Water,” the director James Cameron pulls you down so deep, and sets you so gently adrift, that at times you don’t feel like you’re watching a movie so much as floating in one. From time to time he brings you to the bottom of an alien sea, shot with stunning hyper-clarity in high-frame-rate 3D and teeming with all manner of surreally strange fish — all oddly shaped fins, decorative tentacles and other vestiges of an otherworldly, faintly screw-loose evolutionary timeline.

You can imagine the fun (and the headaches) that Cameron and his visual-effects wizards must have had designing this brilliant ocean-floor nirvana. You can also see an astronomical budget (reportedly north of $350 million) and an extraordinarily sophisticated digital toolkit at work, plus a flair for camera movement that, likely shaped by the director’s hours of deep-sea diving, achieves an exhilarating sense of buoyancy.

Much as you might long for Cameron to keep us down there — to give us, in effect, the most expensive and elaborate underwater hangout movie ever made — he can’t or won’t sustain all this dreamy Jacques-Cousteau-on-mushrooms wonderment for three-plus hours. He’s James Cameron, after all, and he has a stirringly old-fashioned story to tell, crap dialogue to dispense and, in time, a hell of an action movie to unleash, complete with fiery shipwrecks, deadly arrows and a whale-sized, tortoise-skinned creature known as a Tulkun. All in all, it’s marvelous to have him back (Cameron, that is, though the Tulkun is also welcome). He remains one of the few Hollywood visionaries who actually merits that much-abused term, and as such, he has more on his mind than just pummeling the audience into submission.

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Cameron wants to submerge you in another time and place, to seduce you into a state of pure, unforced astonishment. And he does, after some visual adjustment; the use of high frame rate (a sped-up 48 frames per second) tends to work better underwater than on dry land, where the overly frictionless, motion-smoothed look might put you briefly in mind of a Na’vi soap opera (“The Blue and the Beautiful,” surely). But then he can captivate you with something as lyrically simple — but actually, as painstakingly computer-generated — as a shot of his characters sitting beside the water at night, their faces and bodies reflecting the digital phosphorescence below. Any hack can make stuff blow up real good; Cameron makes stuff glow up real good.

In this long-running, long-gestating sequel to his 2009 juggernaut, “Avatar,” Cameron returns you to that distant moon called Pandora, though most of the action unfolds far from the first movie’s majestic floating mountains and verdant rainforests. We encountered that dazzling, soon-to-be-despoiled Eden through the eyes of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a square-jawed, soft-hearted ex-Marine sent by his ruthless corporate overlords to infiltrate the Na’vi, a powerful race of blue-skinned, yellow-eyed, cat-tailed humanoids who lived in astonishing oneness with all living things. Transplanted into his own genetically tailored Na’vi body, or avatar, Jake didn’t take long to switch allegiances and turn against humanity, having fallen hopelessly in love with Pandora’s beauty and also with a Na’vi warrior princess, Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña).

“Avatar” was a thrilling moviegoing experience and a pioneering showpiece for performance-capture technology, which allowed Cameron and his actors to endow their Na’vi characters with astonishingly detailed and lifelike gazes, gestures and physiognomies. The movie was also built on a consciously thin story, with thudding echoes of anti-imperialist westerns like “Dances With Wolves” and the fondly remembered eco-conscious animation “FernGully: The Last Rainforest.” But then, Cameron’s cutting-edge technophilia has always been married to, and complemented by, an unapologetic cornball classicism. And if it was easy to snicker at “Avatar’s” hippy-dippy sincerity, it was also easy to surrender to its multiplex transcendentalism, its world of synthetically crafted natural wonders. Here was the rare studio picture that seemed enlivened, rather than undermined, by its contradictions.

If anything, those contradictions hit you with even greater force in “Avatar: The Way of Water,” which fully and subtly immerses you in the Na’vi world from start to finish. The level of computer-generated artifice on display in every landscape and seascape is cumulatively staggering, in ways to which even the first movie, toggling insistently between Jake’s human and Na’vi experiences, didn’t aspire. Just as crucially, the stakes have risen, the emotions have deepened and the brand-extension imperatives that typically govern sequels are happily nowhere in evidence.

A blue, CGI woman holding a bow and arrow while interacting with a blue, CGI man in a fiery landscape

That might seem remarkable, considering that the “Avatar” series (at least three more movies are planned), like all properties of the former Fox Studios, now belongs to Disney, speaking of ruthless corporate overlords. But then, it’s no surprise that the director of “Aliens” and “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” two of the most indelible sequels in action-cinema history, knows a thing or two about intelligent, expansive franchise building. And as “The Abyss” and “Titanic” bore out, Cameron also knows a thing or two about water, which is where this latest sequel finds its sweet spot: Welcome to Pandora’s beach.

But first, there’s a truckload of exposition to get through. As in the first movie, Jake obliges with the kind of grunting film-noir-gumshoe voiceover that reminds you, in ways more endearing than irritating, that snappy exposition will never be one of Cameron’s strong suits. (He co-wrote the script with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver.) Several years after shedding his own avatar and being reborn as a full-blown Na’vi, Jake has mastered his post-human way of life. He and Neytiri are parents to four Na’vi children: two teenage sons, Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) and Lo’ak (Britain Dalton); an 8-year-old daughter, Tuk (Trinity Bliss), and an adopted teenage daughter of mysterious provenance named Kiri. She’s played by Sigourney Weaver, a casting choice that naturally ties her to Dr. Grace Augustine, Weaver’s deceased scientist from the first movie, initiating a mystery that will presumably be unraveled further down the franchise road.

