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Watching "Avatar," I felt sort of the same as when I saw "Star Wars" in 1977. That was another movie I walked into with uncertain expectations. James Cameron 's film has been the subject of relentlessly dubious advance buzz, just as his " Titanic " was. Once again, he has silenced the doubters by simply delivering an extraordinary film. There is still at least one man in Hollywood who knows how to spend $250 million, or was it $300 million, wisely.

"Avatar" is not simply a sensational entertainment, although it is that. It's a technical breakthrough. It has a flat-out Green and anti-war message. It is predestined to launch a cult. It contains such visual detailing that it would reward repeating viewings. It invents a new language, Na'vi, as "Lord of the Rings" did, although mercifully I doubt this one can be spoken by humans, even teenage humans. It creates new movie stars. It is an Event, one of those films you feel you must see to keep up with the conversation.

The story, set in the year 2154, involves a mission by U. S. Armed Forces to an earth-sized moon in orbit around a massive star. This new world, Pandora, is a rich source of a mineral Earth desperately needs. Pandora represents not even a remote threat to Earth, but we nevertheless send in ex-military mercenaries to attack and conquer them. Gung-ho warriors employ machine guns and pilot armored hover ships on bombing runs. You are free to find this an allegory about contemporary politics. Cameron obviously does.

Pandora harbors a planetary forest inhabited peacefully by the Na'vi, a blue-skinned, golden-eyed race of slender giants, each one perhaps 12 feet tall. The atmosphere is not breathable by humans, and the landscape makes us pygmies. To venture out of our landing craft, we use avatars--Na'vi lookalikes grown organically and mind-controlled by humans who remain wired up in a trance-like state on the ship. While acting as avatars, they see, fear, taste and feel like Na'vi, and have all the same physical adeptness.

This last quality is liberating for the hero, Jake Sully ( Sam Worthington ), who is a paraplegic. He's been recruited because he's a genetic match for a dead identical twin, who an expensive avatar was created for. In avatar state he can walk again, and as his payment for this duty he will be given a very expensive operation to restore movement to his legs. In theory he's in no danger, because if his avatar is destroyed, his human form remains untouched. In theory.

On Pandora, Jake begins as a good soldier and then goes native after his life is saved by the lithe and brave Neytiri ( Zoe Saldana ). He finds it is indeed true, as the aggressive Col. Miles Quaritch ( Stephen Lang ) briefed them, that nearly every species of life here wants him for lunch. (Avatars are not be made of Na'vi flesh, but try explaining that to a charging 30-ton rhino with a snout like a hammerhead shark).

The Na'vi survive on this planet by knowing it well, living in harmony with nature, and being wise about the creatures they share with. In this and countless other ways they resemble Native Americans. Like them, they tame another species to carry them around--not horses, but graceful flying dragon-like creatures. The scene involving Jake capturing and taming one of these great beasts is one of the film's greats sequences.

Like "Star Wars" and "LOTR," "Avatar" employs a new generation of special effects. Cameron said it would, and many doubted him. It does. Pandora is very largely CGI. The Na'vi are embodied through motion capture techniques, convincingly. They look like specific, persuasive individuals, yet sidestep the eerie Uncanny Valley effect. And Cameron and his artists succeed at the difficult challenge of making Neytiri a blue-skinned giantess with golden eyes and a long, supple tail, and yet--I'll be damned. Sexy.

At 163 minutes, the film doesn't feel too long. It contains so much. The human stories. The Na'vi stories, for the Na'vi are also developed as individuals. The complexity of the planet, which harbors a global secret. The ultimate warfare, with Jake joining the resistance against his former comrades. Small graceful details like a floating creature that looks like a cross between a blowing dandelion seed and a drifting jellyfish, and embodies goodness. Or astonishing floating cloud-islands.

I've complained that many recent films abandon story telling in their third acts and go for wall-to-wall action. Cameron essentially does that here, but has invested well in establishing his characters so that it matters what they do in battle and how they do it. There are issues at stake greater than simply which side wins.

Cameron promised he'd unveil the next generation of 3-D in "Avatar." I'm a notorious skeptic about this process, a needless distraction from the perfect realism of movies in 2-D. Cameron's iteration is the best I've seen -- and more importantly, one of the most carefully-employed. The film never uses 3-D simply because it has it, and doesn't promiscuously violate the fourth wall. He also seems quite aware of 3-D's weakness for dimming the picture, and even with a film set largely in interiors and a rain forest, there's sufficient light. I saw the film in 3-D on a good screen at the AMC River East and was impressed. I might be awesome in True IMAX. Good luck in getting a ticket before February.

It takes a hell of a lot of nerve for a man to stand up at the Oscarcast and proclaim himself King of the World. James Cameron just got re-elected.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Avatar (2009)

Rated PG-13 for intense epic battle sequences and warfare, sensuality, language and some smoking

162 minutes

Stephen Lang as Col. Miles Quaritch

Joel David Moore as Norm Spellman

Wes Studi as Eytukan

CCH Pounder as Moat

Dileep Rao as Dr. Max Patel

Giovanni Ribisi as Parker Selfridge

Sam Worthington as Jake Sully

Zoe Saldana as Neytiri

Michelle Rodriguez as Trudy Chacon

Laz Alonso as Tsu'tey

Sigourney Weaver as Grace

Matt Gerald as Corporal Lyle Wainfleet

Written and directed by

James Cameron

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Avatar: The Way of Water

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Watch Avatar: The Way of Water with a subscription on Hulu, Disney+, Max, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

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Narratively, it might be fairly standard stuff -- but visually speaking, Avatar: The Way of Water is a stunningly immersive experience.

Avatar: The Way of Water 's story is predictable, but the visual effects are so spectacular that it hardly matters.

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‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ Review: It’s Even More Eye-Popping Than ‘Avatar,’ but James Cameron’s Epic Sequel Has No More Dramatic Dimension

The underwater sequences are beyond dazzling — they insert the audience right into the action — but the story of Jake Sully and his family, now on the run, is a string of serviceable clichés.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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There are many words one could use to describe the heightened visual quality of James Cameron ’s original “ Avatar ” — words like incandescent, immersive, bedazzling. But in the 13 years since that movie came out, the word I tend to remember it best by is glowing . The primeval forest and floating-mountain landscapes of Pandora had an intoxicating fairy-tale shimmer. You wanted to live inside them, even as the story that unfolded inside them was merely okay.

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“The Way of Water” cost a reported $350 million, meaning that it would need to be one of the three or four top-grossing movies of all time just to break even. I think the odds of that happening are actually quite good. Cameron has raised not only the stakes of his effects artistry but the choreographic flow of his staging, to the point of making “The Way of Water,” like “Avatar,” into the apotheosis of a must-see movie. The entire world will say: We’ve got to know what this thrill ride feels like .

At its height, it feels exhilarating. But not all the way through. Cameron, in “The Way of Water,” remains a fleet and exacting classical popcorn storyteller, but oh, the story he’s telling! The script he has co-written is a string of serviceable clichés that give the film the domestic adventure-thriller spine it needs, but not anything more than that. The story, in fact, could hardly be more basic. The Sky People, led again by the treacherous Col. Quaritch (Stephen Lang), have now become Avatars themselves, with Quaritch recast as a scowling Na’vi redneck in combat boots and a black crewcut. They’ve arrived in this guise to hunt Jake down. But Jake escapes with his family and hides out with the Metkayina. Quaritch and his goon squad commandeer a hunting ship and eventually track them down. There is a massive confrontation. The end.

This tale, with its bare-bones dialogue, could easily have served an ambitious Netflix thriller, and could have been told in two hours rather than three. But that’s the point, isn’t it? “The Way of Water” is braided with sequences that exist almost solely for their sculptured imagistic magic. It’s truly a movie crossed with a virtual-reality theme-park ride. Another way to put it is that it’s a live-action film that casts the spell of an animated fantasy. But though the faces of the Na’vi and the MetKayina are expressive, and the actors make their presence felt, there is almost zero dimensionality to the characters. The dimensionality is all in the images.

Reviewed at AMC Empire, Dec. 6, 2022. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 192 MIN.

Production: A Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, 20th Century Studios release of a 20 th Century Studios, Lightstorm Entertainment production. Producers: James Cameron, Jon Landau. Executive producers: David Valdes, Richard Baneham.
Crew: Director: James Cameron. Screenplay: James Cameron, Rick, Jaffe, Amanda Silver. Camera: Russell Carpenter. Editors: David Brenner, James Cameron, John Refoua, Stephen E. Rivkin. Music: Simon Franglen.
With: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Stephen Lang, Britain Dalton, Sigourney Weaver, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Edie Falco, Jemaine Clement, Giovanni Rabisi, Kate Winslet.

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Avatar: The Way of Water review: A whole blue world, bigger and bolder than the first

Thirteen years on, James Cameron takes Pandora under the sea in an astonishing, at times overwhelming sequel.

In The Terminator , Arnold Schwarzenegger's cyborg assassin is famously sent back from 2029 to rain death and cool Teutonic one-liners on the good people of 1984. For nearly four decades now, that film's creator, James Cameron , has also seemed like a man outside of time, an emissary from a near-future where movies look like something we've only imagined them to be: liquid metals, impossible planets, boats bigger than the Ritz. Avatar: The Way of Water (in theaters Friday) brings that same sense of dissociative wonder. What fantastical blue-people oceania is this? How did we get here? And why does it look so real ?

The answer to that first question, as several hundred million fans of the original 2009 Avatar already know, is a mythical place called Pandora. The next two land somewhere between vast technology, sweat equity, and God (and, at this New York press screening at least, a slightly smudgy pair of 3D glasses). The Way of Water is, indeed, spectacularly aquatic, though not quite in the way that the six-time Oscar winner's eerie deep-sea thriller The Abyss was, or even the vast, ruthless North Atlantic that swallowed Leonardo DiCaprio and 1,500 other doomed souls in his Titanic . This is circa-2022 James Cameron, which is to say he makes it seem a lot like 2032 — a world so immersive and indubitably awesome, in the most literal reading of that word (there will be awe, and more awe, and then some more) that it feels almost shockingly new.

It's also very much a Cameron movie in that the plot is, at root, blood simple: good, evil, the fate of the free world. Former Marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington ) has permanently shed his human form to become full Na'vi, the extreme ectomorphs with Smurf-colored skin whose peaceful pantheistic ways have long clashed with their would-be conquerors from Earth, the rampaging, resource-greedy "sky people." There's still an American military base there, led by the brusque, efficient General Frances Ardmore (a bemused Edie Falco , incongruous in a uniform). But the Na'vi largely run free, hunting and cavorting and swooping through the air on their dragon-bird steeds, singing the songs of the rainforest and raising little blue babies with swishy tails.

Jake and his Na'Vi princess, Neytiri ( Zoe Saldaña ), now have three offspring of their own, along with an adopted teenage daughter named Kiri ( Sigourney Weaver ), the child of the late Dr. Grace Augustine (whom Weaver plays once again in flashbacks), and an orphaned human boy called Spider (Jack Champion), a loinclothed Mowgli they treat more like a stray cat than a son. Jake is the stern patriarch, still a soldier to the bone, and Neytiri is the gentle nurturer; the children, beneath their extraterrestrial skin, are just happy, jostling kids. But when the DNA imprint of Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) is recovered by science after his fiery defeat in the first film and poured into the healthy body of an Avatar, the resurrected officer vows revenge: While Ardmore & Co. continue to efficiently strip-mine Pandora, he will settle for nothing less than his former protegé's dishonorable death.

And so Sully and his family are forced to flee, hiding out among the reef-people clan of Metkayina. The taciturn chieftan ( Fear the Walking Dead 's Cliff Curtis ) and his wary wife (congratulations if you can tell that's Kate Winslet ) are reluctant to let strangers into their world, especially when they come trailing danger and forest dirt behind them. Socially, most Metkayina are only as welcoming as they strictly need to be, and the Sully family soon finds that living in harmony with the sea also means a steep learning curve for land-bound Na'vi — new customs, new modes of transportation, new ways of breathing.

But that, of course, is where Cameron and his untold scores of studio minions get to shine: The world both above and below the waterline is a thing to behold, a sensory overload of sound and color so richly tactile that it feels psychedelically, almost spiritually sublime. The director, who penned the script with married screenwriting duo Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver ( Jurassic World , Mulan ), tends to operate in the grand, muscular mode of Greek myth (or if you're feeling less generous, the black-and-white clarity of comic books). The storytelling here is deliberately broad and the dialogue often tilts toward pure blockbuster camp. (Not every word out of the colonel's mouth is "Oorah," but it might as well be; Jake speaks fluent Hero Cliché, and the Na'vi boys say "bro" like they just escaped from Point Break .)

