Rating: PG-13 | Runtime: 192 minutes
Release Date: December 16th, 2022 (USA)
Studio: 20th Century Studios
Director(s): James Cameron
Writer(s): James Cameron, Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver / James Cameron, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Josh Friedman & Shane Salerno (story) / James Cameron (characters)

Wherever we go, this family … is our fortress.

I love how so many people online joked about no one caring about the lore of the highest grossing film in history anymore when the marketing push for the long-awaited Avatar: The Way of Water finally began. You can’t necessarily blame them considering it had been thirteen years since the first Avatar blew minds with its visuals in 2009. That’s a long time to wait for a continuation regardless of the story jumping ten years itself. But trends and attention spans don’t work the same when James Cameron is involved. A master of the big budget sci-fi action blockbuster who always backs up his exorbitant price tags with gargantuan box office takes that still turn a profit, he can seemingly do no wrong.

So what if it took seven years to finish fleshing out the mythology and write scripts for chapters two and three? So what if it took three years to film Water and The Seed Bearer and then another two to finish post on the former alone? It’s not like laziness is the reason. Cameron helps create new technologies. He and his team single-handedly propel the cinematic medium forward with every new film they put in theaters. And you can see it just by watching the two Avatars back-to-back.

I remember thinking nothing could ever look better than the first as far as believable computer-animated characters and yet it’s practically night and day when compared to the sequel. Does it help that the human element is dialed back to virtually zero so everything can be created out of thin air? Sure. Either way, it’s still a stunning feat.

That visual splendor also compensates for other parts of the whole. Take it away and the first is an average film with a familiar storyline bolstered by effective action. The same could be said about Water too in many regards. The script is perhaps even thinner with a revenge plot pitting the Sully family (Sam Worthington’s Jake and Zoe Saldana’s Neytiri joined by four children: Jamie Flatters’ Neteyam, Sigourney Weaver’s Kiri, Britain Dalton’s Lo’ak, and Trinity Jo-Li Bliss’ Tuk) against the Sky People yet again.

Because a world where you can pipe your consciousness into another species’ body (grown as a hybrid clone with your DNA) is a world where death isn’t quite permanent. Cameron can therefore bring Stephen Lang’s Quaritch back to life as a Na’vi hellbent on killing his previous self’s murderers. He can distract us with that simple conflict while building out Pandora in the background.

Because the real meat here isn’t whether Jake beats Quaritch again. That provides the standalone through line to sustain a three-hour runtime while we meet a new aquatic Na’vi clan known as the Metkayina (and subsequently go through the motions of the Sullys learning how to race through water just as Jake learned to race through the trees in Avatar).

Then there’s a mirrored “The One” subplot that begins like Jake’s with pollen from the trees floating to Kiri as though she’s being anointed by God. An “immaculate” conception of sorts (she’s played by Weaver because she was born from Dr. Grace Augustine’s avatar), Kiri is constantly making good on people’s impression that she’s a “freak” by communing with nature in strange, magical ways. Cameron is sowing seeds for the future amongst these children (Lo’ak’s outcast befriends a whale-like creature the Metkayina had forsook) while Mom and Dad fight to prove their might and love.

Throw in Spider’s (Jack Champion) orphaned human left behind when the Sky People were exiled (raised by the scientists and a playmate with the Sullys) who possesses his own soon-to-be revealed Daddy issues, and the gang is set. Metkayina leaders Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and Ronal (Kate Winslet) deliver Jake and Neytiri facsimiles to bridge the gaps and connections between kingdom and family, Quaritch is still Quaritch, and humanity once again shows that they’ll kill anyone and anything to make a profit.

It’s an adventure film with an exotic locale, gorgeous environments, and beautifully orchestrated action sequences regardless of whether they involve surfing the water, escaping wild predators, or opening fire on enemy battalions. It’s about the experience, investing in the characters, and finding that some stakes do exist despite Lang and Weaver’s return.

The visuals aren’t mind-blowing in quite the same way as 2009 being that they’re mainly an upgrade rather than wholesale paradigm shift, but they still ensure a higher score than would be warranted without. Solid acting and emotive arcs keep us enthralled as the pacing moves things along at a quick enough speed to let the whole feel about an hour shorter than it is.

And while some thought it wouldn’t be able to overcome the lengthy wait, I’d argue the decade-plus helps insofar as letting us forgive just how thin the narrative proves. We can accept a barebones revenger because it lets us reacquaint ourselves with Pandora. Cameron is easing us back in with a conflict we don’t need to expend too much energy on so we can absorb everything else in the background. Here’s hoping The Seed Bearer makes good on that promise in 2024 by showing us something wholly different.

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(L-R): Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) in 20th Century Studios’ AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2022 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.