Weaver’s casting also raises some odd, potentially discourse-sowing questions about Kiri’s chaste (for now) bond with a young human male and fellow foundling named Spider (Jack Champion), who likes to run, bare of chest and foot, with the Sully clan. But if their friendship makes for an optimistic portrait of interspecies harmony, Cameron doesn’t linger on it for long. Instead, he unleashes a grave threat that drives Jake and Neytiri from their Omaticayan jungle home and sends them fleeing to the ocean, where they seek refuge with a civilization of Na’vi reef dwellers known as the Metkayina.

It’s a shrewd narrative gambit that not only refreshes the scenery (and how!) but also forces Jake, Neytiri and their family to adapt to an entirely new way of life, cueing a second-act training regimen that allows Cameron to show off every square inch of his aquatic paradise. (His key collaborators include his longtime cinematographer, Russell Carpenter, and production designers Dylan Cole and Ben Procter.)

Led by the kind, welcoming Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and his less hospitable wife, Ronal (a glaring Kate Winslet), the Metkayina are a highly evolved clan of water dwellers, as underscored by their aquamarine skin (in contrast to the Omaticayans’ cerulean tones), seashell-and-fishnet jewelry and intricate tattoos, reminiscent of Maori body art. They also boast unusually thick, long tails built for underwater propulsion. For Jake, Neytiri and especially their children, learning to navigate the watery wilderness just outside their new beach-bum paradise will prove a difficult challenge. It’ll also earn them some mockery from the locals, especially Tonowari and Ronal’s own teenage children, in a story that sometimes plays like a teen surfing movie by way of “Swiss Family Robinson.”

Even coming from a filmmaker used to setting intimate relational sagas against large-scale tragedy, the tenderness and occasional sentimentality with which Cameron invests this drama of family conflict and survival feels unusually personal. It can also feel a bit thinly stretched at three hours, but even that seems more an act of generosity than indulgence on Cameron’s part; his attachment to this family is real and in time, so is yours. Audiences expecting propulsive non-stop action, rather than the director’s customary slow build, may be surprised to find themselves watching a leisurely saga of overprotective parents and rebellious teens, biracial/adoptive identity issues and casual xenophobia. They’ll also be treated to some lovely whalespeak courtesy of those mammoth Tulkuns, who turn out to be engaging conversationalists as well as formidable fighters.

If you’re impatient, sit tight: The action is still to come, much of it dispensed by a snarling reincarnation of the first movie’s ex-military villain, Col. Miles Quaritch, here reborn — and played once more by the ferocious Stephen Lang — as a Na’vi avatar implanted with a surviving packet of the colonel’s memories. Bigger, badder and bluer than before, Quaritch 2.0 isn’t looking for unobtainium, the first movie’s stupidly, wonderfully named mineral MacGuffin. All he really wants is revenge against Jake and his family. (It’s personal for him, too.) His Na’vi transformation leaves only a handful of human characters, some of them old friends (Joel David Moore, Dileep Rao), though most of them are puny, inconsequential villains who rain down destruction on the Metkayina and their delicate ecosystem, only to reap destruction in return. Like its predecessor, “Avatar: The Way of Water” is both an environmental cautionary tale and a madly effective opportunity to root against our own kind; by the time the third act kicks in, you’ll be screaming for human blood.

Cameron’s return trip to Pandora has been long in the making and nearly as long in the mocking. Over 13 years of ever-shifting industry buzz about possible sequels, sequels to sequels and countless changes of plan, more than a few have expressed exasperation with the director’s ever-outsized ambitions and even cast doubt on the first “Avatar’s” pop-cultural legacy. It’s hardly the first time Cameron has been dinged in advance for an Olympian folly, and if the pattern holds, this latest and most ambitious picture will stun most of his naysayers into silence. “Never underestimate James Cameron” has become something of a mantra of late when, in fact, the underestimation is crucial. It’s part of the director’s hook, his wind-up showmanship, his belief that moviegoing can be a religious and even redemptive experience. The more he suffers, the more he can thrill us, and the more fully the wonder of cinema can be reborn.

You don’t have to buy into that self-mythologizing to surrender, even if only intermittently, to the lovely, uneven, transporting sprawl of “Avatar: The Way of Water.” Certainly it’s hard not to feel moved and even heartened by the conviction of Cameron’s filmmaking, the unfeigned sincerity with which he directs a young Metkayina woman to solemnly intone, “The way of water has no beginning and no end.” That could be interpreted as a dig at the running time, but it also nicely articulates Cameron’s sense of visual continuity. As with the first “Avatar,” the immersive fluidity he achieves here feels like an organic outgrowth from his premise, a reminder that all life flows harmoniously together.

Where it will flow next is a mystery, and it’d be disingenuous of me to suggest I’m not eager to find out. Until then, Pandora, so long, and thanks for all the fish.

‘Avatar: The Way of Water’

In English and Na’vi dialogue with English subtitles Rated: PG-13, for sequences of strong violence and intense action, partial nudity and some strong language Running time: 3 hours, 10 minutes Playing: Starts Dec. 16 in general release

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Justin Chang was a film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 2016 to 2024. He won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in criticism for work published in 2023. Chang is the author of the book “FilmCraft: Editing” and serves as chair of the National Society of Film Critics and secretary of the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn.

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Parents' guide to, avatar: the way of water.

Common Sense Says
Parents Say 40 Reviews
Kids Say 112 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Long but dazzling return to Pandora has sci-fi violence.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 13+?

Sci-fi action violence. Supporting characters die due to explosions, bullet woun

Scattered strong language includes one "f--k," "holy s--t," "bulls--t," "dips--t

Brief scene of nonsexual nudity (blink-and-miss glimpse of a Na'vi woman's breas

No product placement in movie, but dozens of off-screen tie-in merchandising dea

Any Positive Content?

