Avatar: The Way of Water Review

The highest grossing film of all time- Avatar (2009) finally has its sequel, and it's unsurprisingly the hottest topic in the world of geeks right now.

James Cameron made a lot of bold claims regarding this film and his forthcoming franchise, so it's pretty obvious how much work he's putting into these projects.

Anyways, despite it's big name and enormous budget, Avatar: The Way Of The Water reviews have been rather mixed.

One thing I can tell you is that the film is not as bad as a lot of these critics say, but it's not that great either.

First of all, let's give credit where it's due.

The visuals were transcendently gorgeous.

The film was presented for theatrical viewing in both 2D and 3D imagery, but regardless of which one you choose to see, you are guaranteed a mouthwatering visual experience.

With intricately designed character models, eye-popping visual effects, extravagant cinematography, impeccable set designs and stunning sound direction, this film proved to be the biggest visual feast of the year. 

It'll most definitely be nominated for awards of this category, and the sequel stands a high chance of bagging them all.

Now let's move on to the story.

You gotta appreciate the work Cameron put into making this narrative special.

Worldbuilding and Characterization are two concepts that are undeniably important in fictional creations of this kind, and James proved just how much he appreciates them.

But one could say he did that a bit too much.

He succeeded in establishing a much larger world in Pandora, introducing a new culture and a lot of new concepts that are absolutely intriguing.

Even when it came to characters we got a much wider scope to deal with.

These are great features, but when they're made to be more prevalent than the story itself, it becomes a problem.

The biggest problem with this film was it's runtime.

3 hours and 12 minutes- that were in no way justified.

The plot lacked any form of innovation or authenticity.

But this isn't exactly a bad thing if proper execution is applied.

The film was punishably long and this dwindled its entertainment value.

It was a basic story which spent significant fractions of an hour fixating on passive sequences.

It was obvious before the film even aired that its setting was gonna be- the sky people attacking Pandora again and killing a bunch of people to get to Jake, eventually leading to another clash between the humans and the avatars.

So why extend the film unecessarily?

It was clear Cameron intended to pave way for future projects through this film, but he didn't have to make it so painfully obvious.

If it spent most of its runtime properly building up its final showdown from both sides, it would've been a lot more engaging.

But spending ridiculous amounts of time on sequences that add barely anything to the story makes it exhausting.

The film film dragged on for so long, it was even hard to decipher which act this story was in during a lot of scenes.

However, the final act of the movie was exhilarating.

Its climax was filled with incredible action and emotionally- heavy content, but when it took that long to reach its point, it's hard to fully appreciate all the drama.

All in all, the film was quite enjoyable and definitely one of the most artistically beautiful entries to cinema this year.

It's story was compelling despite its simplicity, but got drowned by lacklustre execution and overambitiousness. 

It's deserving of a 7.5/10.

It was good but I genuinely hope Cameron does better in the upcoming sequels.

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See you all next time.