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Avatar: The Way of Water

Reviewed by: Charity Bishop CONTRIBUTOR

Importance of family / Family relationships and dynamics

Pantheism-like spirituality plays a strong part in this film / Worshipping the creation and the supposed “Great Mother” (Eywa, akin to the Gaia of some evironmentalists) instead of the Creator , Yahweh

Message that indigenous tribal people are far superior in spirituality and wisdom about the natural world

Politically correct environmentalism

Hollywood’s continuing push of climate crisis dramas and emotionally charged colonization propaganda

Marines cast as evil

Planet-destroying humans cast as the universe’s truest villains

Message that people need to put aside their differences and unite to save their world

WATER: A miracle of God’s Creation

Underwater life on a fictional alien planet with both jungle and sea

Making tough decisions (fight or flight for family)

Accepting people for their differences

FILM VIOLENCE —How does viewing violence in movies affect families? Answer

Prequel: “ Avatar ” (2009)

J ames Cameron proves once again he’s the king of cinema with his sequel to “ Avatar ,” a sumptuous visual masterpiece centered around the theme of fatherhood.

Set a dozen years after the original film, Jake ( Sam Worthington ) has become a father of four children—including his adopted daughter, Kiri ( Sigourney Weaver ), born from his friend Grace’s avatar after her death, and a human boy, Spider (J ack Champion ). He and Neytiri ( Zoe Saldana ) lead the Na’vi people, after successfully forcing the “sky people” (humans) to abandon Pandora. But now the sky people have returned, among them his old enemy, Quartich ( Stephen Lang ). Even though Jake fought and defeated him, before the final battle, Quartich uploaded his consciousness and his memories to a computer so he could be reborn in an Avatar’s body. Quartich does not remember being killed, but he does recall the trouble Jake caused him, and intends to “settle the score, once and for all.”

Earth is dying and humans need a new planet to colonize, so they send an advance wave of humans, including Quartich and his marines, to pave the way on the planet. After Quartich gets his hands on Spider, fearing the boy will reveal everything he knows about Jake and their home, Jake takes his family and abandons their home in the mountains to live among the coastal tribes. There, he tries to forge a new life while facing the difficulties of fatherhood. This new life will challenge each of them, and reveal their hidden talents, but they cannot remain hidden forever…

Over the last few years, there’s been an assault on men. Our society has gravitated away from traditional gender roles, leaving many young men uncertain of their purpose. But “Avatar: The Way of Water” celebrates men as the protectors of society. Jake tells us twice that protecting their family gives men a purpose, and we see him doing just that. He tries to find a balance between making sure his boys make the right decisions and being a warm and supportive parent. When the boys get out of line, he gives them a stern talking-to; when they start fights, he has them apologize (but also takes pride in the fact that the only reason they fought was to defend their sister); he is hard on them, because he loves them so much, and he sets them a good example of protecting those weaker than themselves.

Family is the core theme of the film, as each character grapples with their place in it and their responsibility to others. Jake reminds his oldest son repeatedly of his need to protect the younger ones. He chastises his second-eldest for endangering his siblings. Spider also fears “I might be like my father” (to which Kiri tells him he is not, he is his own person). Then there’s Kiri, and her search for belonging and meaning, which will resonate with children given up for adoption . She wonders why she was born, and feels different from the other children, but it’s touching to see her adopted family surround, support, and love her.

Adoption and orphans in the Bible

These characters make mistakes and reveal their own prejudices (Neytiri has an obvious preference for her own kids over Spider due to his human appearance), but ultimately choose to make the right decisions to protect their loved ones. In a way, the film is a love letter to fatherhood, full of messages young men need to hear, but it also has strong, courageous, and loving women on display.

Content-wise, if you saw the first film, you know what to expect here; the Na’vi wear almost nothing (the camera catches a brief glimpse of a nipple on an Avatar early on). There is discussion over Kiri’s parentage, as her brothers wonder which person “knocked up” Grace (it’s never made clear whether she has a human/Avatar father, or had an immaculate conception).

There’s some bad language scattered throughout (mostly sh*t, but Jesus’ name is abused once, and there’s one f-word). A Na’vi boy flips off a marine.