Messages about acceptance, unity, and teamwork. Strong environmental, pro-peace,

The women leaders of the clan are strong, brave, assertive characters, and the N

The Na'vi species is divided into clans with a variety of cultures, traditions,

Violence & Scariness

Sci-fi action violence. Supporting characters die due to explosions, bullet wounds, arrows, and dismemberment, as well as a whale-like creature's destructive movements. Several intense scenes involving combat, a ship sinking, and animal hunting that shows the killing of ancient beings. Children are held captive and at gunpoint. Bullying and pranking that leaves a teen in harm's way. Children are used as hostages. A couple of emotional deaths.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Scattered strong language includes one "f--k," "holy s--t," "bulls--t," "dips--t," "bitch," "goddamn," "damn," "piss," "hell," "oh my God," "ass," "ass-whooping," and insults like "four-fingered freak," "half-breed," "stupid," "ignorant," etc. "Jesus" used as an exclamation.

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Sex, Romance & Nudity

Brief scene of nonsexual nudity (blink-and-miss glimpse of a Na'vi woman's breasts). Adolescent Na'vi flirt and hold hands. There's a strong bond between Kiri and Spider. Jake and Neytiri embrace and kiss.

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Products & Purchases

No product placement in movie, but dozens of off-screen tie-in merchandising deals, including toys and books aimed at young kids.

Positive Messages

Messages about acceptance, unity, and teamwork. Strong environmental, pro-peace, and anti-imperialist themes. Idea that love and understanding can trump division and violence. Shows consequences, dangers, and immorality of a corrupt government colonizing and oppressing another land and people. Stresses importance of honest communication between children and their parents.

Positive Role Models

The women leaders of the clan are strong, brave, assertive characters, and the Na'vi are all deeply connected to the land. Jake and Neytiri are courageous and loving parents and clan leaders. Ronal is the spiritual leader of her community. Spider loves the Na'vi even though he's human and is forced into difficult moral situations. Lo'ak finds a way to commune with a sacred creature.

Diverse Representations

The Na'vi species is divided into clans with a variety of cultures, traditions, and belief systems, with overt parallels to Indigenous peoples (tribal tattoos and symbiotic, spiritual relationships with nature) and Indigenous history (colonialist expansion, genocide). But the filmmakers are White, and main characters are almost all voiced by non-Indigenous actors, raising issues about cultural appropriation. The women leaders of the clan are strong, brave, assertive.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Parents need to know that Avatar: The Way of Water is the long-awaited sequel to James Cameron's epic 2009 mega-hit Avatar . The sequel returns to Pandora 15 years after Jake Sully ( Sam Worthington ) rallied the indigenous Na'vi clans against the corrupt "Sky People" (colonizing humans trying to mine and extract Pandora's resources). Jake and his mate, Neytiri ( Zoe Saldaña ), now have four children and decide to save their forest clan by seeking refuge for their family among the island dwelling Metkayina clan. Filmed mostly underwater, the three-hour-plus film is visually striking. And, like the first movie, it has sci-fi action violence, with weapons, hand-to-hand combat, and the hunting of a sacred whale-like creature. The story also features adolescent flirting, hand-holding, and crushes, as well as marital affection. Occasional strong language includes many uses of "s--t," "bitch," and "ass," as well as one "f--k." Like the first movie, this one has a strong anti-imperialist message, plus environmental and multicultural themes that stress the importance of tolerance, acceptance, and honest communication. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Parent and Kid Reviews

Parents say (40)
Kids say (112)

Based on 40 parent reviews

3 hours of extreme unnecessary violence !

More kid friendly than the 1st, what's the story.

AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER is set approximately 15 years after the events of the original Avatar . In the forests of Pandora, Jake ( Sam Worthington ) and his mate, Neytiri ( Zoe Saldaña ), are now parents to two teen sons, Neteyam ( Jamie Flatters ) and Lo'ak (Britain Dalton), as well as a young girl named Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), and Kiri ( Sigourney Weaver ), the teen daughter they adopted after she was born under mysterious circumstances. Jake has helped the Na'vi fight against the Sky People (humans trying to mine and extract Pandora's resources), but the onslaught of the humans' military operations ramps up when they launch a new mission: sending a select group of avatars with the uploaded consciousness and memories of the long-dead Col. Quaritch ( Stephen Lang ) and his loyal soldiers. Quaritch and his Na'vi-fied squad terrorize Jake and Neytiri's Omaticaya clan until Jake convinces Neytiri that their immediate family should leave and seek refuge with the far-off island dwelling Metkayina clan, who are a different shade of blue and boast fin-like tails and flipper-like hands. Their leader, Tonowari ( Cliff Curtis ), and his spiritual leader mate, Ronal ( Kate Winslet ), tentatively grant Jake and Neytiri's family sanctuary, but eventually Quaritch tracks them down and brings the war of the Sky People to the water clans.

Is It Any Good?

James Cameron 's crowd-pleasing sequel is a spectacular technical achievement that, while overlong, manages to dazzle the senses enough to prove that the director is still a visionary. Avatar: The Way of Water isn't a movie you see for its layered, complicated plot. The storyline is simple, and the dialogue is mostly expository or cliché, particularly when Quaritch talks. But it doesn't quite matter, because Cameron puts the movie's $350 million budget to remarkable use in all of the underwater sequences, the incredible creature effects, and the overall immersive return to Pandora. It's worth seeing on the biggest screen possible, in 3D if you can. Yes, the three-hour-plus runtime is long, but it's easy to get lost in the movie's memorable world-building. The motion-capture performances are fascinating to behold, and Winslet and Curtis are welcome additions to the cast. Of the young actors, Dalton stands out as Neytiri and Jake's troublemaking younger son, Lo'ak, who befriends an outcast tulkun (the sacred alien whales). Also worth noting is Jack Champion as Spider, the human boy raised among the Na'vi but whose mask marks him as different. His bond with Kiri, who's also a little bit different, seems headed toward romance, but it's too early to tell (not to mention complicated).

