“The way of water has no beginning and no end.” Every single time I heard that line quoted in James Cameron’s epic-length sequel, I wondered if he was making a commentary on his own film. As a sequel, it is missing the beginning because that was in the original film, and because he spends so much time world-building, it makes the film often feel like it’s never going to end. For those who get excited about nature documentaries, this could be a draw; for the rest of us, it slows down the pace of the movie to the point that, as beautiful as the visuals are, the film is often quite boring, especially on repeat viewings. This is a problem that plagues the middle of the film and makes it difficult to sit through in one go. I saw this originally in theaters and remember checking my watch every ten minutes or so all throughout the bloated middle third. Apparently, I was in the minority, as this movie made a fortune at the box office, ensuring that James Cameron would be making sequels to this franchise for the remainder of his days.
When Avatar hit theaters in 2009, I wasn’t prepared for the phenomenon that it would become. Thanks to several re-releases in the years since, not to mention the surcharge for seeing it in 3D, it became the biggest blockbuster of all time to date with numbers that just barely missed $3 billion. Compared to that, the $2.3 billion the sequel made seems a bit disappointing. Perhaps the extra 30 minutes in length meant fewer showings in a single day, limiting its box office. Still, I had predicted a steep drop-off after opening week and was surprised that it had the longevity it had, just like I was surprised in 2009. Now, in 2025, I am looking at the imminent release of Avatar: Fire and Ice, the third movie in the franchise, and assuming it will dominate once again. Money doesn’t mean quality, though. I like to say, pointing to the huge box offices Michael Bay films make. It’s been sixteen years since Avatar was in theaters and three since The Way of Water, yet I still felt like I was in for a long and dry experience when I fired up my 3D projector to watch this movie for the first time since theaters.
Avatar: The Way of Water is two films juxtaposed together. First and foremost, it is a world-building film, even more so than the original film. This is evidenced heavily in the middle section of the movie when the narrative shifts to the ocean lands from the forest setting we’ve stuck with up to this point. The reason for the relocation is simple: After years of peace where our lead character, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), has married Na’vi native Neytiri te Tskaha Mo’at’ite (Zoe Saldana) and started a family, humans have returned to the planet of Pandora to once again strip it of its natural resources.
Jake, who was a human once but has since been merged with his artificially created native avatar body, leads the fight against the humans. But with this new round of attacks comes something far more dangerous. Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who was killed at the end of the previous film, is back. His brain was scanned prior to his death, and all of that data, along with the brain scans of his elite soldiers, have been merged into permanent avatars of their own. These new bodies are dispatched onto Pandora to hunt down Jake Sully and bring an end to the natives’ resistance. Fearing this new danger will bring destruction to his tribe and people, Jake chooses to take his whole family into exile, hiding out amongst the water tribes.
This works for a while, but eventually, Miles, with the reluctant help of his son, Miles “Spider” Socorro (Jack Champion), a boy that was left behind when the humans evacuated initially, narrows down where Jake and his family are hiding and begins attacking the ocean villages, determined to draw him out. This culminates with a big battle involving the family, the water tribes, and even the indigenous water life. Not all the main characters escape this fight alive, and there is one surprise that is definitely there to set up the third movie. It’s an exciting conclusion with a lot of things going on concurrently and showcases just what James Cameron is a master at: fully realizing a fictional setting.
I rarely admit it, but I do occasionally change my mind on a second viewing. It’s rare, though. My opinion of The Fifth Element was just as negative last year when I gave it a second chance as it was when I saw it brand new. The same thing didn’t happen when I rewatched Avatar: The Way of Water. The middle section is still way too long. I still found myself checking my watch constantly throughout this segment, wishing it would get to the point and dispense with so many scenes of characters swimming around and admiring the underwater life. The gorgeous visuals helped somewhat— how anyone could watch this whole thing on a tablet or phone is beyond me— but they didn’t mask just how bloated this is. However, I found things throughout that I did appreciate much more than I did initially and it made this experience quite a bit more enjoyable than the first time around.
James Cameron is a known fan of deep-sea ocean exploration, and he has used this passion to develop this latest installment, but unless you share in that passion this will feel like overindulgence. In this way, it’s like watching something like Trader Horn, where the runtime is stretched out with shots of the native wildlife as if we were watching National Geographic or Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdominserted into the middle of an action drama. I appreciated the film overall, but if I ever watch it again, I will be judiciously using the fast forward throughout the middle of the film. This movie needs about a half hour trimmed, and virtually all of it can be done in this middle segment.
The problem lies in the new setting. Because it is so far removed from the forest setting of the first film, there is a whole new world to explore, and James Cameron spends a lot of time exploring it. The characters, especially the children of Sully, have to learn how to survive in this new underwater environment. The decision was made to focus a great deal on this for over an hour of the film, seeing new creatures and new ways of life and dwelling on it practically in real time. This is offset a bit by some growing tension between Lo’ak te Suli Tsyeyk’itan (Britain Dalton), the younger son of Jake and Neytiri, and Aonung (Filip Geljo), the son of the water tribe’s chief Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and his wife Ronal (Kate Winslet). This drama is shallow and cliché, serving the themes of the movie but in a superficial way.