The violence is extreme but not bloody; the Na’vi kill a lot of humans (Neytiri shoots them with her signature arrows; Jake and others blow up their helicopters, crash their boats, stab them, and hit them). Quartich threatens Jake’s children multiple times, once threatening to cut Kiri’s throat. He shoots a sea creature to teach a lesson to a native tribe. The last thirty minutes is nonstop action, peril, and violence, as Jake and Quartich square off and beat each other mercilessly, Neytiri kills all the humans she finds, a whale smashes into a ship, and some of the Na’vi (including a character we have grown to know and love) die, along with their sea creatures.

One of the more excruciating scenes is of a whaler ship taking out one of Pandora’s whales—separating a mother and calf from the herd, driving harpoons into her chest, and killing them both, before they drill into her brain to extract a precious fluid that “stops human aging” (at $80 million dollars a vial). It’s painful to watch in its cruelty, and it may disturb children or animal lovers (as it did me).

James Cameron has made no secret of his environmentalist agenda, but this film doesn’t feel like propaganda as much as a celebration of marine life, even if it’s on another planet. It’s intended to make us treasure the ocean and its creatures, a role I believe fits us as Guardians of the Earth (God placed us here to be compassionate stewards).

Cameron’s religious beliefs are less obvious, but this film has a pantheist worldview. The Na’vi believe in a Great Mother spirit that connects all things and allows them to share and see memories through her sacred places. They pray to her, sing to her, and have a deep connection to all life, including being able to communicate with whales. The queen of the sea tribe calls one whale her “soul sister.” Kiri has a deeper connection than any other character to the “Great Mother,” and can use her creatures as a weapon.

For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator… — Romans 1:25 LSB

We see the Na’vi return one who has died to the sea bed, and later, that fallen Na’vi’s loved ones “visit with” this character in the memories of the soul tree. This is an unbiblical view of the afterlife.

What is ETERNAL LIFE ? and what does the Bible say about it?

What is ETERNAL DEATH ?

Violence: Very Heavy
Occult: Heavy
Vulgar/Crude language: Heavy— • F-word (1 or more) • S-words (11) • “Son of a b*tch” (3) • “Ain't this a bitch” • “Perv” (what Kiri calls a guy) • Cr*p (2) • A** (5) • A**hole • Bugger • “That really sucks” • “Who do you think knocked her up?” • “Tough b*stards”
Profane language: Moderately Heavy— • Jesus • Hell (9) • “ Bloody H*ll” • Holy sh*t • D*mn (3)
Nudity: Moderately Heavy (lots of skin on display—female and male, Na’vi and human)
Wokeism: Minor
Drugs/Alcohol: None

Slang definition: Bugger

Slang definition: bloody.

Learn about DISCERNMENT —wisdom in making personal entertainment decisions

See list of Relevant Issues—questions-and-answers .

PLEASE share your observations and insights to be posted here.

Avatar: The Way of Water (Christian Movie Review)

Verdict: A spectacular display of classic cinematic storytelling.

About The Movie

After thirteen years, the lush planet of Pandora is once again open for visitors. The long-awaited sequel to Avatar is not only charged with continuing the story of the big blue Na’vi alien species but also with combating another narrative—the popular internet talking point that despite being the most successful movie in history, Avatar is irrelevant and overrated. Well, mission accomplished on both fronts. Avatar: The Way of Water is a triumphant return, a spectacular display of classic cinema and a masterclass in filmmaking by director James Cameron.

Before taking the plunge, family audiences should be aware of some content elements. The movie maintains its PG-13 rating by the (blue) skin of its teeth, with plenty of juuust covered alien flesh on display, consistent profanity, and a heavy focus on pantheistic spirituality. More on those elements below. Simply taken as a movie, however, The Way of Water soars as high as the majestic floating islands of Pandora.

As with the original film, the story has a simple plot. The “sky people” (aka people from Earth) return to the planet of Pandora to harvest its valuable resources and get revenge on Jake Sully. Leaving the forests, Sully is forced to take refuge in the seafaring Na’vi tribes and learn their ways, as a forest Na’vi in water and metaphorical fish out of water. But when the war eventually finds him, he must lead the people to fight back.