And yet the movie's overt themes of familial love and loss, its impassioned indictments of military colonialism and climate destruction, are like a meaty hand grabbing your collar; it works because they work it. The actors, performing in motion capture, do their best to project human-scale feelings on this sprawling, sensational canvas, to varying degrees of success. Saldaña's mother-warrior makes herself ferociously vulnerable, and Weaver somehow gets us to believe she's an outcast teen; Worthington often sounds like he's just doing his best to sound 10 percent less Australian. Even the non-verbal creatures — bioluminescent jellyfish as delicate as fairy wings; whales the size of aircraft carriers, with four eyes and flesh like an unshelled turtle's — have an uncanny anthropomorphic charm, stealing several moments from their speaking counterparts.

By the third hour, Cameron has shifted into battle mode, and the movie becomes a sort of rock opera, or a sea-salted Apocalypse Now ; the "Ride of the Valkyries" thunder rarely feels far behind. The scale of mortal combat in those moments is, one could say, titanic, though it turns out to be a more personal reckoning for Sully and his family too. The final scenes are calculated for maximum impact and not a little bit of emotional manipulation; at 192 minutes, the runtime is almost certainly too long. It's strange, maybe, or at least wildly uncritical, to say that none of that really matters in the end. The Way of Water has already created its own whole-cloth reality, a meticulous world-building as astonishing and enveloping as anything we've ever seen on screen — until that crown is passed, inevitably, in December 2024, the projected release date for Avatar 3 . Grade: A–

Avatar 2 marks a dramatic step forward for director James Cameron

But The Way of Water is a step back for the endlessly distracting HFR presentation

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There are two thoughts that you never want to cross your mind at a movie theater. One is “Did I just step in gum?” The other is “Is this supposed to look this way?”

Avatar: The Way of Water , James Cameron’s fundamentally enjoyable and exciting sequel to the 2009 blockbuster Avatar , is meant to represent a major technological advance in cinematic exhibition. Time will tell whether that’s the case. But the fact is that many viewers will have a vexing experience if they see the picture in what’s considered the optimum format.

The first press screenings of the long-delayed 192-minute opus, which reportedly cost somewhere between $250 million and $400 million to make, were held at theaters equipped to project the film in a high frame rate (HFR). You may have experienced this with Gemini Man , Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk , or Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy. It’s fair to say that HFR hasn’t really taken off, unlike the wave of 3D that temporarily changed the cinema landscape when Avatar was released. But director/explorer Cameron boasted in October that he’d found a “simple hack” that would work as a game-changer. In short, he used advanced technology to essentially toggle The Way of Water between 48 frames per second and the traditional 24.

On paper, this sounds like a nice compromise. But three-plus hours of the shifting dynamic, without the ability to just settle into one or the other, is actually worse than simply watching an entire HFR movie. To use an old expression, you can’t ride two horses with one behind. And this is all the more upsetting because so much of the film is truly splendid.

Avatar: The Way of Water tells a simple but engaging story in an imaginative, beautiful environment. It’s more than three hours long, and it unfortunately takes close to a full third of that time to get rolling. But once it does — once former human Marine turned Pandoran native Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), his Na’vi mate Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), and their brood of four half-Na’vi, half-Avatar children take refuge from the forest in a watery part of the world — the sense of wonder hits like a tidal wave.

The story setup is simple: Sky People (the rapacious, militarized humans of the Resources Development Administration) are back on Pandora after the events of Avatar , and this time, they want something even more unobtainable than the element unobtainium. No spoilers, but let’s say that extracting this stuff from Pandora isn’t just dangerous, it’s a crime against everything the Na’vi hold dear. Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), reborn in a cloned Na’vi Avatar body, is leading the charge to kill that turncoat/insurgent Jake Sully, and won’t let anything stand in his way. Oorah!

In the second hour, the action picks up. Jake and Neytiri’s family becomes a collective fish out of water, almost literally, moving in with an aquatic tribe of Na’vi and adapting to its aquatic lifestyle. This is where Cameron’s rich soak in his invented world is most fulfilling. There’s about an hour of just floatin’ around a reef. The Sully kids have scuffles with the local bullies; the oddball daughter learns how to plug her hair into sponges and reefs; the adorable runt puts on translucent floaty wings and zooms around. It goes on for a quite a while, and the display of visual creativity is breathtaking.

Hour three is when things get wild. Cameron, an action director with few equals, is in conversation with himself, upping the stakes and testing his own resume. There’s a thrilling, emotional chase, and then a daylight battle sequence that’s propulsive, energetic, and original. It involves a gargantuan sea beast coming in off the top rope in a way that left my theater cheering.

Cameron isn’t generally known as a comic director, but there’s always been a humorous element to his action sequences. Think of Jamie Lee Curtis caterwauling and mugging during the causeway rescue in True Lies , or Robert Patrick’s T-1000 rising up from behind a soda machine as killer checker-patterned goop in Terminator 2: Judgment Day . What, we weren’t supposed to laugh at that first reveal of Sigourney Weaver in the mech suit in Aliens ? But the battle in the last third of The Way of Water is different.

Maybe Cameron reacquainted himself with the work of Sam Raimi. Maybe he’s drinking from the same cup as S.S. Rajamouli , who made the magnificent, absolutely ludicrous Indian import RRR . In The Way of Water , Cameron leans all the way into manic mayhem, smash-cutting from one outrageous image to the next. The final act of this movie shows off a freeing attitude he’s never fully embraced before in his action — even action that’s strikingly similar, like the massive sinking ship sequence in Titanic . James Cameron has some expertise in this arena, but this time out, it feels like he’s having a lot more fun.

It’s unlikely that The Way of Water will be a financial watershed on the same level as 2009’s Avatar . The 3D tech was so new back then, and the world-building and the use of CGI environments were both so unprecedented. It was a once-in-a-lifetime move forward for film technology and immersive storytelling. Much like Disney’s recent sequel Disenchanted , The Way of Water is arriving in a cinematic environment that was completely reshaped by its predecessor — and there are no tricks here that move filmmaking forward in the same way.

The closest Cameron comes is that shifting HFR trick, which winds up being more of a distraction than a bonus. Think about the change you notice at the perimeter of the screen when watching a Christopher Nolan or Mission: Impossible movie in an IMAX theater. The material shot in the large IMAX format blows out to fill the whole frame, changing the aspect ratio. The back and forth of the masking at the top and bottom can be intrusive. Eventually, you get used to it, or you recognize it isn’t that big a deal. The change back and forth with HFR — an enormous screen toggling with a “motion smoothing” effect — is not something the eye and brain can get used to.

What’s more, this is Avatar. Most of the time, what’s in the frame is computer-generated imagery (a telepathic alien whale the size of an aircraft carrier, primed for vengeance!), so it already looks unusual. If the whole movie were in HFR, perhaps one would settle in, but jumping between the two — often from shot to shot in the same action sequence, or even within the same shot , as it is being projected in some cinemas — is simply an aesthetic experiment that fails.

This is not just being picky. The changes mean that the tempo of the action on screen looks either sped up or slowed down as the switches occur. Shots in higher frame rate couched between ones that are lower (and there are many) look like a computer game that gets stuck on a render, which then spits something out super fast. To put it an old-school way, it looks like The Benny Hill Show .

It’s just fascinating that Captain Technology, James Cameron, would want it this way. And it’s unfortunate. Because the entire message of the Avatar films is about environmentalism and preservation, about respecting the world as it is. It seems like Pandora’s creator would recognize that sometimes the best move is to leave well enough alone, instead of looking for ways to fix something that didn’t need fixing in the first place.

Avatar: The Way of Water will be released Dec. 16 in theaters.

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Avatar: The Way of Water First Reviews: A Magical, Visually Sublime Cinematic Experience Well Worth the Wait

Early reviews of james cameron's long-in-the-making sequel say it feels like an immersive theme park thrill ride with interesting characters, breathtaking action, and a better story than the first..

TAGGED AS: First Reviews , movies , news

The first of Avatar’ s sequels is finally here, 13 years after the release of the record-breaking original. For those who’ve been anxiously looking forward to Avatar: The Way of Water and those who have been doubting its necessity, the good news is that the movie is worth the wait and another work of essential theatrical entertainment from James Cameron. The first reviews of the follow-up celebrate its expected visual spectacle as well as its slightly improved script and new cast members. You’re going to want to return to Pandora after reading these excerpts.

Here’s what critics are saying about Avatar: The Way of Water :

Does it live up to expectations?

The Way of the Water is a transformative movie experience that energizes and captivates the senses through its visual storytelling, making the return to Pandora well worth the wait. – Mae Abdulbaki, Screen Rant

Spending more than a decade pining for Pandora was worth it. Cameron has delivered the grandest movie since, well, Avatar . – Johnny Oleksinski, New York Post

This latest and most ambitious picture will stun most of his naysayers into silence. – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

Is it better than the original?

Like all great sequels, The Way of Water retrospectively deepens the original. – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

Avatar: The Way of Water is as visually exhilarating and sweepingly told as its predecessor; the plot is more emotionally vigorous. – Johnny Oleksinski, New York Post

(Photo by ©Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

So it’s not just more of the same?

Any “been here, actually do remember this” déjà vu washes all the way off the minute the action finally plunges under the surface. – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

[It is] meticulous world-building as astonishing and enveloping as anything we’ve ever seen on screen. – Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly

The brand-extension imperatives that typically govern sequels are happily nowhere in evidence. – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

Does it have a better script?

The sequel’s story is spread a bit thin, though there is certainly more depth than the first film. – Mae Abdulbaki, Screen Rant

In terms of narrative sophistication and even more so dialogue, this $350 million sequel is almost as basic as its predecessor, even feeble at times. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

The story is still just okay. – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

Will we care enough about the story and characters regardless?

Avatar: The Way of Water is such a staggering improvement over the original because its spectacle doesn’t have to compensate for its story; in vintage Cameron fashion, the movie’s spectacle is what allows its story to be told so well. – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

The movie’s overt themes of familial love and loss, its impassioned indictments of military colonialism and climate destruction, are like a meaty hand grabbing your collar; it works because they work it. – Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly

Watching The Way of Water , one rolls their eyes only to realize they’re welling with tears. – Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair

I’m sorry, but as I watched The Way of Water the only part of me that was moved was my eyeballs. – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

Are there any standout performances?

Saldaña and Winslet have poignant moments…and Dalton and Champion are standouts among the young newcomers. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

The most dynamic portrayal probably belongs to Lang, whose Quaritch is so relentless in his pursuit of Jake that he becomes a force of nature. – Tim Grierson, Screen International

How is the action?

The open-water clash that dominates the final hour is a commandingly sustained feat of action filmmaking. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

Any hack can make stuff blow up real good; Cameron makes stuff glow up real good. – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

Are the visuals as spectacular as they’re supposed to be?

One can’t say enough good things about the film’s visuals — each frame is more breathtaking and magical than the last. – Mae Abdulbaki, Screen Rant

The world both above and below the waterline is a thing to behold, a sensory overload of sound and color so richly tactile that it feels psychedelically, almost spiritually sublime. – Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly

What’s most astonishing about The Way of Water is the persuasive case it makes for CGI. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

(Photo by Mark Fellman/©Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

But how is that high frame rate?

It’s a rather soulless feel, as it was in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit films. But it can make you feel like you’re sharing the same space with the characters. – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

While the approach can sometimes prove distracting, the film is far more persuasive than Ang Lee’s recent experiments in the form. – Tim Grierson, Screen International

The use of high frame rate (a sped-up 48 frames per second) tends to work better underwater than on dry land, where the overly frictionless, motion-smoothed look might put you briefly in mind of a Na’vi soap opera. – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

Does it feel like more than just your average movie?

At times you don’t feel like you’re watching a movie so much as floating in one. – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

There are times when it can seem as if there isn’t a screen at all, and that the action is unfolding right in front of you. – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

It’s truly a movie crossed with a virtual-reality theme-park ride. – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

Do we need to see it in a theater?

It’s the most rapturous, awe-inducing, only in theaters return to the cinema of attractions since Godard experimented with double exposure 3D in Goodbye to Language . – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

Will it leave us excited for Avatar 3 ?

Where it will flow next is a mystery, and it’d be disingenuous of me to suggest I’m not eager to find out. – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

Avatar: The Way of Water opens everywhere on December 16, 2022.

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Movie review: 'avatar: the way of water'.

Bob Mondello

Filmmaker James Cameron's sequel to the biggest worldwide box office hit of all time, "Avatar: The Way of Water," has been in the works for more than a decade.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

"Avatar: The Way Of Water" opens this week on close to 54,000 screens worldwide. It's the sequel to the highest-grossing film in movie history, and filmmaker James Cameron says he waited 13 years to make it so that film technology could catch up with his vision of the moon Pandora. Here's critic Bob Mondello to tell us, without spoilers, how that vision plays out.

BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: More than a decade has passed since the Na'vi sent Pandora's invading humans packing, and their world seems to have more or less healed. The rainforests are as lush as you remember and is filled with digitized wonders. Jake Sully, the first film's hero, having given up his human body for his avatar one, is now tall, blue and handsome on a permanent basis, and proud papa to four kids who call him sir and follow his orders...