Lang's Quaritch is only slightly less unhinged in this installment than he was in the first film. But he's far from the only antagonist. The Na'vi face seemingly insurmountable odds as the humans' tech gets better and deadlier. The action sequences come mostly in the third act, but there are moments of pulse-pounding peril throughout that will make audiences clutch their seats (or their partners). There's even an extended ship-sinking sequence that's reminiscent of Titanic , right down to how people grip the railing and hold their breath as areas flood. While there's no Pandoran quartet playing classical music, composer Simon Franglen uses the late James Horner's original themes to create an evocative score as the Na'vi fight for their lives. With Avatar: The Way of Water , Cameron and cinematographer Russell Carpenter have created something monumental in scope, so much so that the movie's flaws don't prevent it from being stunning.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the visual and special effects in Avatar: The Way of Water . How do they compare to those in the first movie? How has technology changed since that one was released?

What themes does James Cameron consistently work into his films? Compare aspects of Avatar to the Terminator movies and Titanic . What similarities can you find?

Discuss the difference between how humans dealt with the Na'vi in the first movie and in this sequel.

How do the different tribes from Pandora interact, work together, and use teamwork to achieve their goals? Why is that an important character strength ?

The language and culture of the Maori people indigenous to New Zealand provided director James Cameron with inspiration for the sea-based Metkayina people. What are respectful ways to acknowledge other cultures?

Movie Details

In theaters : December 16, 2022
On DVD or streaming : March 28, 2023
Cast : Zoe Saldana , Sam Worthington , Kate Winslet , Sigourney Weaver
Director : James Cameron
Inclusion Information : Female actors, Black actors, Latino actors
Studio : Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Genre : Science Fiction
Topics : Adventures , Ocean Creatures , Space and Aliens
Character Strengths : Courage , Perseverance , Teamwork
Run time : 192 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : sequences of strong violence and intense action, partial nudity and some strong language
Awards : Academy Award , Common Sense Selection
Last updated : August 9, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ Review: It’s Even More Eye-Popping Than ‘Avatar,’ but James Cameron’s Epic Sequel Has No More Dramatic Dimension

The underwater sequences are beyond dazzling — they insert the audience right into the action — but the story of Jake Sully and his family, now on the run, is a string of serviceable clichés.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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There are many words one could use to describe the heightened visual quality of James Cameron ’s original “ Avatar ” — words like incandescent, immersive, bedazzling. But in the 13 years since that movie came out, the word I tend to remember it best by is glowing . The primeval forest and floating-mountain landscapes of Pandora had an intoxicating fairy-tale shimmer. You wanted to live inside them, even as the story that unfolded inside them was merely okay.

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“The Way of Water” cost a reported $350 million, meaning that it would need to be one of the three or four top-grossing movies of all time just to break even. I think the odds of that happening are actually quite good. Cameron has raised not only the stakes of his effects artistry but the choreographic flow of his staging, to the point of making “The Way of Water,” like “Avatar,” into the apotheosis of a must-see movie. The entire world will say: We’ve got to know what this thrill ride feels like .

At its height, it feels exhilarating. But not all the way through. Cameron, in “The Way of Water,” remains a fleet and exacting classical popcorn storyteller, but oh, the story he’s telling! The script he has co-written is a string of serviceable clichés that give the film the domestic adventure-thriller spine it needs, but not anything more than that. The story, in fact, could hardly be more basic. The Sky People, led again by the treacherous Col. Quaritch (Stephen Lang), have now become Avatars themselves, with Quaritch recast as a scowling Na’vi redneck in combat boots and a black crewcut. They’ve arrived in this guise to hunt Jake down. But Jake escapes with his family and hides out with the Metkayina. Quaritch and his goon squad commandeer a hunting ship and eventually track them down. There is a massive confrontation. The end.

This tale, with its bare-bones dialogue, could easily have served an ambitious Netflix thriller, and could have been told in two hours rather than three. But that’s the point, isn’t it? “The Way of Water” is braided with sequences that exist almost solely for their sculptured imagistic magic. It’s truly a movie crossed with a virtual-reality theme-park ride. Another way to put it is that it’s a live-action film that casts the spell of an animated fantasy. But though the faces of the Na’vi and the MetKayina are expressive, and the actors make their presence felt, there is almost zero dimensionality to the characters. The dimensionality is all in the images.

Reviewed at AMC Empire, Dec. 6, 2022. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 192 MIN.

Production: A Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, 20th Century Studios release of a 20 th Century Studios, Lightstorm Entertainment production. Producers: James Cameron, Jon Landau. Executive producers: David Valdes, Richard Baneham.
Crew: Director: James Cameron. Screenplay: James Cameron, Rick, Jaffe, Amanda Silver. Camera: Russell Carpenter. Editors: David Brenner, James Cameron, John Refoua, Stephen E. Rivkin. Music: Simon Franglen.
With: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Stephen Lang, Britain Dalton, Sigourney Weaver, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Edie Falco, Jemaine Clement, Giovanni Rabisi, Kate Winslet.

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Cast & crew
User reviews

A paraplegic Marine dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission becomes torn between following his orders and protecting the world he feels is his home. A paraplegic Marine dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission becomes torn between following his orders and protecting the world he feels is his home. A paraplegic Marine dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission becomes torn between following his orders and protecting the world he feels is his home.