If all this sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because, to a degree, it is largely a recontextualization and repackaging of the original story. James Cameron leans into broad-brush, classical “hero’s journey” storytelling. The plot may not be complex, but it has a mythic quality. While the basic story beats are similar to the original, the central difference is that it is now a story about family. No longer just star-crossed lovers, Jake and his wife, Nettiri, must confront the threat as parents. While some viewers might be unimpressed by the similar plot beats, having the characters take a comparable journey in a drastically different stage of life is an effective way to explore the central theme: the family as a fortress of strength (see below).

Visually, the film is stunning. I saw the movie in 3D on a large Dolby screen, and I’d be hard-pressed to recall a more immersive experience in a theater. It’s not just empty spectacle; there is beauty as well. Almost every scene showcases the sublime natural beauty of the planet, with perhaps the most believable CGI ever put to film. A movie is not a book; the visuals are as much a part of the experience as the story, and few—if any—films have achieved such a masterful and artful level as this. Particularly once the story shifts to the ocean locations, both above water and below, the film is spectacular to watch.

The movie is essentially a war film, and almost the entire final hour is non-stop action and battle scenes. At the same time, much of the 3+ hour runtime is allocated to purposeful exploration of both the world and its inhabitants. Avatar: The Way of Water is the type of movie that simply doesn’t often get made. An original epic that captures the best of both classic storytelling and cutting-edge visuals. It may not be as novel as the original , but the sequel surpasses its predecessor in many ways and is a worthy continuation of the story.

For Consideration

Profanity: 1 F-Bomb and frequent other profanities (“s—,” “d—,” “b—ch,” etc.). Several religious exclamations (“Jesus,” “Good God”). There are also several other rude/crude words or name calling.

Violence: Many characters are killed during mostly bloodless battle scenes (shot with arrows, slammed against walls, consumed by explosions, etc.). The only gruesome death is when a character has his arm severed (he is tossed from a boat and both the man and the limb are shown flying through the air and landing in the water).

Sexuality: Most of the aliens wear scanty tribal outfits that reveal all but the most private parts and leave the backside bare (although they are more or less obscured by the aliens’ tails). It’s mostly done in the vein of National Geographic rather than as highly sexualized, but there is plenty of blue alien flesh on display. The one unfortunate exception occurs at the beginning, when one such alien is shown floating in a liquid-filled medical tank, fully nude, with an exposed breast and nipple briefly visible. One male human character essentially wears a loincloth for the duration of the film.

Spirituality: The Na’vi have a pantheistic religion. Characters pray to the “Great Mother” and commune with the spiritual entity by connecting to “spirit trees.” While connected to the trees, characters are given visions of a sort of quasi-afterlife in which they speak with deceased characters. Characters talk about how all of nature is connected, and they perform various religious rituals (more on the faith elements below).

Engage The Film

Family as a fortress.

Avatar: The Way of Water is a story about families. Almost every storyline in some way ties back to this theme. It is refreshing for a Hollywood film to focus so directly on the importance of family. Whereas the first Avatar was largely a Romeo and Juliet tale of forbidden lovers coming together, The Way of Water charts the seldom-explored Hollywood path by exploring how that initial relationship matures over time and how the romantic pair grows into a family.

An opening voiceover by Jake Sully declares, “Happiness is simple . . . but the thing about happiness is that it can vanish in a heartbeat.” Family is what matters, where true happiness is found, but how does a family protect itself from the internal and external forces that try to separate them? That’s the question the rest of the story probes.

On two occasions, Jake muses, “Fathers protect their family. It’s what gives them meaning.” Jake had no fear charging into battle in the first movie. Now, with four children to look out for, he views life differently. He is less a reckless warrior on the attack and more a protective guardian willing to sacrifice everything for those he loves.

Two other quotes establish this theme: “This family is our fortress,” and the family’s mantra, “Sullys stick together.” While much of the story is about the protective role of parents and what they do to shelter their children, it also shows how the children stand up for each other. Brothers learn what it means to be brothers, despite their differences, and are also protective of their sister when she is being mistreated by young males from the other tribe.

There is also a pivotal element of children saving their parents. There is a powerful scene at the end of the movie in which both parents are trapped and defeated before their children guide them to safety—daughter leading mother and son leading father. The Sully family is far from perfect (Jake is overly hard on one son, among other struggles), but they believe in each other and fight to stay together.