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER")

JAMIE FLATTERS: (As Neteyam) I'm a warrior like you. I'm supposed to fight.

MONDELLO: ...Intermittently. His wife, Neytiri, has to remind him occasionally that they're his family, not his squad. But everything's basically fine until just a few minutes into the movie, they spot what looks like a new star in the heavens and realize that the sky people are back. Now, may I just say right here that I don't much like wearing 3D glasses. But when the sky people lit up the forest as they were landing and sparks floated persuasively enough out into the auditorium to have me briefly worrying about the hair of the woman sitting in front of me, I decided I was on board. The visuals in this movie are astonishing, everything you'll have heard and then some, especially when Sully realizes that the humans are after him personally and he and his family join another branch of the Na'vi...

MONDELLO: ...A beach-dwelling turquoise clan that spends a good deal of its time underwater. This being submerged part is the technological advance James Cameron was apparently waiting on, and it's plenty dazzling. I mean, he's already made "Titanic" and "The Abyss," so he knows his way around a wading pool. But between the tattooed four-eyed whales and the rideable flying fish, he's arguably treading new water here - not so much in the plot department where he's recycling everything from "Moby Dick" and "Finding Nemo" to his own greatest hits reel, whole scenes that could have been lifted from "Aliens," "Terminator" and "Titanic." That said, in between the battles and breathtaking visuals, there are clever touches that have nothing to do with images, as when he brings back folks who died in the first "Avatar" - Sigourney Weaver's scientist, for instance.

SIGOURNEY WEAVER: (As Grace Augustine) It's like the entire biosphere of Pandora is aware and capable of this cognitive response.

MONDELLO: Her spirit now presents as Sully's adopted Na'vi daughter...

SAM WORTHINGTON: (As Jake Sully) What is it?

WEAVER: (As Kiri) I feel her, Dad.

MONDELLO: ...An environmentally sensitive 14-year-old...

WORTHINGTON: (As Jake Sully) Feel who?

WEAVER: (As Kiri) Eywa.

MONDELLO: ...Voiced by Sigourney Weaver.

WEAVER: (As Kiri) I hear her breathing. I hear her heartbeat.

MONDELLO: While I shouldn't go into specifics, for long stretches, this movie belongs to the kids. Think young adult fiction. As lessons are learned, rivalries morph into friendships with the more aquatic teens...

FILIP GELJO: (As Aonung) Keep up, forest boy.

MONDELLO: ...And things get set up for "Avatars" three, four and five. The concentration on family is new this time, but the thing that stayed constant so far is the filmmaker's obviously sincere passion about the environment. It was there at the start, Pandora's ecosystem in perfect balance until the arrival of humans, and "Avatar: Way Of Water" doubles down on that notion - no more talk of strip-mining unobtainium, possibly because it sounds silly. Now the reason humans have come to Pandora is they finally wrecked planet Earth and need a new planet to despoil. That, as Cameron is well aware 13 years after the first "Avatar," doesn't sound silly at all. I'm Bob Mondello.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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‘avatar: the way of water’ review: james cameron’s mega-sequel delivers on action, emotion and thrilling 3-d visuals.

Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña return to Pandora with a Na’vi family to protect as the “Sky People” menace follows them to a bioluminescent ocean hideout.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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James Cameron knows his way around a sequel. With Aliens and Terminator 2: Judgment Day , he showed he could build on the strengths of franchise starters with brawny action, steadily ratcheted tension and jaw-dropping technological invention. He’s also a storyteller very much at home in H2O, harnessing both the majestic vastness of the oceans and the icy perils of the deep in Titanic and The Abyss .

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“Avatar: The Way of Water,” Reviewed: An Island Fit for the King of the World

By Richard Brody

Fifteen years separated “The Godfather Part II” from “Part III,” and the years showed. The series’ director, Francis Ford Coppola , enriched the latter film with both the life experience (much of it painful) and the experience of his work on other, often daring and distinctive films with which he filled the intervening span of time. By contrast, James Cameron , who delivered the original “ Avatar ” in 2009, has delivered its sequel, “ Avatar: The Way of Water ,” thirteen years later, in which time he has directed no other feature films—and, though he doubtless has lived, the sole experience that the new movie suggests is a vacation on an island resort so remote that few outside visitors have found it. For all its sententious grandiosity and metaphorical politics, “The Way of Water” is a regimented and formalized excursion to an exclusive natural paradise that its select guests fight tooth and nail to keep for themselves. The movie’s bland aesthetics and banal emotions turn it into the Club Med of effects-driven extravaganzas.

The action begins about a decade after the end of the first installment: the American-born Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) has cast his lot with the extraterrestrial Na’vis, having kept his blue Na’vi form, taken up residence with them on the lush moon of Pandora, and married the Na’vi seer Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), with whom he has had several children. The couple’s foster son, Spider (Jack Champion), a full-blooded human, is the biological child of Jake’s archenemy, Colonel Miles Quaritch, who was killed in the earlier film. Now Miles has returned, sort of, in the form of a Na’vi whose mind is infused with the late colonel’s memories. (He’s still a colonel and still played by Stephen Lang.) Miles and his platoon of Na’vified humans launch a raid to capture Jake, who, with his family, fights back and gets away—all but Spider, whom Miles captures. The Sully clan flees the forests of Pandora and reaches a remote island, where most of the movie’s action takes place.

The island is the home of the Metkayina, the so-called reef people, who—befitting their nearly amphibian lives—have a greenish cast to contrast with Na’vi blue; they also have flipper-like arms and tails. They are an insular people, who have remained undisturbed by “sky people”—humans. The Metkayina queen, Ronal (Kate Winslet), is wary of the newcomers, fearing that the arrival of Na’vis seeking refuge from the marauders will make the islands a target, but the king, Tonowari (Cliff Curtis), welcomes the Sullys nonetheless. Unsurprisingly, the foreordained incursion takes place. An expedition of predatory human scientists arrive on a quest to harvest the precious bodily fluid—the sequel’s version of unobtainium—of giant sea creatures that are sacred to the Metkayina. The invading scientists join the colonel and his troops in the hunt for Jake, resulting in a colossal sequence that combines the two adversaries’ long-awaited hand-to-hand showdown with “ Titanic ”-style catastrophe.

The interstellar military conflict is the mainspring of the story, and a link in what is intended to be an ongoing series. (The next installment is scheduled for release in 2024.) But it’s the oceanic setting of the Metkayina that provides the sequel with its essence. Cameron’s display of the enticements and wonders of the Metkayina way of life is at once the dramatic and the moral center of the movie. The Sullys find welcoming refuge in the island community, but they also must undergo initiations, ones that are centered on the children and teen-agers of both the Sullys and the Metkayina ruling family. This comes complete with the macho posturing that’s inseparable from the cinematic land of Cameronia. Two boys, a Na’vi and a Metkayina, fight after one demands, “I need you to respect my sister”; afterward, Jake, getting a glimpse at his bruised and bloodied son, is delighted to learn that the other boy got the worst of it. Later, when, during combat, trouble befalls one of the Na’vi children, it’s Neytiri, not Jake, who loses control, and Jake who gives her the old locker-room pep talk about bucking up and keeping focus on the battle at hand. The film is filled with Jake’s mantras, one of which goes, “A father protects; it’s what gives him meaning.”

What a mother does, beside fighting under a father’s command, is still in doubt. Despite the martial exploits of Neytiri, a sharpshooter with a bow and arrow, and of Ronal, who goes into battle while very pregnant, the superficial badassery is merely a gestural feminism that does little to counteract the patriarchal order of the Sullys and their allies. Jake’s statement of paternal purpose is emblematic of the thudding dialogue; compared to this, the average Marvel film evokes an Algonquin Round Table of wit and vigor. But there’s more to the screenplay of “The Way of Water” than its dialogue; the script (by Cameron, Rick Jaffa, and Amanda Silver) is nonetheless constructed in an unusual way, and this is by far the most interesting thing about the movie. The screenplay builds the action anecdotally, with a variety of sidebars and digressions that don’t develop characters or evoke psychology but, rather, emphasize what the movie is selling as its strong point—its visual enticements and the technical innovations that make them possible.

The extended scenes of the Sullys getting acquainted with the life aquatic are largely decorative, to display the water-world that Cameron has devised, as when the young members of the family learn to ride the bird-fish that serve as the Metkayina’s mode of conveyance; when one of them dives to retrieve a shell from the deep; and when the Sullys’ adopted Na’vi daughter, Kiri (played, surprisingly, by Sigourney Weaver, both because she’s playing a teen-ager and because it’s a different role from the one she played in the 2009 film), discovers a passionate connection to the underwater realm, a function of her separate heritage. The watery light and its undulations are attractions in themselves, but the spotlight is on the flora and fauna with which Cameron populates the sea—most prominently, luminescent ones, such as anemone-like fish that light the way for deep-sea swimmers who have a spiritual connection to them, and tendril-like plants that grow from the seafloor and serve as a final resting place for deceased reef people.

Putting the movie’s design in the forefront does “The Way of Water” no favors. Cameron’s aesthetic vision is reminiscent, above all, of electric giftwares in a nineteen-eighties shopping mall, with their wavery seascapes expanded and detailed and dramatized, with the kitschy color schemes and glowing settings trading homey disposability for an overblown triumphalist grandeur. It was a big surprise to learn, after seeing the film, that its aquatic settings aren’t entirely C.G.I. conjurings—much of the film was shot underwater, for which the cast underwent rigorous training. (To prepare, Winslet held her breath for over seven minutes; to film, a deep-sea cameraman worked with a custom-made hundred-and-eighty-pound rig.) For all the difficulty and complexity of underwater filming, however, the movie is undistinguished by its cinematographic compositions, which merely record the action and dispense the design.

Yet Cameron’s frictionless, unchallenging aesthetic is more than decorative; it embodies a world view, and it’s one with the insubstantiality of the movie’s heroes, Na’vi and Metkayina alike. They, too, are works of design—and are similarly stylized to the point of uniform banality. Both are elongated like taffy to the slenderized proportions of Barbies and Kens, and they have all the diversity of shapes and sizes seen in swimsuit issues of generations past. The characters’ computer-imposed uniformity pushes the movie out of Uncanny Valley but into a more disturbing realm, one featuring an underlying, drone-like inner homogeneity. The near-absence of characters’ substance and inner lives isn’t a bug but a feature of both “Avatar” films, and, with the expanded array of characters in “The Way of Water,” that psychological uniformity is pushed into the foreground, along with the visual styles. On Cameron’s Edenic Pandora, neither the blues nor the greens have any culture but cult, religion, collective ritual. Though endowed with great skill in crafts, athletics, and martial arts, they don’t have anything to offer themselves or one another in the way of non-martial arts; they don’t print or record, sculpt or draw, and they have no audiovisual realm like the one of the movie itself. The main distinctions of character involve family affinity (as in Jake’s second mantra, “Sullys stick together”) and the dictates of biological inheritance (as in the differences imposed on Spider and Kiri by their different origins).

Cameron’s new island realm is a land without creativity, without personalized ideas, inspirations, imaginings, desires. His aesthetic of such unbroken unanimity is the apotheosis of throwaway commercialism, in which mystery and wonder are replaced by an infinitely reproducible formula, with visual pleasures microdosed. Cameron fetishizes this hermetic world without culture because, with his cast and crew under his command, he can create it with no extra knowledge, experience, or curiosity needed—no ideas or ideologies to puncture or pressure the bubble of sheer technical prowess or criticize his own self-satisfied and self-sufficient sensibility from within. He has crafted his own perfect cinematic permanent vacation, a world apart, from which, undisturbed by thoughts of the world at large, he can sell an exclusive trip to an island paradise where he’s the king. ♦

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‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ Review: James Cameron’s Sequel Is What the Theatrical Experience Was Made for

David ehrlich.

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To paraphrase a woman once known as Rose DeWitt Bukater: “Outwardly, I’ve spent the last 13 years insisting that only a total moron would ever bet against ‘ Avatar ‘ mastermind James Cameron . Inside, I was screaming.”

Screaming at the idea that modern Hollywood’s most all-or-nothing visionary was going to waste the twilight of his career — and possibly the last gasp of The Movies themselves — on a series of sequels to his least compelling work. Screaming at the notion that the only person with the resources and cachet to create massive new film worlds from scratch had decided to semi-permanently entrench himself in one that I’d already seen and wasn’t particularly itching to revisit. Screaming at the far-fetched prospect that he’d be able to mine fresh pockets of either from a planet that he’d previously (and vividly) terraformed into the most basic of settler-adoption space fantasies.

“Aliens,” “Terminator 2,” and even the disavowed “Piranha” sequel prove that Cameron has always had a gift for building radical new sights atop pre-existing bedrock, but I was skeptical that another epic worthy of his ego could be constructed on the bones of such brittle colonization tropes, or that the Na’vi offered him the opportunities he needed to revolutionize movie-going yet again (for better or worse).