James Cameron
Sam Worthington
Zoe Saldana
Sigourney Weaver
3.8K User reviews
514 Critic reviews
83 Metascore
91 wins & 131 nominations total

Top cast 99+

(as Zoë Saldana)

Dr. Grace Augustine

Trudy Chacón

Colonel Miles Quaritch

Parker Selfridge

Norm Spellman

(as Carol Christine Hilaria Pounder)

Tsu'tey

Dr. Max Patel

Corporal Lyle Wainfleet

Private Fike
Cryo Vault Med Tech

Venture Star Crew Chief
Lock Up Trooper

Shuttle Pilot
(as James Pitt)

Shuttle Co-Pilot
All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

Trivia The Na'vi language was created entirely from scratch by linguist Dr. Paul R. Frommer . James Cameron hired him to construct a language that would be easily enunciable for actors to pronounce but would not resemble any human language. Frommer created about 1,000 words. Cameron requested Dr Frommer that the Na'vi language must be entirely new, as it's supposed to be from another planet, and that it should sound "nice" to the audience. Cameron didn't want any additional editing done to their voices and wanted them to sound authentic and not unnatural. Equipped with a vast knowledge of linguistics, Dr Frommer understood what kinds of sounds the Na'vi language would or wouldn't have. Just like "j" and "r" don't exist in Korean, in English, the 'h' sound is unaspirated. In a similar vein, Frommer's conception of the new language totally avoided the sounds of "ch", "th", and "sh". Additionally, Frommer had to decide on the language's syntax -- or rules regarding word order. He came up with his own set of constraints and words to be used in the language of Pandora. The tongue took inspiration from the natural languages of the world to create a totally different spoken form.
Goofs When Jake's late brother, Tom, is uncovered, he's played by Sam Worthington . In the next shot of Tom being covered again it's clearly someone else.

Jake Sully : Neytiri calls me skxawng. It means "moron."

Crazy credits There are no opening credits of any kind, outside of the 20th Century Fox fanfare. The title of the film doesn't appear on screen until the end of the movie. For the 2022 re-release, the 20th Century Fox logo was swapped out for a 20th Century Studios logo for consistency with the second film.
Herd: As they fly over Pandora in Trudy's gunship, Jake, Grace and Norm get a closer look at some of Pandora's creatures.
The Schoolhouse: Entering an abandoned schoolhouse in the jungle with Grace and Norm to retrieve supplies, Jake makes a grim discovery.
Purple Moss: Jake follows Neytiri after his rescue, and delights in the bioluminescent moss that glows beneath his feet with every step. I Don't Even Know Your Name: Newly tasked with teaching Jake the Na'vi ways, Neytiri brings him to dinner with the entire clan.
What Does Hold Them Up?: The Avatar team lands at their new base camp in the Hallelujah Mountains, and Jake and Norm marvel at the floating mountains.
Extended Montage: Jake learns the ways of the Pandoran forest under Neytiri's tutelage, and the gulf between his two worlds grows ever wider.
Neytiri's Flyby: As Tsu'tey, Jake and two other young hunters travel across suspended vines to dizzying heights, Neytiri sails past on her banshee.
Sturmbeest Hunt: Omaticayan hunters on direhorses attack a massive herd of sturmbeests, while Jake takes aim from atop his banshee.
Extended Love Scene: Jake and Neytiri confess their feelings for one another and bond together for life under the Tree of Voices in this extended scene.
Drums of War: The morning after the military's attack on the Tree of Voices, Parker and Quaritch get some bad news from the reconnaissance team.
Tsu'tey's Fall: In the RDA assault, Tsu'tey fights fiercely after boarding the Valkyrie shuttle. But the soldiers counter with a hail of bullets.
Strumbeest Attack: Sturmbeests charge to the rescue when Neytiri is cornered by RDA soldiers in AMP suits.
Extended Thanator Fight: Neytiri and her fearsome thanator battle Colonel Quaritch in his AMP suit in this extended sequence.
The Last Shadow: When Neytiri and Jake find Tsu'tey mortally wounded, he passes leadership of the Omaticaya to Jake, with one last request of him.
Connections Edited into Bones: The Gamer in the Grease (2009)
Soundtracks I See You (Theme from Avatar) Performed by Leona Lewis Music by James Horner and Simon Franglen Lyrics by Simon Franglen , Kuk Harrell , and James Horner Produced by Simon Franglen and James Horner Leona Lewis performs courtesy of Syco Music

User reviews 3.8K

goldeneyeonline
Dec 21, 2009

Women in Science Fiction

What's meant to happen to Sully's Navi/"Avatar" body, when his human body gets woken up on-base? And between sessions? We never see Navi-Jake returning to base; Is his switched-off Navi body just laying comatose, in a forest full of predators? Do the real Navi just think Jake has narcolepsy??
If at the the end of the movie, the humans were, as Jake said, sent back to their dying planet (Earth), are we to assume that they all were sent back and simply died?
What is 'Avatar' about?
December 18, 2009 (United States)
United States
United Kingdom
Official Facebook
Twentieth Century Fox
Avatar: An IMAX 3D Experience
Kaua'i, Hawaii, USA (rain forest)
Dune Entertainment
Lightstorm Entertainment
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$237,000,000 (estimated)
$785,221,649
$77,025,481
Dec 20, 2009
$2,923,706,026

Technical specs

Runtime 2 hours 42 minutes
Dolby Digital
Dolby Atmos

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Avatar: The Way of Water (United States, 2022)