Faith and Spirituality as Strength

The spiritual elements in the film can be approached in two ways. Focusing on the specifics, the pantheistic spirituality is clearly not consistent with a biblical worldview. It brings to mind the scripture, “They…worshiped and served what has been created instead of the Creator” ( Romans 1:25 ). While the film does not necessarily espouse spirituality outside of the fictional world of Pandora (James Cameron is not suggesting that a Great Mother embodies spirit trees and all living things on Earth), Christians should recognize the ways that the religion is inconsistent with biblical truth.

On a broader level, there are some aspects Christians can affirm. While the faith in question is clearly not Christian, there is a theme about the power of faith and belief. There is a moment when one of the Sully children has a “religious episode.” One of the doctors (a human in a Na’vi avatar) attempts to explain it away as “frontal lobe epilepsy,” but as the audience knows, the doctor’s assessment is not true. Later, her spiritual connection is put on full display when she rescues her family in a time of need.

There is a motif all throughout that what makes the inhabitants of Pandora strong is their faith and spirituality, in stark contrast to the non-religious and more scientifically minded human colonizers. Christians with no tolerance for fictional stories containing non-biblical faith are unlikely to appreciate the spiritual elements in this movie. But for Christians who instead look to the bigger theme of how characters wrestle with faith and spirituality, there are perhaps some interesting themes to explore.

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Avatar: The Way of Water

Thirteen years after the blockbuster release of Avatar , James Cameron takes viewers back to the planet of Pandora and the Na’vi people in Avatar: The Way of Water . Since the events of the first film, Jake Sully is now living fully as his avatar, along with his companion Neytiri and Neteyam, Lo’ak, Tuk, and adopted teenage daughter Kiri, the biological child of Dr. Grace Augustine. They live a quiet, peaceful life until the planet once again comes under siege from “The Sky People” who want to harvest its resources and trap the indigenous population, along with an elite resurrection squad of soldiers targeting Jake specifically. Jake and Neytiri now face the choice of protecting their family and their people or disappearing. Through their journey, they learn of new tribes, customs, and creatures, as well as learning how to function as a family. They prefer peace, but when war comes to their doorstep, they rally together to defend themselves, delivering a heartfelt and thrilling adventure for viewers.

Dove Review

In the years since the big battle where Jake surrendered his human form and took his place as a Na’vi, he has settled with Neytiri and their children in the forest among the Omatikaya clan. They are joined by friendly scientist Norm and Spider, a human child left behind who is close friends with the Sully children. The Resource Development Administration (RDA) once again targets the planet for its resources, forcing Jake to lead a resistance against it. But the RDA has a secret weapon, a resurrected, cloned to avatar version of Jake’s nemesis, Colonel Miles Quaritch, and his fighting men, intent to eradicate the Sully family. Faced with endangering their clan and family, Jake and Neytiri make a long journey to live among the Metkayina, a coastal, more amphibian clan living on a spread of islands. The children immediately have a rough time fitting in and learning the customs, while Jake and Neytiri just want to fit in and live peaceably. Their middle son, Lo’ak, in particular, faces intense struggles, sending him to the ocean to befriend a new whale-like tulkun creature, Payakan, who he communicates with.

Minor Spoilers follow:

Col. Quaritch and his team track the family to the islands and begin hunting them and the tulkun in hopes of drawing out the Metkayina tribe, who revere the creatures. Spider, who was captured in the forest, becomes a reluctant guide to help find the family, but his allegiances remain to the Na’vi over his own human counterparts. Jake and his family enlist their new friends in their efforts to defend their children and preserve their way of life.

Every frame of Avatar: The Way of Water is expertly crafted, intentionally made for high-definition 3D rendering. In fact, so much of it feels like peering in a window at a world beyond the viewers’ reach. It is a next-level accomplishment from a director who continues to challenge himself. Also, at more than three hours’ length, the film lets stories and characters breathe and not feel rushed. There is so much time devoted to the family fitting into their new surroundings and caring for each other that viewers may sometimes forget the eventual war that’s coming. When the time comes to fight, like the scenes of relationship building, it’s intense and memorable, guided by the man who gave audiences epic sequences in Titanic and Avatar .

Family is the theme of Avatar: The Way of Water , specifically how Jake earns his place among the Na’vi and how he and Neytiri raise their children to be leaders among their people. They lean on each and learn from each other and even in their rough patches, they always return to a place of respect and honor. They also ingratiate themselves with their new tribe by their innocence and humility. In a larger sense, the tribe also represents family and community, and it triumphs over those who would wish to usurp it.

