Avatar: The Way Of Water

It’s thirteen years since James Cameron introduced the world of Avatar. Time has passed since Jake (Sam Worthington) went native, swapping his consciousness fully into his Avatar. He and his mate Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) have a family and a peaceful life. However that changes when the sky people return with a new mission, to make the planet their home and quell any dissention from the natives. The team is led by the Avatar of Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who knows to do this must gain revenge on Jake and Neytiri and will destroy anything in his path to achieve it. Jake realises to keep his family and the tree people safe he must run. So they head off to the islands of the water people and seek the protection of Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and Ronal (Kate Winslet). But ultimately this brings to war to the water people and leaves Jake with no option but to fight.

The first Avatar was far from perfect, but was technically impressive and wowed audiences. Whether that warrants a sequel let alone a series of films is questionable and The Way Of Water does little to dispel the idea that Cameron’s creation lacks the story ideas to carry a series of films.

Like the first the second film is far from perfect but isn’t unenjoyable. It looks impressive with some engaging world building and great action set pieces fantastically realised.

But it also has the same issues. The main one is the paper thin story, it’s a 40 minute story stretched over 3 hours. The knock on effect is lots of padding especially in the middle third where the kids seem to be endlessly bonding with nature and each other. While it doesn’t overly drag, by the final act you are certainly starting to wonder “are we there yet”.

But for those criticisms there is still plenty of enjoyable parts.

The Way Of Water is overly long and lacks the story to sustain it and feels more interested in technology than narrative. But it is a grand scale cinematic experience and at times an enjoyable one. It probably is worth seeing for the experience, but how good it is will feed debate for some time.