On the latter point, of course, Cameron knew that it did. Pandora was conceived as a giant playground for the technology that he wanted to bring to movie theaters — and as the weapon that would force them to go digital or die — and Cameron’s plan for it always extended beyond lithe blue cat people selling the masses on saving the rainforest. His heart belongs to the ocean, after all, and the ones on Pandora are virtually impossible to beat.

Cameron has always treated story as a direct extension of the spectacle required to bring it to life, but the anthropocenic relationship between narrative and technology was a bit uneven in the first “Avatar,” which obscured the old behind the veil of the new where his previous films had better allowed them to intertwine. An out-of-body theatrical experience that makes its predecessor feel like a glorified proof-of-concept, “ Avatar: The Way of Water ” is such a staggering improvement over the original because its spectacle doesn’t have to compensate for its story; in vintage Cameron fashion, the movie’s spectacle is what allows its story to be told so well.

The adventures of Jake Sully (of the Jarhead clan) are probably never going to escape their sub-“Lawrence of Arabia” underpinnings or achieve the kind of popcorn-flavored poignancy that inspired this critic to list “Titanic” as one of the 10 greatest films ever made, but I’ll say this much: When “Avatar” ended, I couldn’t imagine caring about its characters enough to sit through a sequel, let alone four of them. When “The Way of Water” finally ebbed out to sea after 192 spellbinding minutes — receding into darkness with the gentlest of cliffhangers at the end of a third act defined by some of the clearest and most sensationally character-driven action sequences this side of “True Lies” — I found myself genuinely moved by the plight of Jake’s tall blue family, and champing at the bit to see what happened to them next. Never doubted Big Jim for a minute!

Here is a silly movie that works so well because it uses dazzling new tools to satisfy our nostalgia for classic entertainment. Seeing “Avatar: The Way of Water” in 3D VFR at High Dynamic Range doesn’t feel like watching any other movie you’ve seen before. This thing is a categorically and phenomenologically different experience than everything else that’s ever played at your local multiplex, including the original “Avatar” — it’s as many light years removed from the year’s other great blockbusters (“Nope,” “RRR,” and “Top Gun: Maverick”) as the extrasolar moon of Pandora is from Earth.

To some degree, that’s because “The Way of Water” iterates and improves upon technology that’s been tried before. As you would expect from an “Avatar” sequel, the main cast largely consists of 10-foot-tall aliens who mind-meld with nature through the anemone-like tendrils that wiggle out of their braids, only this time the Na’vi look more realistic than most of the human actors you’ll find in other Hollywood fare, especially during the ultra-vivid close-ups that Cameron uses to lend this film an emotional depth that its predecessor lacked the time and technology to achieve.

Like all great sequels, “The Way of Water” retrospectively deepens the original, and while that may not be much of a challenge here, it’s one that Cameron meets all the same. Now that the table-setting is out of the way and paraplegic-marine-turned-alien-clan-leader Jake Sully ( Sam Worthington ) has been at home in his new world and body for more than a decade, Cameron is free to move beyond $250 million “Pocahontas” fanfic and get a little freaky with the formula.

Jake and his Na’vi huntress mate Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) have produced four recom/Na’vi hybrid children when the sequel begins, which is enough to suggest that all of the “Avatar” series’ latent horniness is probably a bit less latent when Disney audiences aren’t watching. In fairness, the couple’s least annoying child was adopted when the Avatar that Sigourney Weaver ’s Dr. Grace Augustine used during the first movie somehow became pregnant while floating inside its test tube coffin after the scientist’s death.

And while the father’s identity remains something of a mystery, he must have been a pretty cool guy/spirit god because inquisitive teenage Kiri — also played by Weaver in one of the most affecting turns that performance-capture has ever made possible — instantly becomes the series’ best character (the other Sully kids range from “cute” to “under-written middle child” to “oh no it’s basically the idiot son from ‘War of the Worlds’”).

An outcast in a story teeming with them, Kiri depends on a degree of nuance that didn’t seem possible of the Na’vi in the previous film, and the character transcends her “chosen one” mystique with a warmth and curiosity that sets her apart from the rest of the cast, even as her interspecies hybridity and search for belonging find her in good company. She’s the bridge between human and Na’vi, analog and digital, that “Avatar” sorely needed, and her centrality to the next chapter of Cameron’s overarching narrative bodes well for the future of this franchise.

The same can’t quite be said of Miles “Spider” Socorro (Jack Champion), a shredded human teenager who was born on Pandora before the events of the first film, and is so determined to be accepted by/as one of the Na’vi that he runs around in his skivvies with stripes of blue painted over his skin. He’s a Newt for a new generation, and his very old school Cameron-ian goofiness wouldn’t be so worrying if not for the fact that Spider is almost immediately revealed to be the late Col. Quaritch’s son.

Well late-ish, anyway, as the cigar-chomping Quaritch (Stephen Lang) is back in Na’vi form. Earth is uninhabitable, people need a new planet, and a tall blue clone of the genocidal colonist from the last movie is in charge of clearing out the hostiles from humanity’s new home. That nü-Quaritch isn’t human himself adds a curious dynamic to his mission — a wrinkle dramatized by a wonderful “Avatar” take on Hamlet’s “Alas poor Yorick” speech — as does the fact that his own child is fighting alongside the natives.

Whether Spider is a strong enough character to carry that kind of story weight remains to be seen, but the intention alone points the plot towards resonant notes of acceptance and belonging; notes that help “The Way of Water” pivot away from the colonialist overtones that its predecessor wasn’t prepared to handle, and instead towards broader questions about man’s destructive instinct for survival at all costs, in perpetuity, throughout the universe. Quaritch’s war against the Na’vi mirrors the one against his own nature, a war that Jake Sully finds worth fighting in the service of protecting the people he loves and the planet that sustains them.

With Quaritch determined to slaughter Jake’s entire clan in order to put his head on a pike, our hero makes the decision to leave the jungle and flee with his family to the distant atolls of Pandora. That’s where they seek refuge with the sea green Metkayina clan and try to adapt to the life aquatic as they wait for the inevitable third act showdown with Quaritch’s military goons (fingers crossed that Kate Winslet gets more to do in the third movie as the Metkayina’s chief matriarch).

It’s during the film’s leisurely middle stretch that Cameron pioneers the use of underwater performance-capture, which is the kind of thing that only sounds like a big tech bro wank until the moment you see it in action. If parts of the story’s first chapter suggest that audiences are in for a simple retread of a sci-fi adventure that everyone on our planet saw twice and pretends to have forgotten, any “been here, actually do remember this” déjà vu washes all the way off the minute the action finally plunges under the surface and submerges us in an oceanic world so clear and present that you might instinctively start holding your breath.

It’s the most rapturous, awe-inducing, only in theaters return to the cinema of attractions since Godard experimented with double exposure 3D in “Goodbye to Language,” whether swimming with schools of alien fish or introducing us to the four-eyed, 300-foot-long whale-like tulkun (who prove central to the plot and communicate in subtitled Papyrus), these scenes have more in common with VR or lucid dreaming than whatever rinky-dink CGI we’re forced to swallow with every new superhero movie, and Cameron lets us soak up every frame. If we can fall in love with this world and be compelled by the fight to save it, why can’t we do the same with our own?

Complicating the illusion in a way that alternately enhances “The Way of Water” and risks interrupting its flow is a variable frame rate that switches between 24 and 48fps from one shot to the next, as if God (or Eywa) were speed-ramping life itself. There are times when the magic of it all fails to transcend the motion-smoothed memories that may continue to haunt my fellow survivors of “Gemini Man” and “The Hobbit,” and it can seem as if the screen has once again been set to soap opera mode.

There are other times — and your mileage on this will itself prove variable — when it can seem as if there isn’t a screen at all, and that the action is unfolding right in front of you. Either way, almost everything you see looks real (avatar-ized Stephen Lang is the only aspect that caused my brain any cognitive dissonance), or at least it all looks equally unreal , which is the same thing as far as your eyes are concerned.

The experience simply isn’t comparable to whatever else is playing at the local AMC, and yet the most impressive thing about “The Way of Water” might be how it captures the age-old spirit of the multiplex so well that it doesn’t even need to star Tom Cruise. This is a Movie with a capital “M,” its $400 million tech and ecological messaging all in service of a tulkun-sized adventure so transportive that I quickly stopped caring how Cameron made it. It’s certainly always obvious that no one else could have or did, as “The Way of Water” finds new charm in many of the director’s most groan-worthy fetishes and cliches: Stiff heroes, mouth-foaming villains, military jerk-offs, the emasculating insults they spew like bullets (“cupcake,” “buttercup,” other tasty morsels like that), scruffy engineers wearing stupid t-shirts, and enough boomer chutzpah to raise the Titanic are all present and accounted for in unapologetic fashion. Edie Falco walking around in a giant exoskeleton? That’s just a free bonus.

Using cutting-edge technology to recreate something that always seems on the brink of being lost forever, “The Way of Water” effectively marries the “what the hell am I eating?” experience of gastronomy with the full-bellied satisfaction of the first Big Mac you’ve had after a brutal fast. Frustratingly — if also most exciting of all — this feast of a movie left me with the feeling that Cameron is still holding back. Massive and monumental as “The Way of Water” is, there’s little doubt that you’re being served the most expensive appetizer of all time.

Be that as it may, this serving is still more than enough to make your mouth water. By the time the film arrives at its harrowing finale (a sublime reminder that “James Cameron + sinking ships” is one of the best combinations the movies have ever come up with), I couldn’t believe how involved I was by this larger than life cartoon epic about characters I was ready to leave for dead 13 years ago.

Does it matter if “The Way of Water” doesn’t elicit the same response when I watch it at home? Not really — I know that it won’t. Does it matter that Cameron is continuing to “save” the movies by rendering them almost unrecognizable from the rest of the medium? His latest sequel would suggest that even the most alien bodies can serve as proper vessels for the spirits we hold sacred. For now, the only thing that matters is that after 13 years of being a punchline, “going back to Pandora” just became the best deal on Earth for the price of a movie ticket.

20th Century Studios will release “Avatar: The Way of Water” in theaters on Friday, December 16.

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16 Dec 2022

Avatar: The Way Of Water

In the near-decade-and-a-half since we last visited Pandora, the humans in the film have travelled the 4.4 light years back to Earth, regrouped, made the return trip and built a new city-sized base on the alien moon. James Cameron has been about as busy. Besides mapping out a Lord Of The Rings -sized mythology for his burgeoning franchise (frankly we’ve lost count of how many Avatars are percolating in his brain at this point; we think it’s 32?), he’s been pushing technological envelopes left, right and centre, stirring up a mad brew of aquatic performance-capture, 3D tech and amped-up frame rates. The result, Avatar: The Way Of Water , is so dazzling to behold that adjectives like “dazzling” seem too anaemic to apply. It’s a leap beyond even what he pulled off with the first film, a phantasmagorical, fully immersive waking dream of a movie in which something impossible is happening on-screen at almost every moment. It’s a lot to process. And a timely reminder of what cinema is capable of when it dares to dream big.

Size is a key factor here — this is a sequel, after all, and the law of movie physics dictates that follow-ups must get increasingly colossal. The Way Of Water ticks this box in several ways. For one, there’s the ensemble of characters. All your old favourites are back (plus Norm Spellman), but making their bow are a group of azure urchins, the children of Neytiri ( Zoe Saldaña ) and Jake ( Sam Worthington ). The prospect of a blockbuster driven by kids can be a concerning one; Cameron, though, manages to keep things on the right side of saccharine. Even if none of these younglings are quite as winning as Aliens ’ Newt — not even the adopted Spider (Jack Champion), a wild-child human space-sprog who brings her to mind — they’re all easy to root for, which is good news considering the second act of the movie leaves Jake and Neytiri behind to venture out on adventures with the new generation. The titchy Tuktirey (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss) doesn’t get much to do, but there are substantial storylines for Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), who finds a friend in an unlikely place, and Kiri ( Sigourney Weaver , a 70-something playing a 14-year-old through VFX magic), the most interesting of the fresh characters, who appears to be getting set up to become a major player in future instalments.

The action, when it arrives, is thunderingly entertaining.

