When the Sky People return to Pandora to mine the moon for its resources, the head of the team, Quaritch (Stephen Lang) has a personal vendetta against Jake (Sam Worthington), a former marine under Quaritch who became permanently linked with his Avatar on the first mission and was accepted by the indigenous Na’vi as the chief of the Omaticaya clan.  With the only choice to stay and risk the safety of the entire clan, or flee, Jake, his wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), and their five children make the difficult decision to seek out the reef-dwelling Metkayina clan and beg for sanctuary.  They live in peace, learning the new ways of their new home, but Quaritch is not content to let Jake go and soon brings his war to the Metkayinan shores. 

After thirteen years of development, James Cameron transports audiences back to Pandora through the magic and technical marvels of advanced motion capture and premium exhibition formats with Avatar: The Way of Water, the long-rumored sequel to his 2009 box office juggernaut, Avatar.  Now under the Disney umbrella and aided by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver on the screenplay – instead of holding the sole writing credit – it still has all the trappings that make Cameron’s films so recognizable.  A simple story that is stretched to its absolute limit, and a cast of characters with black-and-white morality who speak in overwritten dialogue so as not to mix any meaning.  On one hand, it is impressive how widely accessible the film is on a thematic level, though practically its 192-minute runtime is nothing if not punishing because of that same simplicity. 

The first act with the Omaticaya clan helps get audiences reacquainted with the Na’vi if they have not revisited the original; re-introduced to Jake and Neytiri, the Soul Tree, Quaritch who had died in the first Avatar but has since had his memories uploaded into an avatar body of his own, and the legacy left behind by Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) who likewise lost her life in the first war between the Sky People and the Na’vi; though that does not exclude her involvement in The Way of Water, albeit in a new role.  She returns as Kiri, Grace’s biological daughter who was adopted by Jake and Neytiri and raised alongside their oldest son Neteyam (James Flatters), second son Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), and youngest daughter Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss).  In addition, the family also looks after Spider (Jack Champion), the teenage son of Quaritch who was abandoned at the outpost as an infant before being rescued by Jake and learning to love the natural world of Pandora despite the limitations of being too young for an avatar body to freely interact with the environment as his adopted siblings are able to.   

Science fiction is afforded a greater tolerance than other genres when it comes to exposition as it needs to introduce audiences to real-world concepts, at least to a baseline understanding, so that it can then begin to bend and play with the rules later on in the narrative.  The Way of Water also has some thirteen years – probably more given Neteyam’s age, though it is never clear how much in-world time has passed between the two films – of plot to fill audiences in on.  The problem here is that this exposition goes on for a good forty-five minutes instead of ten.  Visually, we have seen the forest world already and do not need the deep dive back in, plot-wise it takes its time to cover very little ground, and character-wise they are all extremely basic familiar dynamics, so it does not take that long to lay out the who’s-who.  What Cameron does do, and again can easily be accomplished in far less time, is prove two things: this film will be much bigger in scope and destruction than the first one, and alerts audiences that they need to be prepared to throw all logic to the wind as the rules of this world will constantly shift to fit Cameron’s narrative whims.  The fewer questions asked, the better.  Accept it all at face value, or be frustrated is the name of the game.  

Once into the second act with Jake and his family in exile, the film finally begins to pick up speed, ironically as it also spends the next hour doing little more than world building but the environments are new, and the culture of the Metkayina clan, while unique from the tree-dwellers, just substitutes water for sky and reef for trees.  The film becomes dangerously close to being a re-hash of Avatar, with Jake coming in as the outsider that saves another ill-equipped society from destruction, but the one benefit of the larger cast here is that Jake mostly falls by the wayside for much of the film; a relief because the “jar-head” demeanor is still as flat, one-dimensional, and dull as it was thirteen years ago.   

Cameron does not give the reef people much screentime or development; the stern Chief Tonowari (Cliff Curtis), his pregnant wife and healer Ronal (Kate Winslet), and their two children Reya (Bailey Bass) and Aonung (Filip Geljo). They all fall into their archetypes and are in line with the Sully family to be an appropriate mirror, but it is hard to distinguish who any of these characters are outside of this most basic layer as there is nothing there to latch on to. They swim, splash, and get into tussles with each other for the majority of the film, but very little is accomplished narratively as they tread in the open waters aimlessly. 

This is somewhat made up for in the world-building which Cameron is much more interested in, and it primarily revolves around a lone tulkun, Payakan, a whale-like creature that was exiled by its pod. The backstory here is laboriously teased out, and while the reveal is ultimately not inventive enough to really justify the chore, it is the main thing that keeps the second act moving. To give credit where credit is due, Cameron’s creature design is also much more palpable in the sequel, his creatures feeling much more at accessible here in the sea than those land and sky-dwelling beasts from before, and the tulkun is a shining example of such. The massive creature may not be as inventive as ikran, or their water-based equivalents, the ilus and the tsuraks, but it is comprehensible, which is a rare badge of honor for anything to have in this franchise. They also provide an interesting aspect of the lore as they are spirit brothers and sisters to the Metkatina – each Na’vi sharing a deep connection to a member of the pod – and when they are in migration through the reef, it is a celebration as they share the joys and sorrows of life with each other.   