And that theme is a stereotypical one, at that. We are seeing an examination of fathers and sons and how the son strives to live up to an overbearing father. James Cameron is excellent at world building, but he is weak when it comes to writing characters and dialogue. This became obvious with Titanic, which failed to secure a nomination for the script, and that trend was repeated with Avatar and its sequel. The themes, while cliché, can be handled in a way that is subtle and effective, yet that is not the case here. Within minutes, this theme is spelled out to us, the audience, when Neytiri calls out Jake for being too hard on his sons, pointing out, in case you missed it, that they try hard to live up to him. We’ll get the same thing from Chief Tonowari and his son and Miles with Spider. It’s heavy-handed and obvious.
But defenders of James Cameron do not go to his films to see well-written scripts. They are there to see visuals that surpass anything they have seen in the past. This was the case with Terminator 2: Judgment Day with the liquid metal, and it has been what he is known for for over two decades now. I will address this again in Avatar, but the same goes for this sequel. The visuals carry this film. It is photorealistic, and that is one of the major selling points for a film like this. Without that, this would be a mediocre nature drama, as preachy in its message as Ferngully: The Last Rainforest. Those themes of man vs. the environment are doubled down on here, introducing whaling to the mix.
In this film, the whales are introduced as being even more intelligent than the Na’vi and are being hunted down for a single reason: a chemical that grows naturally in their brains. This chemical stops aging and is worth millions back on Earth. The rest of the creature is left to rot, of no use to the humans. This can be read as a substitute for the over-harvesting of whales for ambergris, the buffalo for their pelts, or any other number of animals that man has hunted to near extinction. And to make sure we get the message, there will be a prolonged sequence showing just how man hunts down these ocean creatures and steals the magic de-aging liquid from their brains. To make this act even more abhorrent, it will be mentioned several times that this creature is intelligent but pacifistic in nature, adding another layer of horror to what man is doing here.
One of Cameron’s strong points when it comes to this picture is his sense of character. While it is true that the father/son dynamic is generic, the individuals involved are not. There is a strong distinction between Lo’ak and his older brother, Neteyam te Suli Tsyeyk’itan (Jamie Flatters), with the younger boy more prone to disregard orders and act on emotion rather than logic. There are also the two daughters: Tuktirey “Tuk” te Suli Neytiri’ite (Trinity Bliss), who is eight years old and full of natural curiosity, and their adopted sister Kiri te Suli Kireysi’ite (Sigourney Weaver), biological daughter to Dr. Grace Augustine. Kiri was born from Grace’s Avatar, and the father’s identity remains a mystery. Kiri has a special connection to Pandora, which manifests itself in several different ways. This will undoubtedly be explored further in the sequels. Each of these siblings is distinct and stand out from the others.
Bringing back the chief antagonist from the first film, even though he was killed, feels like a bit of a cop-out, as well as a means to further push the father/son themes. Fortunately, Stephen Lang is charismatic enough to overcome most of the shortcomings that result from this writing choice. He’s also allowed to explore more of his character than what he was given the first time. By introducing the character of Spider to the mix, it allows him to demonstrate his paternal side. Ideally, the existence of Spider will be fleshed out in the sequels, as the only thing we get here is that he is Miles’ son. There is no mention of a mother, but he must have been born on Pandora; otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to be transported to the planet in the first place for the same reasons he had to be left behind when the humans evacuated.
This is a long film and at times it is unwieldy. It suffers from being a middle chapter in an ongoing series; I don’t hold that against it, though. Like The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers or The Empire Strikes Back, it can hold that place without feeling less like a complete film. Avatar: The Way of Waterdoesn’t work on that same level, though. It lacks a true ending and feels more like an episode of television where To Be Continued flashes on screen before the credits roll. The first Avatar didn’t have that feeling to it. That film felt complete. But now that James Cameron is determined to make this a five-film saga, I fear that every film going forward, save for the last one, will have this same incomplete feel to it. For a movie that exceeds three hours, that is just unsatisfying. The story is engaging enough when it isn’t devoting too much time to exploring the oceans, but the final battle doesn’t feel like a final battle. It feels more like a prelude to more. That can work in serialized television where a new chapter is coming in another week, but when there are three years between chapters, it is not enough to be a totally satisfying conclusion for how much time has been invested. Watching it this time was not as bad of an experience as my initial theatrical experience, but there are still several major flaws that keep this from being the experience it ultimately needed to be.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: James Cameron and Jon Landau
Best Sound: Julian Howarth, Gwendolyn Yates Whittle, Dick Bernstein, Christopher Boyes, Gary Summers, and Michael Hedges
Best Production Design: Dylan Cole, Ben Procter, and Vanessa Cole
Best Visual Effects: Joe Letteri, Richard Baneham, Eric Saindon, and Daniel Barrett (won)
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Release Date: December 16, 2022
Running Time: 192 minutes
Rated PG-13
Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, and Kate Winslet
Directed by: James Cameron
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