It’s finally here. After years of missed release dates related to postproduction issues, James Cameron’s oft-delayed sequel to 2009’s Avatar has finally arrived. Was it worth the 13-year wait? Unquestionably. It’s difficult to overstate how impressive and potentially game-changing this motion picture is. Nothing before has prepared audiences for the immersion offered by Avatar: The Way of Water when seen in optimal circumstances. The film’s straightforward narrative (which isn’t going to garner any writing nominations) plays a distant second fiddle to the amazing technical leap forward that this movie offers. If theatrical movies are going to survive, this is the future – the kind of experience that will get me off my sofa and into a well-upholstered theater seat. The Way of Water gave me three-plus hours like no other three-plus hours I have spent in a multiplex. By alternating fast-paced action sequences with slower, more contemplative stretches, Cameron calms the blood pressure before repeatedly elevating it. Those in search of a rich emotional experience or complex storyline won’t find either here, but those things have never been the director’s bread-and-butter. He offers enough of both to allow his vision and his team’s technical bravura to smooth out any pacing inconsistencies and take the viewer down a dizzying rabbit hole. Awesome.

The sequel starts between 15 and 20 years after the first Avatar ended. During the peaceful interval between movies, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) have been raising a family: eldest son Neteyam (Jamie Flatters), adopted daughter Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), younger son Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), and youngest daughter Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss). Also hanging around is Spider (Jack Champion), a human left behind (babies couldn’t be put into cryo-sleep for the journey home) who has “gone native.” Their idyllic lifestyle with the Forest Na’vi is shattered when a new group of Earthlings arrive in the skies of Pandora. Their objective this time isn’t stip-mining; it’s colonization. But, before they can tame (and terraform) the planet, they have to pacify the natives…by force. Led by General Ardmore (Edie Falco), the marines are given a “by any means necessary” mandate, which suits Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) just fine. A Na’vi avatar implanted with the memories of the original Quaritch, this soldier has the same personality and intends to avenge himself upon the killer of his predecessor: Jake Sully.

No matter how many words I could use, I’d never be able to adequately describe the leap forward that The Way of Water takes. It’s as close to Virtual Reality as can be obtained in a movie theater. The visual effects are impressive on their own – CGI used in new ways to flesh out the first-rate world building begun in Avatar . The action sequences are cleanly choreographed and expertly shot – there’s no confusion about what’s going on. Cameron does what he has always done in ratcheting up the tension because it’s never a certainty who’s going to live and who’s going to die. The motion capture is top notch. There are very few humans in this film, making The Way of Water more of a hybrid animated/live-action movie. But when it comes to the 3D…

A quick comparison of The Way of Water with the most recent MCU release (which also has numerous underwater scenes), Wakanda Forever , illustrates how much bolder Cameron is when it comes to world-building, character arcs, and narrative trajectory. Compared to this film, even the best recent superhero entries feel stale and rote. The Way of Water excites both in terms of its visual presentation and the way in which it has been fashioned. There’s an energy here that has been sadly absent from too many recent Hollywood blockbusters. For 2022, The Way of Water may not be the most intricately made or intellectually rigorous motion picture, but it exemplifies what “cinematic” means today.

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Screen Rant reviews Avatar

So, after endless fanboy hype (and hate) rivaling that of the months leading up to Watchmen, Avatar is finally upon us. The burning question (once again): Is this film worthy of all the hype preceding it?

Well, first let's get to the story...

Sam Worthington plays Jake Sulley, a Marine who lost the use of his legs in battle. He has absolutely nothing to do with the Avatar project until his twin brother is killed (apparently in a senseless mugging). His brother was a scientist who had been working on and preparing for the Avatar project for three years.

This is significant because the bio-engineered Na'vi bodies created for the Avatar project are genetically coded to a specific human - and since Jake is the identical twin of his brother (despite having zero training in the project) the corporation talks him into joining it. Their logic is they can always use a Na'vi Avatar with combat skills on their side. Worthington's character is not only a Na'vi Avatar, but also obviously one for the audience as well... the person who comes onto the scene not knowing anything about what is going on (like the audience) and the film's exposition happens through his point of view for our benefit.

The planet Pandora contains a very rare mineral with extremely valuable properties (that are never explained, no need) called... Unobtainium. Yeah, I know. They only call it that once in the film, thankfully. Anyway, there are pockets of it scattered throughout the planet, but the biggest cache of it happens to be directly beneath the village of the Na'vi we come to know. The goal is to either negotiate with them to get them to move so the bulldozers can come in and mine or to expel them via military force.

Relations with the Na'vi have been shaky at best - it seems that olive branches were extended in the forms of schools, roads and supplies, but the Na'vi are not interested in any of it - and there have been some isolated clashes between them and the military. It's decided that Sully (not being a scientist) would be an ideal mole - he can go in and gain the trust of the locals in order to gather intel that can be used against them should things come to blows. Sully is promised that the expensive surgery which could once again give him use of his legs would be taken care of if he goes along with the plan - which he does. He has three months.

Sigouney Weaver plays Grace, the fairly grizzled, smoking lead scientist on the project who is not happy (to say the least) to see Jake show up to take his brother's place. There's another scientist who was friends with Jake's brother and who comes to resent the fact that after he has put in so much time learning how to be a Na'vi, that a newcomer with no experience comes in and plays a central role in the project. The scientists are determined to find a diplomatic solution (although tasking scientists with this doesn't really make much sense) and are constantly at odds with the military. They relocate their lab far away from central command in hopes that they can function more autonomously, without intervention from the corporation (represented by Giovanni Ribisi as the lead on the project) or the military.

Speaking of the military, Stephen Lang absolutely shines as Colonel Miles Quaritch, a chiseled in stone older soldier with plenty of field experience who is in charge of military operations on Pandora. Scenes with him, Weaver, the sci-fi tech and Cameron at the helm took me back to the most excellent James Cameron film, Aliens . In some ways this almost felt like a continuation of that film - if not in story, then in characters and hardware.