Then there’s the new environment. As you’ve probably gleaned by now, Cameron has activated his key mantra — just add water — returning to the ocean for the first time since 1997’s Titanic . Except this isn’t any ocean you’ve seen before. The first time he plunges us beneath the surface of Pandora’s big blue, the brain almost can’t take it all in: the images are crystal-sharp, hyper-real — see it in 3D HFR if you can — but the marine ecosystem teeming in every frame is mesmerisingly unearthly (you might find yourself taking your eyes off the important stuff to stare at an alien eel). It’s like a National Geographic documentary beamed in from another solar system, Cameron’s twin obsessions with sea-life and sci-fi fusing together in truly trippy fashion. The lengthy second act of the movie, in which the Sully family, fleeing the human villains, relocate to the Bora Bora-esque shores of a Pandoran island, will likely test the patience of some. (There are multiple fish-riding tutorials, as the Sullys get familiar with the barracuda-meets-dragonfly Skimwing and the adorable, seal-like Iwi.) But for those willing to tune into the strange and highly earnest vibe, it’s heady, entrancing stuff, particularly the screentime given to the Tulkan, a species of space-whale that proves unexpectedly moving — even if the drama on the beach is a little less compelling than what’s going on off it.

Which brings us to the plot. Interestingly, this is the one area in which Cameron has gone smaller. Relatively, of course: with moon-crossing odysseys and beasts the size of a submarine, he’s hardly gone Ken Loach . But the epic warring-species stakes of the original Avatar have been dialled down (for now), replaced by a simple revenge story. Stephen Lang ’s granite-tough Colonel Quaritch , a major standout in the first film and a character deepened here, is back in avatar form, eager to avenge his own death (it’s a long story) by slaying his blue foes. And so for now, bigger questions will have to wait. A new resource coveted by humans that’s even more unobtainable than unobtanium doesn’t get elaborated on, while Edie Falco is introduced as the new human Big Bad (yes, Carmela Soprano gets her own exo-suit) but phases out of the action. Instead, we’re left with a stripped-down game of cat-and-mouse, designed to test every one of the Sullys to their limits. It’s an effective choice by Cameron, keeping the stakes clear and resulting in a powerful, emotional final hour, as Quaritch corners his quarry and turns up the heat.

The Way Of Water takes its sweet time getting to the melee — at well over three hours, it should really be called ‘The Way Of Wishing You Hadn’t Drunk That Water’ — but by the time it does, it’s made sure you care about what’s going on. And the action, when it arrives, is thunderingly entertaining. On one side: the Na’vi navy, astride battle-fish, ululating and bristling with spears. On the other, Quaritch and his blued-up squad of Marines, plus a swaggering, dickish Australian seadog named Scoresby (Brendan Cowell, near-stealing the show with his salty jargon), a conflicted marine biologist ( Jemaine Clement , doing an American accent that might be the most alien thing in the film), and an armada of incredible military tech (scuttling crab-suits FTW). What ensues is a sea battle for the ages, a blisteringly exciting meld of live-action elements and visual-effects, which boggles the brain while never forgetting to focus on the heart. Where Cameron goes from here, who knows. But this is a reminder, after a long absence, that he’s still master and commander of making your jaw drop.

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Remember ‘Avatar’? Neither Do We. Catch Up Before the Sequel Arrives.

After 13 years, James Cameron’s sequel, “Avatar: The Way of Water,” is finally opening in December. Here’s everything you need to know.

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By Sarah Bahr

What can be accomplished in 13 years? Given that much time, J.K. Rowling published all seven of the Harry Potter books — and helped turn the first six of them into movies. Taylor Swift cranked out eight studio albums — and rerecorded two of them. The Yankees won the World Series eight times.

James Cameron made one film.

“ Avatar: The Way of Water ,” a roughly three-hour sci-fi epic, is a sequel to his 2009 “Avatar,” which shattered box office records and garnered a devoted fan base. (The three Academy Awards — for art direction, cinematography and visual effects — didn’t hurt either.) It’s set for a holiday-season release on Dec. 16 in theaters.

If you remember very little about Pandora, here’s a refresher on the “Avatar” plot, the phenomenon it became and the stakes a sequel faces.

OK, I just need to make sure before I get my hopes up yet again: This is really, finally, actually happening?

Why did it take so long?

The short answer is that the dazzling — and costly — array of visual effects means these films spend forever and a day in preproduction. Also, a majority of the sequel was filmed underwater, and new motion-capture technology had to be developed to accomplish the feat.

Thirteen years is a long time, but not long enough for me to have seen the original “Avatar.” Can I watch “The Way of Water” anyway?

Well, yes, but it’d be like diving into the “Star Wars” franchise with “The Empire Strikes Back.” How did Han Solo get in that carbonite? And what’s the deal with him and Princess Leia?

OK, got it, not optional. So where can I watch “Avatar”?

You’ll no longer be able to find it on Disney+ after it was quietly removed from the streaming service in August. You can, however, see “Avatar” in theaters beginning Sept. 23, when Disney will rerelease it with remastered audio and picture.

I don’t have time to rewatch a nearly three-hour film! Hit me with the highlights.

It’s the middle of the 22nd century and humans have depleted Earth’s natural resources, so they are now colonizing a moon known as Pandora, which is home to both the valuable mineral unobtanium and a tribe of 10-foot-tall indigenous blue creatures known as Na’vi, who look like a mash-up of the Blue Man Group, centaurs, professional basketball players and armed supermodels. A group of specially trained humans inhabit genetically engineered Na’vi bodies, known as avatars, to interact with the tribe while their human bodies remain in a remote location.

The protagonist is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic ex-Marine who replaces his identical twin brother in the Avatar Program after his death. Power struggles ensue within the program about what is worth sacrificing to obtain the unobtanium, as well as the value of Na’vi life; within the forest, as Jake tries to convince the Na’vi to accept him as one of their own; and within Jake himself. He grapples with the ethics of what he is doing, which is complicated by the fact that he has fallen for one of the Na’vi women, Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña).

After Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), the head of the security force for the group mining the unobtanium, destroys the Na’vi’s gathering place, Hometree, and kills many of them, Jake confronts him in his Na’vi form. Quaritch almost kills Jake before Neytiri fatally shoots the colonel with two arrows to the chest. Jake, in love with Neytiri and having gained the trust of the Na’vi, chooses to transfer to his avatar form permanently. The film’s closing shot is of his eyes, waking up on Pandora.

The visual effects in the film were a big deal, right?

Oh, yes. Reviewers focused as much — if not more — on the images as on the plot, both explaining and lauding the use of performance capture, which was then a newfangled innovation that had been most notably used for Gollum in Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” films.

Wasn’t “Avatar” released in 3-D?

Yes, it was shot with a 3-D camera system that gave Cameron an augmented-reality view in real time by integrating the live actors with computer-generated environments in the viewfinder. “Avatar” was one of the films that restarted a fad of 3-D cinematic releases, though you may not have actually seen it in 3-D: Many theaters didn’t yet have 3-D projection systems.

What about the film itself? Was it any good?

It brought in more than $2.8 billion at the worldwide box office, becoming the highest-grossing movie of all time, not adjusted for inflation. Reviewing the film for The New York Times , Manohla Dargis named it a Critic’s Pick, calling it “glorious and goofy and blissfully deranged.”

Both critics and audiences lauded the visuals and immersive world-building, but the story itself — which was familiar to anyone who had seen “Dances With Wolves” or “The Last Samurai” — won far less acclaim, with a large portion of reviewers dismissing it as generic or unoriginal. In her review, Dargis also criticized Cameron’s writing, particularly the dialogue, which she noted veered into “comically broad” territory at times (case in point: “Yeah, who’s bad?” Jake taunts a rhinolike creature).

Is Cameron writing the sequel, too?

Yes, though while he had sole script credit on “Avatar,” he co-wrote “The Way of Water” with Josh Friedman, who wrote the 2005 “War of the Worlds” adaptation that was directed by Steven Spielberg, and is co-writing the forthcoming “Star Trek 4” film.

What do we know about “The Way of Water” so far?

Cameron, who won an Academy Award for directing “Titanic,” is going back to the sea with the sequel, which is — as you may have guessed from the title — set primarily underwater. It takes place more than a decade after the events of the first film and focuses on Jake Sully and Neytiri and their preteen children. It also introduces a new tribe of reef-dwelling Na’vi known as the Metkayina.

Is Zoe Saldaña back?

Saldaña, who became a fan favorite for her performance as Neytiri and went on to play the green-skinned Gamora in Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” films, is back for “The Way of Water,” along with Worthington, Lang, Sigourney Weaver, Joel David Moore and CCH Pounder. Yes, some of their characters are apparently dead, and no, we haven’t figured out how that works yet.

They’ll be joined by prominent newcomers, including Kate Winslet (the Na’vi leader Ronal), Cliff Curtis (Tonowari, a leader of the Metkayina clan), Edie Falco (a military officer) and Jemaine Clement (a marine biologist).

Will the sequel be shown in 3-D?

Yes, but good news for glasses-wearers: You won’t need two sets to take in the film; a newer laser system eliminates the need for special glasses. (Though many theaters, as was the case the first time around, do not yet have the necessary equipment.)

Am I going to have to wait 13 more years for “Avatar 3”?

Cameron has signed on to make three more sequels, and they’re currently set for release in 2024, 2026 and 2028.

But maybe pencil in 2035, 2048 and 2061, just in case.

Sarah Bahr is a senior staff editor at The Times. She has reported on a range of topics, most often theater, film and television, while writing for the Culture, Styles and National desks. More about Sarah Bahr

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DVD & Streaming

Avatar: The Way of Water

Action/Adventure , Drama , Sci-Fi/Fantasy , War

Content Caution

In Theaters

December 16, 2022
Sam Worthington as Jake Sully; Zoe Saldaña as Neytiri; Sigourney Weaver as Kiri; Stephen Lang as Colonel Miles Quaritch; Kate Winslet as Ronal; Cliff Curtis as Tonowari; Edie Falco as General Frances Ardmore; Brendan Cowell as Captain Mick Scoresby; Jemaine Clement as Dr. Ian Garvin; Jamie Flatters as Neteyam; Britain Dalton as Lo'ak; Trinity Jo-Li Bliss as Tuk; Bailey Bass as Reya; Filip Geljo as Aonung; Duane Evans Jr. as Rotxo; Jack Champion as Spider

Home Release Date

March 28, 2023
James Cameron

Distributor

20th Century Studios

Movie Review

Pandora’s a nice place to visit. But you wouldn’t want to plunder there.

Humankind should’ve learned that lesson back in the first Avatar movie. With our own planet nearly exhausted and humans greedy for the Pandora-based metal of unobtanium, we homo sapiens set up shop on Pandora and quickly discovered the planet didn’t want us there. Lots of people died. Most of the rest were expelled. A few scientists remained (as long as they promised to be very, very nice), and a couple of them actually kinda transferred souls —telling their human bodies goodbye and becoming one of the blue, 10-foot-tall Na’vi.

But humans are a stubborn lot. Like heroes in a moderately creepy 1980s romcom, they take Pandora’s firm “no” as the planet just playing hard to get. And if Pandora’s complex ecosystems get in the way? Well, just set ‘em on fire. Burn a nice large area for humanity to mine and pave and build parking garages on in their quest to bring the whole of this lush, green land to heel.

But before that work can truly begin, the invading humans need to take care of one big blue thorn: Jake Sully.

Sully was one of folks who decided being Na’vi was preferable to being human, and that a life in Pandora was just too good to pass up. He’s got a wife now—the fierce, loving Neytiri—and a minivan’s worth of kids (though the minivan would certainly need some extra headroom). He’s also been leading a guerilla war against humankind’s latest efforts at exploitation.

Who better to lead the charge against pesky Jake than his one-time boss, Colonel Miles Quartich?

OK, so technically, the colonel died in the last movie. But before Quartich was killed, he saved (essentially) his brain on (essentially) a thumb drive, allowing to plug in his own essence into a Na’vi avatar.

Yep, that’s right: Sully might’ve gotten the best of the colonel last time around. But now, Quartich is just as big as Jake. Just as blue. Just as able to plug his braided hair into Pandora’s planetary hard drive as Jake is.

And this time, it’s personal .

Positive Elements

Sullys stick together. Such is the mantra that Jake has passed on to his four kids, and we see it play out time after time.

Jake feels the weight of fatherhood particularly heavily. “A father protects,” he tells us. “It’s what gives him meaning.” So when Jake learns that Quartich and his squad of human-brained Na’vi are after him and his family, he makes the difficult decision to move—to escape to a more watery realm on Pandora. It’s a painful uprooting, but Jake insists, “Wherever we go, this family is our fortress.” And when the Sullys do settle into an unfamiliar village that operates in unfamiliar ways, The Sully kids have each other’s backs—sometimes at huge personal risk.

An example of the family’s cohesive camaraderie: When some local teens pick on Kiri—Jake and Neytiri’s dreamy, adopted daughter—brothers Neteyam and Lo’ak fly to her defense. And while neither Jake nor Plugged In condone the violent way that defense is made, we still applaud that sort of loyalty.

But eventually—and through a lot of hard work—Jake, Neytiri and their children become integral parts of their new community, too. The entire village shows a willingness to fight and sacrifice for each of its members (including its non-Na’vi members). And even neighboring villages do their best to protect Jake and his family at great personal and communal cost.

