Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) Review

 "Why so blue?"

-Colonel Miles Quaritch

Over a decade after the first movie, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) have built a family of four children and lead their clan.  But when humans return to Pandora, Jake and his family have to go into hiding.  And a familiar face is hunting them.

Spoilers below.

What Works:

I don't think anyone will be surprised to hear that the visual effects are spectacular and some of the best ever put to screen.  The original Avatar was revolutionary.  Over a decade later and there's bound to be improvement.  The underwater stuff is breathtaking and it's beyond impressive technically.

The battle sequences near the end of the movie are also really fun.  There are some great moments and set-pieces.  The fights and escapes onboard the sinking ship are definitely the best action of the movie and really feels like classic James Cameron.

I wasn't expecting the whale-esque creatures to be actual characters in the movie.  I was just expecting them to be background sea-life.  Nope.  They are essential to the story and actually have dialogue and personality.  It adds some emotional weight to the film and really makes you hate the villains.

Finally, it's really bizarre to watch Sigourney Weaver play a teenage alien, but I really enjoyed it.  I've never seen her play a role like this.  She's in her 70's now and watching a 70-year old play a teenager was wonderful.  They changed how her voices sounds, but if you know it's Weaver, you can hear her within all the snark.

What Sucks:

The biggest problem with the movie is the protagonist.  It's actually not Jake, but his son, Lo'ak (Britain Dalton).  That's not intrinsically a bad thing.  Sequels having a different protagonist while having the original protagonist still being a character can absolutely work, but that new character has to either be likable or interesting, if not both.  Lo'ak is neither.  He's just a moody teen who does a lot of stupid crap.  I found it hard to be invested in his journey.

The other new characters are mostly duds.  Jake's other children are unmemorable, apart from Kiri, who is the one played by Sigourney Weaver, and all of the characters from the reef clan are a bunch of nothing.  There's more shitty teenagers and the adults don't get much to do and they all mysteriously vanish from the story in the 3rd act.  It doesn't help that Jake and Neytiri are sidelined for a lot of the movie.  The only other characters to get invested in are Quaritch (Stephen Lang) and Spider (Jack Champion).

Speaking of Quaritch and Spider, I enjoyed their plotline for the most part and was wondering where it was going to go.  It took a really interesting turn when Neytiri held Spider hostage.  The way it ends doesn't work for me though.  Having Spider save Quaritch, but still returning to Jake and Neytiri felt like sloppy sequel-bait.  The fallout from Neytiri threatening to kill Spider never happens.  Maybe it will come into play in the 3rd movie, but it didn't work for me.

Finally, the movie is over three hours long.  No movie needs to be over 3 hours long.  Like, damn, some of us have lives to live!  In all seriousness, the movie has decent pacing, but near the end you definitely start to feel the length of the movie.  There was stuff that absolutely could and should have been cut.

Verdict:

Avatar: The Way of Water didn't do much for me.  It looks incredible, there are some fun sequences, and the whales and Sigourney Weaver were great.  It's just that the movie is too long, most of the new characters suck, the protagonist is a dud, and the set-up for the sequel was sloppy.  If you're going to see it, see it in theaters just for the visuals.  If you didn't care for the first movie, don't bother with this one.

 6/10: Okay