And of course we have Zoe Saldana as Neytiri, who does a fine job as the lead female who is put in charge of teaching (Avatar) Jake the language and culture of the Na'vi. At first she intensely dislikes and mistrusts Jake, but over the course of the film their relationship's development is the focal point as she softens towards him and he comes to respect and understand the Na'vi deeply.

So what's the verdict?

(Click to continue reading our Avatar review)

If you've seen the movie and want to talk about it without worrying about spoilers, please head over to our Avatar Spoilers Discussion .

Please don't discuss movie spoilers here in order to not ruin it for people who haven't seen it yet.

James Cameron has still got it.

Avatar is the most visually amazing film I've ever seen. His boasts were valid: Nothing like this has ever been done or seen on the big screen. The incredible scope and detail is really mesmerizing - he created an entire planet with variety and detail that is unparalleled... and had to maintain it throughout a 2 1/2 hour film. It boggles the mind to think that (by my estimate) at least 80% of the film is fully CGI.

The motion capture (both body and facial) that Cameron employs here is impressive. I would say that he has succeeded in conquering the "uncanny valley" (that last bit of detail in anthropomorphic CGI that bridges that feeling that something's "just not quite right"), except that he is not portraying fully human characters - where the subtle "misses" are most obvious. He wisely changed the appearance of the Na'vi enough that your mind registers them as non-human and thus is more forgiving of anomalies. That could be why he made their eyes so large, in order to make them more overtly expressive. I will say that as Na'vi, I found the physical and facial animation flawless - it seemed to me very natural even when put to the test with subtle, emotional close-up scenes.

The planet is lush, dangerous and believable - populated with dense vegetation and a wild variety of creatures. Everything from delicate, glowing, floating things to scary, aggressive, six-legged carnivores. Cameron has created an entire eco-system here with some interesting details, along with one detail that made me smirk (not really in a good way) in its similarity to "The Force" in Star Wars .

I didn't see it in IMAX, but it was in 3D. I can tell you that in my opinion the 3D only added to the breathtaking visuals on the screen. It was used to good effect - giving depth to scenes, letting the audience share in a sense of vertigo when on the precipice of some huge drop or in flight on one of the local winged creatures. For me, this is exactly how 3D should be used in movies - it was there but not in a way that you were conscious of it, it just sucked you into the film that much more.

The relationship between Neytiri and Jake was well done and believable - you could say that Cameron took so long building the growth of the relationship and Jake's character development that it almost dragged on a bit... but had it not been done the ending would not have worked as well. Supporting characters, however small their roles, all worked and supplemented the primary characters nicely. The one exception might be Ribisi, who while I like him as an actor, seemed a bit miscast here.

What I found predictable was the story. You can pretty much map out what's going to happen 10 minutes in without expending too many brain cells. I was hoping for perhaps something more complex or an unexpected twist of some sort - but the entire film played out pretty much the way you'd expect it to. I'm really not a fan of "humanity as the bad guys/aliens as the good guys" and I don't know what sort of message Cameron was trying to make here (colonization of America and what happened to the native Indian population?), but frankly I found the film entertaining enough that I was able to set that aside - more easily when he actually highlighted a spiritual component of the film as counterpoint to the Sci-Fi tech.

But this has all the Cameron trademarks: Relatable characters you'll care about, a story that makes sense, mind blowing visuals and action sequences that are awesome. The final 20 minutes of the film are just a kick-ass, non-stop ground and air battle that will leave you feeling VERY satisfied.

For the parents out there, the PG-13 is for some repeated mild profanity, partial CGI Na'vi nudity (they're pretty scantily clad), battle violence and a very short scene that's pretty suggestive between two of the big blue characters. Overall I'd definitely take my child to this before I would ever consider letting them watch Transformers 2 when it comes to content.

Overall, Avatar delivers what it promised, and it promised a LOT. In the end I think it will turn out to be a repeat-viewer that you'll want to revisit often - much like most of James Cameron's other films.

Avatar is a sci-fi action/adventure film created by James Cameron and released in 2009. Set in the fictional world of Pandora in the distant future, humans seek a rare mineral found on the planet but find a race of highly-intelligent beings directly in their mining path. To attempt to communicate and work with them, scientists create body replicas called "avatars," and one man will change the destiny of both races using an avatar of his own.

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Officer Black Belt Review: Kim Woo Bin's action avatar and simplistic charm deserve an edgier narrative

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Passionate about all things cinema, Shivani enjoys calculating the metrics and understanding the intricacies behind the camera. More than an interview, it’s a good conversation for her, getting a headline is forever on her mind and she rules writing exhaustive explainers on trends that rule the Internet. With almost a decade-and-a-half decoding Bollywood, Shivani is now enjoying the realm of Korean dramas and K-pop, with her love for Indian cinema remaining intact. Read More