We should note that most of Jake’s kids—in the early stages of adolescence, it seems—are processing their own roles within the family and community. Lo’ak, Jake’s second-oldest son, often feels like a disappointment to his ever-demanding father. Kiri feels like an outcast. But in many ways, these two characters form the bedrock on which The Way of Water is built, with each bringing special skills and moxie to the narrative party. The message the movie seems to be sending: Not fitting the norm can be a pretty good thing. All of us are different, and those differences can make us stronger.

Spiritual Elements

Pandora’s culture is deeply spiritual—but it’s not at all Christian. Rather, the planet’s inhabitants worship and sometimes pray to Eywa, a sort of an environmentally based goddess (think of it almost like Mother Nature on spiritual steroids). Neytiri, for instance, thanks the “Great Mother” when her son avoids a fate that could’ve been a catastrophe. Others pray in life-threatening situations. Pandora’s whole religious system feels pantheistic: Everything on the planet is connected to Pandora’s central spiritual heart, simultaneously separate and part of a whole spiritual being. The Na’vi literally plug into Pandora’s environmental motherboard to connect more closely with its creatures and even experience memories and visions.

We also hear some vaguely spiritual talk predicated on water, repeated almost like a mantra. “The way of water has no beginning and has no end,” it begins. The planet’s water gives and receives, it is “before birth” and “after death.” A scientist tells us that some of Pandora’s biggest inhabitants—whale-like creatures called tulkun —are said to have huge spiritual centers in their brains (to go along with their superior intelligence).

The movie also hints at some sort of divine or immaculate conception. Kiri, Jake and Neytiri’s adopted daughter, was the birth daughter of (and I realize this sounds a bit confusing) the avatar of Dr. Grace Augustine, who kinda-sorta died in the last movie and whose Na’vi avatar still floats floating in a capsule of liquid. That avatar got pregnant—no one’s sure how. Now, Kiri seems to have an extra-special connection with Pandora, manipulating creatures in ways that no one else can do.

We hear references to Sully and his kin as having “demon blood.” The closing song makes reference to sin.

Sexual Content

As mentioned, Grace’s avatar is floating in what looks like a capsule of water, and at one juncture we see her breasts (including a bit of nipple).

But let’s be honest: The Na’vi are not known for their modesty, and there’s a lot of blue skin on display. Critical bits are mostly covered by tiny bits of fabric or leather or hair (or strategic camera angles, since tiny kids sometimes wear nothing at all), but viewers will be exposed to an unrelenting stream of blue CGI buttocks throughout.

Also of note: One character, Spider, is a human teen boy living the Na’vi lifestyle. He wears, essentially, a loincloth throughout the entire movie.

When the Sullys move to their watery new home, Lo’ak develops a crush on Reya, the village chieftain’s daughter. When Reya’s trying to teach Lo’ak and his siblings how to slow their heartbeats (in order to breathe underwater longer), she places her hand on his stomach to help calm him. It has just the opposite effect: “Your heart is beating fast,” Reya says, as Lo’ak’s brother and sister look at each other knowingly.

When a bad guy captures, Kiri and tells her to “move along, buttercup,” Kiri responds by saying, “I’m not your buttercup, perv.”

Sully and Neytiri enjoy a brief moment of canoodling together sans kids on a “date night,” as they call it—until, that is, the arrival of human spacecraft interrupts them. Elsewhere, a grown female Na’vi is very pregnant, though that hardly slows her down or keeps her from fighting when the time comes.

Violent Content

The Way of Water , like the first Avatar movie, is essentially a war flick, and we see plenty of violence. Indeed, the last hour of the film is one constant battle.

Bullets rattle out of machine guns and sometimes find their mark, leading to bloody injuries and painful deaths. While the Na’vi use these more modern-day weapons, many use more indigenous tools: Neytiri’s favorite is her bow, from which she shoots arrows with distinctive, telltale fletching. Several find their mark—sometimes the heads of opponents, sometimes through vehicle windshields on the way to the chest. Knives and axe-like weapons are also favorite implements: One man suffers a spike-blow to the head. Several characters are impaled by spears.

Various machines and vehicles explode, sometimes killing or injuring others in the process. People might fly up and out of said vehicles, surely pulled by gravity to their dooms. (One man is thrown from a boat and has his arm severed for good measure: We see both fly.) A number of people drown or nearly drown, and at least one man is crushed by what appears to be a gigantic anemone. Someone has what appears to be an epileptic seizure underwater and nearly dies.

But perhaps the movie’s most jarring death isn’t that of a human or Na’vi at all, but rather a whale-like tulkun. Hunters pierce the animal’s hide with skewers carrying fast-inflating balloons, which bring the animal to the surface. Then it’s smacked in the chest with a massive explosive harpoon. The tulkun tries to flee, but eventually exhausts itself and dies. The hunters later go inside the beast’s cavernous maw and drill into its brain, draining a valuable liquid from the creature. (The rest of the carcass is apparently wasted.) Later, we discover that the tulkun’s calf also died.

The tulkun are assaulted with sonic cannons and depth charges. (We’re told that the creatures have never “even lifted a fin” against their attackers, but one tulkun decides to go against the species’ pacifistic ethos with devastating consequences.)

Sully’s kids fight with other teens. Fists are thrown and tails are pulled. The fight leaves Lo’ak and Neteyam bloodied, but the other teens (a Sully boy insists) suffered much worse. (When Sully later makes Lo’ak apologize to the other teen leader, he does, after a fashion: “I’m sorry I hit you—so many times,” he says.)

An animal is shot and killed; we see its carcass floating in the water. Countless more die on the humans’ return to Pandora, caught in an overwhelming inferno. Knives cut into the chests of a couple of people—ceremonial deaths, it would seem (even though the flesh wounds aren’t particularly serious).

Village buildings are set on fire. The lives of several people and Na’vi are threatened. Someone is strapped into a sort of torture device, leaving him with a bloody nose after the ordeal. A gigantic fish-like monster tries to gobble up a swimmer before it is killed itself. A tulkun sports a metallic hook of sorts in its fin, which a Na’vi friend kindly removes. A shark-like undersea creature relentlessly hunts one of the Na’vi.

Crude or Profane Language

One f-word and about 15 s-words. We also hear “a–,” “b–ch,” “b–tard,” “crap,” “g-dd–n,” “d–n,” “h—” and the British profanities “bloody” and “bugger.” Jesus’ name is abused once. We hear some name-calling, too, including one sibling calling another “penis face.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

A tulkun hunter tells a marine biologist on the team that his hunting pays for the scientist’s research. “That’s why I drink,” the scientist tells him. Someone makes a quip about someone else owing her a beer.

Other Negative Elements

Colonel Quaritch, the movie’s most notable big bad, is a proud and fierce U.S. Marine, as is the rest of his team. They do some pretty despicable things during this movie and form the spear point of humankind’s desire to plunder and colonize Pandora. And while the colonel’s character takes on some subtler shades as the movie goes on, The Way of Water certainly casts the military in a poor light.

Whatever else you think of James Cameron, let’s acknowledge at least this: The guy knows how to make a buzz-worthy movie.

His greatest strength lies in world-building—bringing moviegoers into exotic realms and making them feel as though they’re there. Be it the long-lost elegance of the Titanic or the gritty confines of a blue-collar spaceship in Aliens , Cameron invites you in—making it all feel so real. (In the case of the Avatar movies, the 3D doesn’t hurt.)

But while Cameron is a first-class tour guide in his own made-up worlds, those worlds are not necessarily ones that should be visited.

Avatar: The Way of Water swims into its PG-13 rating by the skin of its oddly pronounced incisors. Language alone pushes the envelope. The occasional blood spatter or flying limb doesn’t do the film any favors, either. And then, of course, there’s all that CGI skin. Yes, it’s all fake, but I hesitate to think of all the Rule 34 Na’vi GIFs that might be floating out on the internet. Nor would I be that surprised if the impossibly lithe, impossibly thin Na’vi (who, after all, make their human counterparts look like clumsy Minecraft figures) might unintentionally inspire an eating disorder or two.

But even if all that’s navigable, I’d encourage you to consider two more points before toting the whole family to watch. One, the tulkun hunt—a jarring scene for any young animal lover (especially one with a love of whales). And two, Pandora’s spiritual system that pushes away Christianity and hugs a nature-based pantheism. Forget the biblical model of stewardship: It sidesteps the Creator and instead worships the creation. And that is pretty much the definition of idolatry.

Cameron has a way of upending Hollywood expectations. The original Avatar is still the highest-grossing movie worldwide of all time—and it is said that The Way of Water will have to exceed that to make a profit. It could do just that.

But while Pandora is as beautiful as ever, The Way of Water might not be the way that many families would care to go.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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Common sense media reviewers.

Action-heavy epic has dazzling effects, familiar story.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Overall, movie's message is that we could all stan

Several characters make difficult but moral choice

Although humans on the base are racially diverse,

Characters (supporting and extras) die due to expl

Many longing looks between Jake's avatar and Neyti

The word "s--t" is used several times. Language al

No product placement in the movie, but dozens of t

Sigourney Weaver's character, Grace, smokes cigare

Positive Messages

Overall, movie's message is that we could all stand to learn something from a population that's different from our own. Strong environmental and pro-peace themes. Some viewers may see the message of occupying a foreign land to usurp their cultural riches as a commentary on Western imperialism or United States' involvement in global politics.

Positive Role Models

Several characters make difficult but moral choices. Jake chooses to support the Na'vi even though it's against orders to do so and means he must fight (and kill) fellow human soldiers. Neytiri, Grace, and Trudy all make personal sacrifices to help the clan; they're strong, courageous, assertive characters. (In both human and Na'vi populations, female characters are brave and important -- even the Na'vi mating ritual requires that both partners equally accept/choose each other.) On the flip side, the Colonel and corporate boss Parker are portrayed as bloodthirsty and greedy.

Diverse Representations

Although humans on the base are racially diverse, majority of main characters are White. They use offensive terms and stereotypes when talking about the Indigenous population of Pandora, and the military engages in imperialist violence. These scenes, intended to encourage racial/ethnic equality and show value of treating other groups with respect, only partially succeed because, while the Na'vi ultimately triumph, they do so only by following the guidance of outsiders. Violent human colonizers are ultimately ejected from Pandora, but film glosses over how the Na'vi environment and population have been permanently damaged by even well-meaning human scientists and allies. Main character Jake has a visible disability: He uses a wheelchair and is initially teased and treated as an inconvenience. But he easily moves around the base in his wheelchair and asserts control over himself when others try to touch or move him without his consent. Women and female Na'vi characters are important in the story, hold prominent social roles such as scientists and spiritual leaders. No body size diversity. All romantic relationships are between male and female Na'vi.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Characters (supporting and extras) die due to explosions, bullet wounds, arrows (some treated with toxins), precipitous falls, asphyxiation. Several intense scenes involving frightening Pandoran animals and plants, as well as tension between Jake's rogue group of pro-Na'vi humans and the rest of the humans sent to Pandora.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Many longing looks between Jake's avatar and Neytiri, which eventually leads to kissing and a marital "mating" ritual (kissing and touching are seen on screen). Na'vi clothing makes parts of their humanoid bodies visible. Jake and Neytir's relationship is briefly referred to as "getting tail."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

The word "s--t" is used several times. Language also includes "bulls--t," "bitch," "goddamn," "piss," limp-d--ked," "hell," "oh my God," "ass," and insults like "stupid," "ignorant," etc. Degrading language is used to describe disabled people, such as "cripple." Slurs such as "savages," "roaches," and "blue monkeys" are used to describe the Na'vi.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

No product placement in the movie, but dozens of tie-in merchandising deals tied to the title -- including toys and books aimed at young kids.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Sigourney Weaver's character, Grace, smokes cigarettes and somewhat glamorizes the activity.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that James Cameron 's sci-fi epic Avatar is about humans colonizing the planet Pandora, home to the Na'vi. The movie is long (at 161 minutes) and intense, with several effects-heavy battle and hunting sequences that show the devastation of imperialist violence and the right that Indigenous groups have to protect themselves and their land. These scenes include missile-launching military aircraft, neurotoxin-laced arrows, scary Pandora-dwelling fauna and flora, and lots of explosions. Salty wartime language includes many uses of "s--t," "bitch," and more. As in his previous films, Cameron infuses the action-driven story with strong female characters who are important to the plot, and crafts a morality tale about treating others with respect centered in a romantic relationship. Main character Jake uses a wheelchair in his daily life and a Na'vi "avatar" body to interact with local populations, and the human-Na'vi relationship in question gets a bit complicated because the human is actually using his Na'vi avatar. Na'vi clothing makes parts of their bodies visible from time to time. The romantic leads have chemistry that's sometimes sensual. (Note: Fans of the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender should know that this movie is in no way connected to that show or the movie based on it.) To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Based on 253 parent reviews

Very well done. Make sure you are not only an older teen, but a mature one too. Watch the family edition.

What's the story.

