Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)

United States of America

Science Fiction, Adventure, Action

20th Century Studios, Lightstorm Entertainment

Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Kate Winslet, Cliff Curtis

James Cameron

Josh Friedman, James Cameron, James Cameron, Shane Salerno

Taglines: Return to Pandora.

dying and death, loss of loved one, alien life-form, resurrection, dysfunctional family, sequel, alien planet, distant future, adopted child, rebirth, family dynamics, adopted son, stronger villain, war

Set more than a decade after the events of the first film, learn the story of the Sully family (Jake, Neytiri, and their kids), the trouble that follows them, the lengths they go to keep each other safe, the battles they fight to stay alive, and the tragedies they endure.

Reviews:

Author: Dark Jedi
Avatar 2 or Avatar: The Way of the Water came out on 4K Blu-ray a couple of weeks ago so me and the kids finally got around to watch it last weekend. I rarely go to the cinemas nowadays. It’s just too much hassle and way to expensive for four people. But there’s also no way I watch a big movie like Avatar on streaming with their over-compressed images and mediocre sound. Yeah, yeah, I know they claim Dolby Atmos and all that but they use almost one tenth the bit-rate for the video compared to 4K Blu-ray and push the Atmos over a lossy Dolby Digital stream. Anyway, enough rambling. Avatar: The Way of the Water was better than I feared it would be. I was really worried that it would turn out to be a preachy woke turd. Especially with some of the comments Cameron has made lately. Sure, it was pretty much a repeat of the first one with the companies bad, humans bad an all that kind of story but at least that was about it. There was not really any of the usual preaching, finger pointing and general woke force feeding that has been way too common from Hollywood lately. The main enjoyment of this movie is really the imagery, the scenery, the fantastic creatures and all that. It is a visually very beautiful movie. The second part of the enjoyment comes from some quite enjoyable action sequences, especially towards the end of the movie. The story is not much to write home about though. It is pretty standard, unimaginative story fairly full of the usual Hollywood lazy-ass unplausible shit. The idea that humanity in the future would go to another planet and start to hunt down the wildlife, behave like some conquistadors and literally strip the planet is fairly ludicrous from the start of course. The story is not so much about the main characters, or at least what I expected to be the main characters, but more about the kids. I was expecting it to be about the Na’vi kicking the invaders’ asses…again, but unfortunately the movie takes a different track rather early on. After that it is more of a coming of age story about their kids who, also unfortunately, behaves like the usual Hollywood teenagers in not listening to their parents and generally behaving recklessly. This part of the movie would have been really, really, boring if it was not for the beautiful scenery. Then there was this idea of an intelligent species, supposedly more intelligent than humans, being not only pacifists but refuses to defend themselves in any way while literally being exterminated. That kind of stupid shit only exists in the mind of a Hollywood writer. They also conveniently looked like whales so the script writer could push some bad-humans-catching-whales stereotypes. And why did they have to drag back the main the main asshole from the first movie? It just felt lazy and did not add to my enjoyment of the movie. Still, the bottom line is that I did enjoy the movie, even though it was over three hours long which felt a little bit dragged out. It is in no way this super blockbuster that some people seem to think though. At least not as far as I am concerned.