Should I See Avatar: Way Of Water? 10 Spoiler Free Questions To Help You Decide.

Greg Ehrhardt, OnScreen Blog Columnist

The best thing Hollywood has going for it are the directors whose movies you want to see without really knowing anything about their movies, often called “Event Film Directors”. Everyone has their own personal list (OnScreen Blog Chief Film Critic Ken Jones has like 70), but it is a short list of event directors who are able to make popular movies across the gender and age spectrum.

Steven Spielberg was the president of this group for decades, but sadly retired after making Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. From a box office perspective today, we have I think 3 remaining event directors with enough mass appeal to drive significant box office by their name alone: Christopher Nolan, Jordan Peele, and yep, James Cameron.

James Cameron, the man who never made a bad movie, is famous for pushing the envelope with film technology. Quality and technology is a potent box office cocktail. The industry suffered when Cameron committed himself to the Avatar franchise after 2009 (imagine what other new projects or franchises he could have breathed new life into), but Avatar was a singular achievement in film-making where he made it special to see a movie in the theaters again. It also helped that Avatar was an old-school fun action movie.

We waited 13 years to see if Cameron could outdo himself with an Avatar sequel, and Avatar fans and general movie enthusiasts could endure the wait. You knew he was going to, at bare minimum, come up with something visually special, even if the plot was as generic as the first Avatar movie.

Is this movie for the casual movie fan, the ones who helped superpower Avatar to break box office records in 2009? That’s what I’m here to help you decide on. I’ll answer ten spoiler free questions about the movie which should help you figure out if this is worth the trip to the theaters or not.

Question #1: Is this movie as visually spectacular as the first one?

There are some great visuals in the ocean, but the breakthroughs in this movie are more for realism than for flair. You can barely tell there’s CGI going on with the various creatures, that’s how realistic they look. The first Avatar took your breath away with the flying scenes and the lighting of the forest at night. There’s less of that aspect here; this movie will spur more “I can’t believe this is CGI” reactions than “I can’t believe I just saw that” reactions the first movie generated.

Question #2: Is the 3D as good as the first one?

The 3D is more immersive, but less spectacular, if that makes sense. Movie technicians will marvel at how seamless the 3D is, but there’s less 3D going on where it feels like the movie surrounds you with its story. Still, since 3D movies is barely a thing anymore, it is a unique experience and helps the movie.

Question #3: I heard this movie is basically a re-run, story wise, of the first movie. Is there really nothing new with the movie?

Yeah, I can confirm story wise, this is basically the first movie in slightly different clothes. This movie’s last two hours takes place in the ocean, which is new, but goes through the same plot beats as the first one. From my view, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing if the execution is there (and we’ll get to that later)

Question #4: I saw in the trailers Jake and Neytiri have a family in this movie. Are their kids a big story element? Are they annoying like so many kids in action movies?

Their kids are prominently involved in the movie, and they are overall a net positive for the movie. There’s nothing Oscar worthy going on in their performances, but centering the movie around Navi children was a noted new element in this sequel that mostly worked, just because seeing kid characters go through an action movie usually builds solid suspense, and that’s the case here too.

Question #5: So Stephen Lang is back as Colonel Quaritch in Avatar 2? Does this make sense, and is he good in the sequel?

Yep, he’s back (this isn’t a spoiler btw), and yes, it makes sense (as long as you buy the technology behind the resurrection). If you liked Lang in the first movie, you’ll like him in this movie. He has a bit more to do here, and he’s still pretty fun to hate. There is another antagonist who doesn’t get much screen time, but whom I’m guessing will be the primary antagonist in the sequels, but overall, this is Lang’s movie once again.

Question #6: Is the action as good in the sequel as it was in the first movie?

Short answer, no, primarily because there’s barely stakes in this movie. The first movie, beyond the thrilling flying scenes and some of the creature scenes where they attack the humans, also had huge stakes as far as the humans wanting to destroy the Navi and everything they hold dear. While the humans still want to colonize Pandora completely, this is more a personal stakes movie: Quaritch wants revenge on Jake Sully, and the movie centers around that. While we want Jake Sully to live, it significantly reduces the tension of the action surrounding that plot device.

Question #7: I did not like the first Avatar movie, will I like this one?

Nope! There is nothing new here for any person who didn’t like the first one to enjoy this one instead

Question #8: Is this going to be in the Oscar conversation like the first one was, if I want to be versed on the Oscar contenders?

This will certainly contend, if not win, the visual categories, but I’ll be surprised if this gets a Best Picture nomination. Like the first movie, this has a 3+ hour run time, but there is way less of a story engine keeping the audience engaged with this movie as there was with the first movie. The plot is as generic as the first one, there was no particular insight this movie generated beyond the superficial, and this just wasn’t a captivating a movie visually or aurally, which a movie like Top Gun Maverick excelled at, which is why I think that will be in the Oscar race

Question #9: Are there any noteworthy acting performances? Fun performances? Interesting performances?

I thought Sigourney Weaver gave the best performance here playing an angsty Navi teenager. Zoe Saldana was also good and extremely believable as a Navi. As noted above, Stephen Lang was fun and at times more interesting than in the first movie. This movie in particular is way more focused on the Navi (and the avatars) than the humans, to the film’s detriment.

Question #10: Is this a good movie?

Sadly, it is not, and that is painful to say, because I wanted this movie to be at least fun; this movie is a bad combination of mediocre and boring, beyond the visuals. T

his is, by far, James Cameron’s worst movie, and surprisingly a messy movie too. The first Avatar was 3 hours long, but it was a fairly lean movie. This movie is bloated. Usually, we want to see the director’s cut of movies to see the good scenes the studios forced the director to cut. This is the first movie ever where I actively want to see a studio cut of 2 hours and 15 minutes, and believe me, there’s 45 minutes you can cut from this movie without losing much.

This movie also isn’t just bloated with excessive plot meandering. There are MANY plot threads in this movie which don’t go anywhere, and gaping plot holes where even my wife, a super casual movie fan who doesn’t dissect movies like I do, would even whisper to me “Why didn’t the character just do this?”. The movie’s most interesting scenes were cut too short, and the least interesting scenes ran 5 minutes too long every time.

The script really needed another pass, but I’m guessing Cameron was so focused on getting the technology right that the script was not given proper attention.

The die hard Avatar fan will still probably like this. Everyone else, unless you really want to experience the visuals in 3D, can probably wait until it comes out on Disney+ next year.

Yeah, it may be time for James Cameron to retire from the Event Director’s Club.

1.5 stars out of 4.