The language of the film is very much in line with the original, with many PG-13 profanities thrown around, with an “F” word and others such as “a—hole,” “sh-t” and “b-tch.” Many characters and creatures are in peril and even killed, either by the soldiers or the elements, but they are not explicit or gory.

Even though Avatar was a landmark release, its sequel, The Way of Water builds on that and surpasses it in scope and story. It dives deeper into the mythology of Pandora and its inhabitants, giving more of a human connection for viewers. Because of that, the stakes feel much higher when the final, nail-biting battle arrives.

Dove Rating Details

No overt Christian message. The religion on Pandora is integrated throughout nature, through plants that respond to human contact and animal type creatures the Na’vi can communicate with.

Jake and his family are positive role models, banding together when the time is right and looking out for those who can’t defend themselves. They are regarded as leaders for good reason.

Crude and obscene language throughout film (f-ck, sh-t, a—hole, b-tch, etc).

Characters frequently engage in battle, with dire non-explicit consequences such as loss of life, and creatures being speared.

The Na’vi are CGI creatures but are dressed in tribal gear, such as loincloths and draped clothing. Spider, the human teen left behind, spends the film in a loincloth.

More Information

Film information, dove content.

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Movie Review: ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’

NEW YORK – Given that its predecessor remains the highest-grossing feature of all time, it may seem surprising that it has taken 13 years to release the sequel “Avatar: The Way of Water” (20th Century). Is this second sci-fi epic worth the wait? The answer will largely depend on what priorities movie fans bring with them to the theater as well as what concerns the film’s content may inspire in them.

In crafting his follow-up, director James Cameron, the auteur of the original, shares writing credit with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver. Their script returns viewers to the fictional moon Pandora and continues the story of the kickoff’s two principal characters, the avatar of Earth-born ex-Marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his Pandoran warrior wife, Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña).

Having chosen, for love of Neytiri, to continue life as a hybrid of human consciousness and a body in the likeness of the Na’vi – the 10-foot-tall, blue-skinned natives of Pandora – Jake has become the patriarch of a thriving family.

Besides sons Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) and Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), the clan includes adopted daughter Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) and, informally, human hanger-on Spider (Jack Champion).

When earthly intruders, an earlier wave of whom were defeated and sent packing at the end of Avatar,” return to Pandora in a renewed attempt to exploit its natural resources, Jake becomes the leader of the indigenous resistance. His high-profile role makes him a target, once again, for ruthless Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) with whom he clashed in the first outing.

Torn between his urge to continue fighting and his fears for those in his care, Jake makes the decision to go into voluntary exile. After an arduous journey, the Sullys find shelter in a distant set of islands occupied by a tribe, known as the Metkayina, whose lifestyle is centered on the ocean. The locals are led by matriarch and shaman Ronal (Kate Winslet) and her husband Tonowari (Cliff Curtis).

As Kiri explores her mystical powers and hapless Lo’ak struggles to overcome his status as a perpetual disappointment to his parents, the technically innovative visual flair that helped propel “Avatar” to lasting preeminence at the box office is present in abundance across a three-hour-plus running time. Indeed, the luxuriant aquatics on display are such as might have left the late Jacques Cousteau eating his heart out.

Meanwhile, Cameron and his screenplay collaborators establish themes connecting the proceedings to environmental issues, corporate greed, the fate of Native Americans and the Vietnam War. Their points, however, are conveyed in an excessively earnest tone and via some clunky dialogue.

More significant are the problematic religious ingredients included in their narrative. Villainous Quaritch, for one thing, has been scientifically resurrected from the dead. Additionally, the Na’vi engage in a form of pantheistic goddess worship directed at a deity called Eywa. Given that such a cult is obviously at odds with Christian faith, “Way of Water” is not fit fare for the impressionable.

As for those old and well-catechized enough to dismiss Eywa as eyewash, they’ll certainly be treated to a spectacle rarely rivalled. Yet, whether the mere act of lingering in the chambers of the sea, to paraphrase poet T.S. Eliot, will fully satisfy their cinematic aspirations – given that the depths of Pandora’s oceans are not matched by a profundity of either emotion or insight – will remain a matter of taste.

Look for: Clan solidarity and love for nature.

