Avatar: The Way Of Water - Movie Review

At last it is here! The (very) long awaited sequel to James Cameron's Avatar. Is it as good as the first, or is this another doomed sequel? Some say James is the king of movie sequels, so maybe Avatar: The Way Of Water is another stellar entry to his list of achievements. Well I'm here to tell you the answer is a resounding yes... and no.

Simply put: this movie feels too bloated, and it's not just because of it's 3 hour and 20 minutes runtime, there are just too many scenes where nothing really happens plot wise. The film is full of special effect shots, only really here to essentially show off how beautiful Pandora is. We got a lot of scenes like this in the original Avatar too, but since we had never seen Pandora before, it was truly awe inspiring. Although the CGI has certainly improved a lot since 2009, these scenes become more cumbersome than fun after the first hour. Jurassic Park's sequels suffered the same flaws, once we've seen it once, you can never catch the same magic twice. It's a lot like revisiting the same place on holiday, you'll love it the first time, but by visit 3 or 4 you'll be sick of the place! Also the water theme felt too close to reality, it sometimes felt like I was watching a Sci-Fi remake of Pirates Of The Caribbean with blue aliens instead of pirates.

Now I did say Avatar: The Way Of Water wasn't all bad, and that's true, there is certainly still a lot here to love! Where the first Avatar felt like a one and done deal, the sequel begins to set up larger stakes and expands upon Pandora's lore and scale. So much happens in this film, it can be a little hard to keep up with, but the humans have returned in droves and now we're in the middle of a massive ongoing war across the whole planet! Not only is this all exciting and epic, but it's also frightening and dramatic. It honestly felt like I was watching Star Wars, it was that action packed! Even the new plot feels similar, with Miles returning in Avatar form, who meets his human son (also named Miles) that has been brought up by the Na'vi. His son is essentially abducted by the humans, but is allowed to go on missions with the marines (very irresponsible considering he's only like 13). He sees both sides of the conflict and we begin to understand that not everything is as black and white as the first film. Us humans are still the bad guys, but we come to learn that earth now relies on some of the energy sources from Pandora to keep a float, etc. The film actually does a decent job sympathising with both sides of this war, as even beloved human characters die in tragic ways, we also see Na'vi brutally kill marines to dramatic music, which was epic yet scary at the same time.

So there it is! As you can see, this film can be very enjoyable, yet it is also a slog. James Cameron has a brilliant idea with this Avatar series, but I think his ego is a little too strong here. Unfortunately, most of the time I felt like I was watching a (albeit very impressive) tech demo for PlayStation 6, rather than an actual movie. To be fair, everything does look delicious and the little story we do get here is genuinely thrilling, the action is epic and stakes are high. It ends with a decent cliff hanger, that leaves me eager for the third entry, so it isn't bad by any means. It just isn't perfect, I think the first film was a little better.

I rate Avatar: The Way Of Water - 3 out of 5 stars. It may be visually impressive, but the story is sidelined for special effects, therefore it is a 3 star movie.