Avatar: The Way of Water
Directed by James Cameron
Written by James Cameron, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver
Starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Steven Lang, Kate Winslet
Rated PG-13
Runtime: 3 hours, 12 minutes
In theaters December 16

by Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor, Red Herring

If you’re reading this, I See You. That’s a reference to an oft-repeated line from the first Avatar, the highest grossing movie worldwide of all time. Like many, I thought the 2009 film was a technical marvel. I didn’t connect with it on a deeper level, but I did see it twice in the theater. The only other engagement with the world of Pandora I’ve had between early 2010 and 2022 was seeing the Cirque du Soleil show, Turok – The First Flight when it came to Philadelphia, because I was offered free tickets (that was also the only time I’ve seen any Cirque du Soleil show, but that’s a story for another time). Even earlier this year, when visiting Disney World, I did not make the effort to visit the Pandora theme park area. 

That started to change back in September, when I decided to see the IMAX 3D re-release of Avatar. Even seeing it immediately after The Woman King, I began to appreciate it anew. That might say more about the state of Hollywood in 2022 than anything else, but I was truly surprised to find out how engaged I was with something I hadn’t seen in 13 years (except for the one time it was on at the gym before someone changed the channel). Digging into the numbers, it’s not like the overall breakdown of movies has changed that much. Sure superhero stuff was only starting to explode in 2009, but we still had just as many sequels, reboots, and animated family fare topping the charts overall. Maybe it’s that the Marvel approach to visual effects is largely about ‘good enough’ outside of their de-aging technology. Or maybe no one is making true epics anymore? Regardless, I walked out of that screening excited for The Way of Water. 

Even before that I was interested in this sequel, if only because I generally like James Cameron’s work. Titanic was my first Cameron, which was released when I was eleven. I saw most of the rest of his films between then and Avatar, and this sequel is only his third narrative movie released in the last 25 years. This is a lot of table setting for this review, but I do think that context is important since so many people I know feel similarly about the first Avatar and because this is really a continuation of that story. It’s worth rewatching (or at least reading through the Wikipedia plot summary) before settling in for The Way of Water. 

The sequel picks up a few years after the end of the first. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) have started a family of genetic hybrid and latchkey children. Their children are the boys Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) and Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), and their youngest, a daughter named Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss). Also part of their family unit are Spider (Jack Champion), a human child who was too young to leave Pandora with the other humans at the end of the first movie, and Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) the daughter born from the Avatar of Dr. Grace Augustine, the body of which is in some kind of stasis. Without warning, the humans have returned, now led by General Frances Ardmore (Edie Falco), and have shifted from mining to exploiting other resources on Pandora because the condition of Earth has worsened. The humans bring some Recombinants with them, Na’vi Avatar bodies grown from the DNA of soldiers killed on Pandora in the first film and implanted with their memories, led by Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang). The Recombinants are there to hunt down and exact revenge against Jake and Neytiri. So they flee the forests and head to a different clan that lives on top of a reef, led by Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and Ronal (Kate Winslet).

For a film this long, there’s not a ton of plot, and The Way of Water mostly takes its time letting the stories unfold within. They overlap and swerve back and forth, creating a larger tapestry and filling out the world of Pandora and specifically the seaside that Jake and family try to acclimate within. The biggest difference is that while the original was introducing us to the world through Jake as a point-of-view character, here the audience is fully embedded with the Na’vi, with Cameron even pulling the “now the characters are speaking in English but we know they are speaking a different language in the reality of the movie” trick from The Hunt for Red October. Throughout, there are homages and parallels to Jaws, Starship Troopers, The Phantom Menace, and the Gundam franchise. Starship Troopers (the movie, not the book) and Gundam come to mind especially because of how vividly and lovingly the military hardware is depicted, despite the clear anti-war themes throughout. Big vehicles and big guns are fun, but The Way of Water also doesn’t shy away from their murderous purpose. 

But moreover, this Avatar sequel is Cameron’s victory lap. He’s playing his hits. There’s Cameron returning to mysteries hidden by the ocean (even if this one isn’t ours) for the first time in fiction since The Abyss. The space marine aesthetics of the bad guys are straight out of Alien$. Like Terminator 2: Judgment Day, it’s about warriors and their young kids having to flee an overwhelming threat from a distant place. It’s been a while since I’ve seen True Lies, but there is some relationship drama in here as well. And there is an extended riff on the sinking of the Titanic in the final set piece. Add to that the anticolonial, anticapitalist, and strong environmental themes, and you have a full scale epic that feels as personal as anything Cameron has ever made. There’s a heartfelt earnestness that’s refreshing compared to the “ironic” detached tone of so many other big budget movies at present. There’s no fourth wall breaking smugness, no reliance on pop culture references for cheap humor, and no one trying to protect their star persona behind the scenes. 

Combining cutting-edge technology (I hope the 4K disc release is positively packed with behind the scenes stuff) with classic, earnest storytelling is firmly the hallmark of this series, and it honestly gave me almost everything I wanted from it.