The bond shared between nature and Na’vi is not new to the franchise, yet it feels much more real here as the Na’vi are not physically linking in to take control of the creatures, but actually sharing a communion with nature. The tulkuns are not used as tools for the Na’vi, but there is a sense of reunion and completion here that is not at all like the close connection that a rider would share with their ikran or their tsurak. This bond sets up a major part of the emotional stakes of the third act as each tulkun’s brain has a serum that is even more valuable than the unobtanium which was being mined in the first film. Its late and un-heralded introduction into The Way of Water gives some added purpose as to why the military is still so hung-up on Jake Sully and this incredibly expensive and as-of-yet fruitless mission, but it is just one of the many plot points that are thrown into an already bloated story such as the seizures which Kiri experiences when she plugs into the Tree of Souls. Cameron sets all of these traps to be triggered in the climactic battle, but few ever come back into play in a meaningful way. 

Finally, and with still about fifty-five minutes to go, the film’s final set piece begins to take off. At the remote site of The Three Brothers, a rock formation in which Payakan spends his days alone, Lo’ak goes to warn the creature of the poachers seeking to harvest his brain serum, and he is joined by his own brothers and sisters as well as the kin of Tonowari. The two leaders, upon learning of their children’s peril, quickly bring the Metkatina army to the site, but it is too late as the children have already been captured by Quaritch. Running in tandem with this standoff is the whaling expedition which adds another layer of chaos into the mix as Payakan drags the whaler, wielding it as a weapon in service of the Na’vi, wildly through the water. Aboard the larger craft, Quaritch and Jake go back and forth as the children are captured, then freed, then captured again, and finally freed again in an absolutely exhausting exchange. While the action and the explosions all start off exciting, and it is all thankfully well-lit so everything can be seen, it frankly goes on for far too long and what should be exhilarating is just downright tedious.  

The Way of Water highlights the main problem with the Avatar series, and through the resolution, it paints a foreboding image of what is to come in the at least one confirmed, but upwards of three succeeding installments, and that is Jake Sully. He is a nothing character that finds himself at the center of everything, and though his transition in the first film – admittedly, slightly ableist – gave some depth to the character, now that he is as fully Na’vi as he physically can be, he is just an unstoppable force that will win no matter what. At least before, Neytiri had to serve as a liaison between the Na’vi and Jake, and Jake had to build up his relationship with the world around him, but now that he is fully integrated, poor Saldana finds herself mostly sidelined; a background character at best in a story that is too broad and too unfocused. The spectacle is not enough to make us care about Jake, and since Cameron went out of his way to also save Quaritch not just once by uploading his memories into an avatar, but then also by saving the avatar from drowning, it just sets up for more of the same for the sequel. Quaritch will pursue, Jake will infiltrate another colony and become the hero, wash, rinse, repeat. The opportunity is there to allow us to move on from the same old story that has already run its course by giving Spider a nefarious change of heart and transitioning this story over to the children, but Cameron is seemingly too precious with his toys and does not want to let go of Jake. It is not unlike how J.J. Abrams was too precious with the Skywalkers to tell a wider story in a galaxy that should be larger than one single person in the misaligned Star Wars sequel trilogy, also overseen by Disney, and the parallels bring about a fearful sense of reliance on nostalgia and the familiar for the remainder of this franchise as the Studio hopes the mere reunion with these characters will be enough to placate audiences instead of forging ahead into any new narrative territory.  

Visually, The Way of Water is mostly an improvement over Avatar but that is about where the praise ends, and even that comes with a list of qualifiers behind it. The technology at work is great, but once the shine begins to fade, the holes in the story begin to show, and this does not take long as The Way of Water does not have the advantage of showing us a brand-new world of Pandora, but rather just connecting us back to much of the same. It is why the first act feels so long, it is little more than an abbreviated retelling of the first film, and then already almost an hour in before seeing anything new, audiences are easily forgiven if their patience for Cameron’s obsessions has worn thin. That the second act of the film is equally as simple a story, yet overflowing with ideas to see what sticks, adds insult to injury and is a clear sign that there needs to be someone in charge beside Cameron to help focus this vision if it is to be impactful.  

It is sure to be high atop the list of box office grossers come the end of the year and the end of its run, but against its budget, it remains to be seen if it will be a financial success. With a $134.1 million domestic debut, it opened below the box office of all three of Marvel Studio’s releases this year as well as Jurassic World: Dominion and Top Gun: Maverick if accounting for the Monday holiday, with an even higher concentration of PLF priced tickets contributing to that number, too. It feels like it will face the same cultural fate as Avatar that no one will be talking about it in six days, weeks, months, and certainly not years from now. It should be admired that the only restraint shown in the franchise is Cameron’s patience for the technology to catch up to what was in his head, but from the self-appointed “king of the world,” to continue to heap praise on this personal vision of an idyllic extraterrestrial world feels a little more like an emperor’s new clothes situation.  While, yes, the technological advances are an achievement, what is the purpose?  Why is it here?  Without clear goals in mind on how this technology can be used to shape cinema, is the film – a glorified tech demo and an exercise in the unnecessary – even that good? Honestly… no, because when you strip away the flashy colors and the shiny allure, all that remains in an overlong and meandering story that, in its effort to be on the emotional level of all audiences, it fulfills the needs of no one.