In the 22nd century, Marine Jake Scully ( Sam Worthington ), who uses a wheelchair, embarks on a corporate-run, military-backed experiment in which he and a select group of academics -- led by Dr. Grace Augustine ( Sigourney Weaver ) -- can fully control avatars that look exactly like the Na'vi: the lean, blue-skinned native population of a distant world called Pandora. On his first outing as his AVATAR, Jake is saved by Na'vi Neytiri ( Zoe Saldana ) and then captured by her clan. They decide to spare Jake's life as long as he agrees to learn the Na'vi ways from Neytiri. He does, but then he's told by villainous Colonel Quaritch ( Stephen Lang ) that he'll be spying on the Na'vi to make it easier to remove them from their home, an ancestral tree that's rooted above a deposit of an unbelievably valuable substance called "Unobtainium" (pun intended). As Jake becomes more and more involved with Neytiri and her people, he's forced to choose between following orders and respecting the Na'vi's wishes.

Is It Any Good?

James Cameron , director of the highest-grossing movie ever made ( Titanic ), risked a rumored $500 million on a spectacular futuristic sci-fi epic whose main characters are blue aliens and settings are mostly CGI. The good news for epic movie lovers everywhere is that Avatar was a massive success. It's more like the story of Dances with Wolves crossed with the breathtaking visual effects of Lord of the Rings and the love story of Titanic , with a splash of the assimilation to a native culture aspect of Apocalypse Now thrown in. Even though Cameron seems to have gone to the same hammy dialogue school of screenwriting as George Lucas , he can certainly immerse viewers in a thoroughly enjoyable spectacle. Every shot of Pandora is amazingly detailed, from floating mountains to flying beasts to the feline-featured Na'vi, who are inspired by several Indigenous cultures. The movie's scale is undeniably impressive.

Cameron owes a huge debt to his movie's female characters, all of whom are much more interesting than the stereotypical men -- especially the outlandishly evil Quaritch and Giovanni Ribisi 's greedy corporate overseer. Weaver and Michelle Rodriguez (as soldier Trudy Chacon), like Aliens ' Ripley or Terminator 's Sarah Connor, could take on anything or anyone, and Saldana follows up a memorable turn as Uhura in Star Trek with another strong performance as Neytiri. It's quite a feat to create romantic electricity between fictional alien creatures, but Saldana and Worthington manage it surprisingly well. If you allow yourself to get lost in Cameron's Pandora, it's impossible not to root for the Na'vi (or Neytiri and Jake). Part sci-fi, part romance, all James Cameron, this is the sci-fi epic that will suck everyone in.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Avatar 's revolutionary special effects. Do they overwhelm or support the movie's story? How does the portrayal of the Na'vi affect the movie's emotional impact?

What themes does Cameron consistently work into his films? Compare the strong female characters in Avatar , Terminator , and Titanic . Any similarities?

What political messages is Cameron exploring in the movie? How are its themes relevant to what's going on in today's world? Do you think these messages will stand the test of time?

Why is it important to respect different cultural groups and treat their traditions and practices as valid and important?

How do the Na'vi and human allies use teamwork to achieve their goals? Why is that an important character strength ?

Movie Details

In theaters : December 18, 2009
On DVD or streaming : April 22, 2010
Cast : Michelle Rodriguez , Sam Worthington , Sigourney Weaver , Zoe Saldana
Director : James Cameron
Inclusion Information : Female actors, Latino actors, Black actors
Studio : Twentieth Century Fox
Genre : Science Fiction
Topics : Activism , Magic and Fantasy , Science and Nature , Space and Aliens
Character Strengths : Teamwork
Run time : 161 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : intense epic battle sequences and warfare, sensuality, language and some smoking
Last updated : February 9, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Avatar: The Way of Water review – a thunderously underwhelming damp squib of a return

James Cameron’s long-awaited Avatar sequel is a lumbering three-hour slog featuring characters seemingly designed by a stoned sixth former

A stonishing! Enthralling! Exciting! Immersive! None of these words could sensibly be applied to the three-and-a-quarter-hour Wet Smurfahontas stodgeathon that is Avatar: The Way of Water . A lumbering, humourless, tech-driven damp squib of a movie, this long-awaited (or dreaded?) sequel to one of the highest grossing films of all time builds upon the mighty flaws of its predecessor, delivering a patience-testing fantasy dirge that is longer, uglier and (amazingly) even more clumsily scripted than its predecessor, blending trite characterisation with sub- Roger Dean 70s album-cover designs and thunderously underwhelming action sequences. In water.

We pick up several years after the wholly forgettable antics of 2009’s Avatar . On the distant world Pandora, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) has gone native, raising a family with Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) after shedding his human skin to inhabit his alien avatar (see previous film). When the “sky people” of Earth come looking for a fight, among other things, the forest-friendly Sullys are forced to flee to distant archipelagos where the water-tribes dwell. Here, they must abandon their tree-hugging lifestyle and learn the ways of the reef people, who have thicker tails and are a bit more turquoise. Really.

The Metkayina tribe are led by Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and his partner, Ronal (Kate Winslet), whose kids don’t click with the Sully brood, setting the scene for much teen-movie style internecine squabbling followed by inevitable boring bromance bonding. En route, our blue heroes will learn to ride amphibious skimwings (imagine How to Train Your Dragon as retold by the writers of Star Trek and Stingray ), to speak the language of the seas in all its wondrous wetness, and to befriend a damaged, whale-like creature (think Free Willy in space) who will become a key player in the film’s emotional baggage handling.

There are moments that are meant to be thrillingly exciting. These are easy to spot because the characters on screen shout “Woohoo!” in the same way that young Anakin shouted “Yippee!” in Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace . Sadly, the comparisons with Lucas’s ill-fated space opera prequels don’t end there. Like Jar Jar Binks, the residents of Pandora appear to have been designed by a stoned sixth former while listening to Tales From Topographic Oceans , all wide-eyed Middle-earth wonder mixed with cod FernGully - style fairytale heroism. There’s also a feral human child (he speaks normally, but occasionally growls annoyingly) whom James Cameron presumably imagines to be a thematic descendent of Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli, but whose irritating presence simply reminded me how much I preferred the lush worlds of Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book and Andy Serkis’s Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle .

Of course the joyous watery wibbling (“Woohoo!”) cannot last, and the sky people come calling, leading to a hyberbolic action showdown that bolts the third act of Aliens (against-the-clock sprog hunt through exploding/collapsing metal structures) with the first act of The Poseidon Adventure (watery world turned upside down) and the second half of Titanic (breath holding and personal conflict-solving combined!).

As for the 3D – a moribund format that has risen and fallen like the tide on umpteen occasions throughout cinema history – the only thing it immerses us in is the harsh realities of the Chinese theatrical marketplace, where spectacular stereoscopy still rules the roost. Let’s face it, with very few notable exceptions ( Creature From the Black Lagoon in the 1950s, Flesh for Frankenstein in the 1970s, Gravity in the 21st century), 3D has done precious little to “enhance” anyone’s viewing experience. But when the financial stakes are this high ( The Way of Water reportedly needs to take around $2bn – £1.6bn – to wash its face), Cameron simply cannot afford to abandon a gimmick for which he has become chief gong banger, standard bearer and book-keeper.

Underneath it all is the same honkingly bland anti-imperial/anti-colonial/eco-friendly metaphor that gave the first Avatar the illusion of gravitas, although it’s hard to overlook how much Cameron enjoys the human hardware sequences, which have a rough physicality that stands in stark contrast to the floaty computer-game visuals of the rest of the film. Whether things will improve over the course of subsequent movies (two more sequels are already in progress) remains to be seen. On this evidence, I doubt it.

Avatar: The Way of Water
Mark Kermode's film of the week
Science fiction and fantasy films
James Cameron
Zoe Saldana
Kate Winslet

Netflix Avatar Star Gets Candid on the Show’s Critical Reviews (Exclusive)

One of the stars behind Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender got honest about some of the reviews critics gave the show.

Fans were extremely excited ahead of the live-action series' release, especially since everything about the project looked so accurate to the original series.

Sadly, when Avatar finally aired, the reception to it was lukewarm. Critics were vocally disappointed by many aspects of it—though parts of it got constant praise, such as the performances from Paul Sun-Hyung Lee and Dallas Liu as Uncle Iroh and Zuko.

The show currently sits at a 60% critic approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes , and a 73% audience score.

[ Avatar Netflix Season 2: Dallas Liu Reveals His Big Hopes for Upcoming Episodes (Exclusive) ]

Paul Sun-Hyung Lee Gets Honest About Critical Reception

Avatar: The Last Airbender star Paul Sun-Hyung Lee shared his honest thoughts with The Direct at Paleyfest 2024 about the reviews the Netflix series received when it was released.

Lee admitted he "was actually really surprised at how critical some of the outlets were towards it:"

"That's a really good question. There was the gamut of responses that I was expecting, like, I was hoping that fans would really dig it. I was actually surprised at how critical some of the outlets were towards it. It was almost like--and I'm biased, I'm biased, because you know, I'm part of it."

"It looked like some of those reviewers just had already made up their minds beforehand," the actor continued:

"But from my point of view, it looked like some of these reviewers just had already made up their minds beforehand, based on everything that they heard instead of the actual, like actually watching the show. And they were ready to just pick it apart. Whereas the fans really sort of embraced it. And were like, I don't know about this, I'm cautiously optimistic. But the majority of them really enjoyed it."

Lee explained how people should "approach different things with different sets of expectations," a mentality "that’s good for anything in real life:"

"And I think that's what we need to do is just sort of approach different things with different sets of expectations, in a sense, and not to prejudge and make up our minds before you have a chance to view anything. And I think that's good for anything in real life, is to really have an open mind, go in, experience it, instead of going, 'I'm going to judge this,' instead of, 'I'm going to watch this, and I'll see.' And then I will be critical or I will, you know, be judgmental, or whatever. But that's all you ask for in life. It's like not to be judged before the work is shown."

"It’s one of those things that have to grow," Lee noted, adding that it’s "very rare that something is pitch-perfect right out of the gates:"

"And I'm really impressed with the fan community for doing and embracing that. It was really kind of going well; it wasn't perfect, but we really did enjoy it. And then, at the end of the day, that's all you want. And we're learning, too. So, it's one of those things where things have to grow. It's very, very rare that something is pitch-perfect right out of the gates, right?"

When it comes to fan reception, Dallas Liu told The Direct how he "love[s] seeing just how stoked everyone is on the bending effects:"

"I'd say, like, I love seeing just how stoked everyone is about the bending effects in our show. I think Jabbar [Raisani] and his team really nailed that part of like, what everyone loves about the original."

Producer Jabbar Raisani revealed it is "the fan reception to the show" he's most proud of:

"I mean, really, the fan reception to the show, right? Like, we tried to make this thing that felt like the animated series, had the heart and soul of the animated series, but lived in breath in a live-action world and people responded to that. That was a very challenging thing to actually do."

Arden Cho, the actress who plays June, shares how she has been "really happy to see everyone enjoying and loving the show:"

"I think I'm really happy to see everyone enjoying and loving the show. And there's just so many different things that are being noticed. And yeah, I think I knew people would love this because everybody's working hard on it. And it's such a loved story to begin with. I'm so excited to be a part of it. But yeah, I think what I'm enjoying the most is sort of seeing the response to all the kids and everything and just the world [of Avatar]. I love the world... The world is so fun; it's so fun to be a part of it."

[ Avatar Star Dallas Liu Explains Zuko & Katara's Rivalry In Live-Action Show (Exclusive) ]

Letting Avatar: The Last Airbender Find Its Footing

Paul Sun-Hyung Lee has a point—countless shows have grown exponentially in quality as they went on. Some just take time to find their footing.

With Season 1 in the wild and audiences giving plenty of feedback, the creative team has every chance to improve upon the foundation they’ve already built. They don't even need to worry about whether they will be able to finish the story.

If Netflix can knock the next two seasons out of the park, there is a good chance fans can expect even more stories to be told in that universe. Maybe one of the upcoming new adult Aang movies could get an adaptation or even the Legend of Korra .

Avatar: The Last Airbender is now streaming on Netflix.

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Furiosa races onto the cover of Total Film magazine – on sale now!

Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth and George Miller talk about the epic new chapter in the Mad Max saga

Total Film's Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga covers

Mad Max: Fury Road exploded onto the scene in 2015 and became instantly acclaimed as an action classic, and one of the best films of its decade. Not only did it revive the character of Max Rockatansky, but it also introduced Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa, who stole the film out from underneath its title character.

For his next Mad Max Saga, director George Miller is exploring the back story of Furiosa (played here by Anya Taylor-Joy) and what led her to the world of the Wasteland, and how she found herself caught between too tyrannical warlords.

In the new Total Film cover story, Miller and stars Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth and more spill the details on shooting the epic action odyssey, which promises more spectacular vehicular mayhem, larger-than-life characters and dystopian world-building.