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COMMENTS

Avatar
James Cameron's Academy Award®-winning 2009 epic adventure "Avatar", returns to theaters September 23 in stunning 4K High Dynamic Range. On the lush alien world of Pandora live the Na'vi, beings ...
Avatar: The Way of Water movie review (2022)
Cameron invites viewers into this fully realized world with so many striking images and phenomenally rendered action scenes that everything else fades away. Maybe not right away. "Avatar: The Way of Water" struggles to find its footing at first, throwing viewers back into the world of Pandora in a narratively clunky way.
Avatar: The Way of Water
Rated: 3.5/5 Aug 13, 2024 Full Review Nadya Martinez The Latin Times Avatar: The Way of Water, the long awaited sequel to Cameron's Avatar - the highest grossing film of all time - was ...
Cameron retains his crown movie review (2009)
162 minutes ‧ PG-13 ‧ 2009. Roger Ebert. December 11, 2009. 5 min read. Watching "Avatar," I felt sort of the same as when I saw "Star Wars" in 1977. That was another movie I walked into with uncertain expectations. James Cameron 's film has been the subject of relentlessly dubious advance buzz, just as his " Titanic " was ...
'Avatar: The Way of Water' Review: Big Blue Marvel
Cameron's ambitions are as sincere as they are self-contradictory. He wants to conquer the world in the name of the underdog, to celebrate nature by means of the most extravagant artifice, and ...
Avatar
Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 8, 2024. Preston Barta Fresh Fiction. 'Avatar' is not just a visual display. It contains heart, humor, and all the aspects needed to make it a well-rounded ...
'Avatar: The Way of Water' Review: James Cameron's Immersive Sequel
Screenwriters: James Cameron, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver. Rated PG-13, 3 hours 12 minutes. In terms of narrative sophistication and even more so dialogue, this $350 million sequel is almost as ...
'Avatar' Review: Movie (2009)
This is motion capture brought to a new high where every detail of the actors' performances gets preserved in the final CG character as they appear on the screen. Yes, those eyes are no longer ...
Avatar: The Way of Water review: A big, bold sequel
Avatar: The Way of Water review: A whole blue world, bigger and bolder than the first. Thirteen years on, James Cameron takes Pandora under the sea in an astonishing, at times overwhelming sequel.
Avatar: The Way of Water First Reviews: A Magical, Visually Sublime
The first of Avatar's sequels is finally here, 13 years after the release of the record-breaking original.For those who've been anxiously looking forward to Avatar: The Way of Water and those who have been doubting its necessity, the good news is that the movie is worth the wait and another work of essential theatrical entertainment from James Cameron.
Avatar: The Way of Water Review
Avatar: The Way of Water is a thoughtful, sumptuous return to Pandora, one which fleshes out both the mythology established in the first film and the Sully family's place therein. It may not be ...
Review: James Cameron's Spectacular Avatar: The Way of Water
Movie Review: In James Cameron's 'Avatar: The Way of Water,' Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) flee with their families to a distant ocean land to get away from the ...
'Avatar: The Way of Water' review: James Cameron stuns with this ...
The movie's second act is basically a charming riff on Swiss Family Robinson, as Jake and Neytiri receive a wary welcome from the community leaders, one of them played by a glaring Kate Winslet ...
Avatar Movie Review
Our review: Parents say (258 ): Kids say (651 ): James Cameron, director of the highest-grossing movie ever made (Titanic), risked a rumored $500 million on a spectacular futuristic sci-fi epic whose main characters are blue aliens and settings are mostly CGI. The good news for epic movie lovers everywhere is that Avatar was a massive success.
'Avatar 2' review: Na'vi gazing at its finest
Review: An exercise in Na'vi gazing, 'Avatar: The Way of Water' will cure your moviegoing blues. Jake Sully (played by Sam Worthington) in the movie "Avatar: The Way of Water.". In ...
Avatar Reviews
Avatar Reviews - Metacritic. 2009. TV-14. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. 2 h 42 m. Summary Jake Sully is a former Marine confined to a wheelchair. But despite his broken body, Jake is still a warrior at heart. He is recruited to travel light years to the human outpost on Pandora, where a corporate consortium is mining a rare mineral ...
Avatar: The Way of Water Movie Review
Our review: Parents say (40 ): Kids say (112 ): James Cameron 's crowd-pleasing sequel is a spectacular technical achievement that, while overlong, manages to dazzle the senses enough to prove that the director is still a visionary. Avatar: The Way of Water isn't a movie you see for its layered, complicated plot.
Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)
Avatar: The Way of Water: Directed by James Cameron. With Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang. Jake Sully lives with his newfound family formed on the extrasolar moon Pandora. Once a familiar threat returns to finish what was previously started, Jake must work with Neytiri and the army of the Na'vi race to protect their home.
'Avatar: The Way of Water' Review: Eye-Popping, but Lacking ...
"Avatar: The Way of Water" has scenes that will make your eyes pop, your head spin and your soul race. The heart of the movie is set on At'wa Attu, a tropical island reef where Jake Sully ...
Why Avatar: The Way of Water's Reviews Are So Positive
The first wave of reviews for Avatar: The Way of Water is in, and so far the movie is getting mostly positive reviews and is certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with an 82 percent score. With over 160 reviews submitted to Rotten Tomatoes so far, the movie's score is exactly the same as the original Avatar's 82 percent score from 2009.. A sequel 13 years in the making after the original Avatar ...
Avatar (2009)
Avatar: Directed by James Cameron. With Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang. A paraplegic Marine dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission becomes torn between following his orders and protecting the world he feels is his home.
Avatar: The Way of Water
The motion capture is top notch. There are very few humans in this film, making The Way of Water more of a hybrid animated/live-action movie. But when it comes to the 3D… Back in 2009, Cameron made a forceful pro-3D statement with Avatar. It was one of only a handful of masterful uses of the technology.
Avatar Review
3.5. Avatar is a sci-fi action/adventure film created by James Cameron and released in 2009. Set in the fictional world of Pandora in the distant future, humans seek a rare mineral found on the planet but find a race of highly-intelligent beings directly in their mining path.
Officer Black Belt Review: Kim Woo Bin's action avatar and simplistic
Kim Woo Bin stars as Lee Jung-do in Officer Black Belt, where he excels in martial arts and becomes a Martial Arts Officer. The film features stylized action and humor but has a predictable ...

Cameron retains his crown

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