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Plus, Doctor Who, Twisters, George MacKay, Daisy Ridley, sci-fi actioner Atlas and loads more. And as this is TF’s landmark 350th issue, there’s a list of the greatest films to have ever graced our covers (and the worst stinkers that have ever held that premium spot too).

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Furiosa cover story

She exploded into the action movie hall of fame in Fury Road. Now, a pre-Imperator Furiosa is seizing the wheel of the Mad Max saga for a 16-year odyssey through the Wasteland. Total Film hits the road with the new, grease-painted face of studio Ozploitation, co-star Chris Hemsworth and mad genius George Miller for a gasoline and rage-fuelled prequel about to ride eternal…

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I'm the Editor at Total Film magazine, overseeing the running of the mag, and generally obsessing over all things Nolan, Kubrick and Pixar. Over the past decade I've worked in various roles for TF online and in print, including at GamesRadar+, and you can often hear me nattering on the Inside Total Film podcast. Bucket-list-ticking career highlights have included reporting from the set of Tenet and Avengers: Infinity War, as well as covering Comic-Con, TIFF and the Sundance Film Festival.

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Iroh actor reacts to mixed reviews for Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender

N etflix's live-action remake of Nickelodeon's beloved fantasy cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender was partly doomed from the get-go. The fandom had already saw an atrocious attempt at a live-action movie back in 2010 from director M. Night Shyamalan, and many were wary about another attempt.

Turns out, the Netflix remake did pretty well, and the streamer has renewed it for another two seasons, meaning it will get to tell the whole story. Still, season 1 got numerous bad and lukewarm reviews. This was an inevitable outcome, one that star Paul Sun-Hyung (Iroh) and the team had to take on the chin.

"From my point of view, it looked like some of these reviewers just had already made up their minds beforehand, based on everything that they heard instead of the actual, like actually watching the show," he told The Direct . "And they were ready to just pick it apart. Whereas the fans really sort of embraced it. And were like, I don't know about this, I'm cautiously optimistic. But the majority of them really enjoyed it."

That said, Sun-Hyung was still taken aback by just how forceful some of the detractors were. "I was actually surprised at how critical some of the outlets were towards it...I'm biased, because you know, I'm part of it."

The live-action show currently sits at 7.2/10 on IMDb and a fair 60% on Rotten Tomatoes . Not glowing ratings by any stretch, but respectable given the high expectations. Many viewers were not impressed by storylines being completely changed. And the remake had a darker vibe than the original series, almost as if it were trying to capture Game of Thrones fans. Going into season 2, Sun-Hyung believes the cast and crew have learned plenty from the fan response, enough to make the show blossom in its later seasons:

And I'm really impressed with the fan community for doing and embracing that. It was really kind of going well; it wasn't perfect, but we really did enjoy it. And then, at the end of the day, that's all you want. And we're learning, too. So, it's one of those things where things have to grow. It's very, very rare that something is pitch-perfect right out of the gates, right?

Avatar: The Last Airbender will run for two more seasons to complete the saga. This renewal was a big feat in itself, taking into account Netflix's tendency to cancel shows prematurely. Given how it's such a massive production, don't expect new episodes to arrive anytime soon.

Elsewhere in the Avatarverse, Nickelodeon is extending the cartoon continuity with their upcoming movie Aang: The Last Airbender , now set for release in 2026.

To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and Twitter account , sign up for our exclusive newsletter and check out our YouTube channel .

This article was originally published on winteriscoming.com as Iroh actor reacts to mixed reviews for Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender .

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Strange Way of Life Review: The Classic Old West with a Gay and Sexy Twist

Strange Way of Life stars Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke as lovers in the Old West who reunite for the first time in 25 years.

Strange Way of Life may be a short, but by no means is it bite-sized in any way. It has everything you would anticipate in a Pedro Almodóvar film : melodrama, bold design, and impossibly beautiful actors playing characters burdened by long-held secrets from their pasts. What's different and especially exciting about this film is not just the fact that it's a Western — a first for the Spanish director — but, more importantly, how Almodóvar utilizes conventions of the genre to turn them on their head. The result is a sizzling short that forges its own path in the Old West.

Starring Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke, Strange Way of Life finds Silva (Pascal), a rancher, traversing the desert to see Sheriff Jake (Hawke), an old friend and lover he hasn't seen in 25 years. Though their reunion stokes the embers of old feelings in both men, their euphoria is short-lived. It's no coincidence that Silva has returned after Jake ordered the arrest of his son Joe (George Steane) for murder, and as the past and present collide, the pair finds themselves in a violent stand-off that could change their lives forever.

The Old West Like We Haven't Seen Before

At first glance, Strange Way of Life might seem like an out-of-left-field choice for Almodóvar. In fact, when development of the film was first announced in June 2022 (via Variety ), folks around the world were as surprised as they were intrigued. After all, a director like Almodóvar, who has built his career telling stories predominantly about complicated women and tortured gay men, isn't necessarily the first who comes to mind when one thinks about "the classic Western" movie, especially when one considers how steeped in toxic masculinity the genre has historically been. And yet, it's precisely the unexpected-ness of it all that makes this film exceptional.

Simply put: Strange Way of Life unearths a different side of the Old West that we have rarely been able to see in the genre's history — which is, of course, a good thing. On a visual level, the designs are bolder and more colorful than typical Western movie fare. There is, for instance, a flamboyance to Jake's home — deep red curtains, maximalist decor, an overabundance of romantic candlelight — that serves as a great visual contrast to the austerity of the desert we see him riding through on horseback later on. It effectively underscores how Jake has lived his life up to this point: to the outside world, he's the sheriff, rough around the edges but still the tough guy through-and-through, but, on the inside, he's a completely different person.

Pedro Pascal & Ethan Hawke Talk Playing Lovers in Strange Way of Life

Of Strange Way of Life 's other design elements, utmost praise should go to Anthony Vaccarello for the beautiful costumes. Incidentally, Vaccarello is the head designer of the luxury brand, Yves Saint Laurent, which, in turn, serves as the film's co-producing company. Indeed, there's something to be said about a fashion house like YSL dressing a Western film, and, really, it can all be boiled down to Silva's green jacket. Soft yet rugged, and notably sticking out against the red hues and warmer tones of the film's palette, the jacket is effectively emblematic of the film as a whole: it dares to draw attention to itself, at once fulfilling convention and subverting expectation.

A Spiritual Sequel to Brokeback Mountain

It's almost impossible not to think about Brokeback Mountain while watching Strange Way of Life . Two decades ago, per The New Yorker , Almodóvar turned down the opportunity to direct Brokeback Mountain , citing that the political climate of the time would not have allowed him to tell the queer love story he wanted. Nevertheless, the film would go on to be directed by Ang Lee and become perhaps the most famous queer Western of modern times and a groundbreaking LGBTQ+ movie .

Interestingly, in both films, each couple contemplates what kind of life two men could have together living on a ranch, and while Brokeback Mountain only gesticulates at the question such a life, Strange Way of Life offers an actual answer. In this way, it's not hard to view Almodóvar's movie about middle-aged gays in the west as a sort of spiritual sequel to and progression of Lee's film. Which makes sense: Brokeback Mountain , as great as it is, is a product of its time, and thus viewed its queer themes with a very narrow lens. In Strange Way of Life , however, Silva and Jake aren't afraid of themselves in the way Jack and Ennis (Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger, respectively) were, and therefore end in a different place than Lee's star-crossed lovers.

Strange Way of Life Trailer Blossoms a Pedro Pascal & Ethan Hawke Romance in the Old West

No, Silva and Jake aren't exactly waving the Pride flag, but, to Almodóvar's credit, his leads don't speak in code about their desire for each other, aren't in denial about what they feel, and, more importantly, make space for vulnerability when discussing their history. In their post-coital exchange, for example, the walls come down and truths come to light, and both Silva and Jake radiate a complicated mix of lust, anger, ecstasy, and heartache as they each reveal what they want from each other. Here, Pascal and Hawke's chemistry absolutely sizzles, and both actors turn in top-notch performances of life-beaten and love-sick men.

In his signature style, Almodóvar carves deeply human and complex characters in an emotionally-charged story, which is especially refreshing to see in a genre that has traditionally seen its male characters portrayed as stoic, sometimes even nameless , and verging on the unfeeling. This, of course, doesn't mean that Strange Way of Life completely abandons the genre's formalities: like the Westerns that have come before it, the film offers its share of dirt and denim, brute force and fist-fighting, and a nerve-wracking stand-off. It plays by the classic genre's rules, for sure, but it ultimately suggests that there's still storytelling territory waiting to be explored.

Strange Way of Life releases in select theaters October 6 from Sony Pictures Classics. You can watch the trailer below:

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Home » Hollywood News

When Quentin Tarantino Opened Up On Kill Bill ‘Regret’ After Watching James Cameron’s Avatar, “Wanted It To Be More Like A Ride…”

Quentin tarantino shared he had grand visions for his movie, which features uma thurman, lucy liu, david carradine, and others..

James Cameron’s Avatar is one of the most loved Hollywood movies. The sci-fi film was released in 3D and mesmerised everyone with its stunning visuals and grand storytelling. When the movie was released in 2009, discussions about how 3D would change the way people look at movies commenced. One such prominent filmmaker who was impressed with Cameron’s work is Quentin Tarantino.

In an interview in 2010, the Pulp Fiction director was asked his thoughts on James Cameron’s movie and 3D technology. Quentin was quite impressed with the movie and wished he had seen it before making Kill Bill. The director also shared how he had grand visions for his movie, which released in two volumens. It features Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, David Carradine, and others.

Avatar Movie Trailer

Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vision Wasn’t Fully Achieved

As reported by MTV, during an event, Quentin Tarantino was asked about Avatar’s success and the use of 3D technology. The ‘ Once Upon A Time In Hollywood ‘ director shared, “I’ll tell you what would have been a game-changer, as far as I was concerned, if I had seen Avatar before I had done Kill Bill. Not that I would (use) blue screens or anything; I’d have done it the way I wanted to do it but one of the things I was thinking when I was watching Avatar was (related to) Kill Bill.”

Quentin added, “I had these grandiose visions in my head of the experience of watching the movie and I actually wanted it to be more like a ride than a normal ‘watching a movie at the Cineplex, you go home and then you have pie.’ (I wanted it to be like) you’d be in this world, and it’d be a ride, and I don’t think I did that.”

Quentin Tarantino added that he couldn’t add the grand visions he wanted to add in Kill Bill. He said his movie was good, but it wasn’t the “ride.” When the filmmaker saw James Cameron’s Avatar, he felt like that’s the movie that takes one on a ride, which Quentin intended for Kill Bill. Tarantino wanted to bring that element into his movie, which took one and a half years to script.

Kill Bill Volume 1 Trailer

Meanwhile, James Cameron’s Avatar stars Zoe Saldana, Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez and Joel David Moore. The sequel ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’, released in 2023 and received rave reviews. The third part, also starring Kate Winslet, is scheduled to release in 2025.

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Avatar: The Way of Water movie review (2022)
Cameron invites viewers into this fully realized world with so many striking images and phenomenally rendered action scenes that everything else fades away. Advertisement. Maybe not right away. "Avatar: The Way of Water" struggles to find its footing at first, throwing viewers back into the world of Pandora in a narratively clunky way.
Avatar movie review & film summary (2009)
Watching "Avatar," I felt sort of the same as when I saw "Star Wars" in 1977. That was another movie I walked into with uncertain expectations. James Cameron's film has been the subject of relentlessly dubious advance buzz, just as his "Titanic" was. Once again, he has silenced the doubters by simply delivering an extraordinary film. There is still at least one man in Hollywood who knows how ...
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Avatar: The Way of Water review: A whole blue world, bigger and bolder than the first. Thirteen years on, James Cameron takes Pandora under the sea in an astonishing, at times overwhelming sequel.
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The first of Avatar's sequels is finally here, 13 years after the release of the record-breaking original.For those who've been anxiously looking forward to Avatar: The Way of Water and those who have been doubting its necessity, the good news is that the movie is worth the wait and another work of essential theatrical entertainment from James Cameron.
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Movie Review: 'Avatar: The Way of Water' Filmmaker James Cameron's sequel to the biggest worldwide box office hit of all time, "Avatar: The Way of Water," has been in the works for more than a decade.
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Our review: Parents say ( 253 ): Kids say ( 645 ): James Cameron, director of the highest-grossing movie ever made ( Titanic ), risked a rumored $500 million on a spectacular futuristic sci-fi epic whose main characters are blue aliens and settings are mostly CGI. The good news for epic movie lovers everywhere is that Avatar was a massive success.
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‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ Review: It’s Even More Eye-Popping Than ‘Avatar,’ but James Cameron’s Epic Sequel Has No More Dramatic Dimension

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Reviewed at AMC Empire, Dec. 6, 2022. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 192 MIN.

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