Look out for: Nonscriptural beliefs and practices, stylized but intense and momentarily disturbing combat, partial nudity, at least one use each of profanity and rough language, a few milder oaths, about a dozen crude terms, several crass expressions and an obscene gesture. The Catholic Moviegoer’s guidance is M – suitable for mature viewers. The Motion Picture Association rating is PG-13 – parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

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Avatar: the way of water, common sense media reviewers.

Long but dazzling return to Pandora has sci-fi violence.

A Lot or a Little?

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

Messages about acceptance, unity, and teamwork. St

The women leaders of the clan are strong, brave, a

The Na'vi species is divided into clans with a var

Sci-fi action violence. Supporting characters die

Brief scene of nonsexual nudity (blink-and-miss gl

Scattered strong language includes one "f--k," "ho

No product placement in movie, but dozens of off-s

Positive Messages

Messages about acceptance, unity, and teamwork. Strong environmental, pro-peace, and anti-imperialist themes. Idea that love and understanding can trump division and violence. Shows consequences, dangers, and immorality of a corrupt government colonizing and oppressing another land and people. Stresses importance of honest communication between children and their parents.

Positive Role Models

The women leaders of the clan are strong, brave, assertive characters, and the Na'vi are all deeply connected to the land. Jake and Neytiri are courageous and loving parents and clan leaders. Ronal is the spiritual leader of her community. Spider loves the Na'vi even though he's human and is forced into difficult moral situations. Lo'ak finds a way to commune with a sacred creature.

Diverse Representations

The Na'vi species is divided into clans with a variety of cultures, traditions, and belief systems, with overt parallels to Indigenous peoples (tribal tattoos and symbiotic, spiritual relationships with nature) and Indigenous history (colonialist expansion, genocide). But the filmmakers are White, and main characters are almost all voiced by non-Indigenous actors, raising issues about cultural appropriation. The women leaders of the clan are strong, brave, assertive.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Sci-fi action violence. Supporting characters die due to explosions, bullet wounds, arrows, and dismemberment, as well as a whale-like creature's destructive movements. Several intense scenes involving combat, a ship sinking, and animal hunting that shows the killing of ancient beings. Children are held captive and at gunpoint. Bullying and pranking that leaves a teen in harm's way. Children are used as hostages. A couple of emotional deaths.

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

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Brief scene of nonsexual nudity (blink-and-miss glimpse of a Na'vi woman's breasts). Adolescent Na'vi flirt and hold hands. There's a strong bond between Kiri and Spider. Jake and Neytiri embrace and kiss.

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

Scattered strong language includes one "f--k," "holy s--t," "bulls--t," "dips--t," "bitch," "goddamn," "damn," "piss," "hell," "oh my God," "ass," "ass-whooping," and insults like "four-fingered freak," "half-breed," "stupid," "ignorant," etc. "Jesus" used as an exclamation.

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

Products & Purchases

No product placement in movie, but dozens of off-screen tie-in merchandising deals, including toys and books aimed at young kids.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Avatar: The Way of Water is the long-awaited sequel to James Cameron's epic 2009 mega-hit Avatar . The sequel returns to Pandora 15 years after Jake Sully ( Sam Worthington ) rallied the indigenous Na'vi clans against the corrupt "Sky People" (colonizing humans trying to mine and extract Pandora's resources). Jake and his mate, Neytiri ( Zoe Saldaña ), now have four children and decide to save their forest clan by seeking refuge for their family among the island dwelling Metkayina clan. Filmed mostly underwater, the three-hour-plus film is visually striking. And, like the first movie, it has sci-fi action violence, with weapons, hand-to-hand combat, and the hunting of a sacred whale-like creature. The story also features adolescent flirting, hand-holding, and crushes, as well as marital affection. Occasional strong language includes many uses of "s--t," "bitch," and "ass," as well as one "f--k." Like the first movie, this one has a strong anti-imperialist message, plus environmental and multicultural themes that stress the importance of tolerance, acceptance, and honest communication. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Parents say (41)
Kids say (109)

Based on 41 parent reviews

3 hours of extreme unnecessary violence !

More kid friendly than the 1st, what's the story.

AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER is set approximately 15 years after the events of the original Avatar . In the forests of Pandora, Jake ( Sam Worthington ) and his mate, Neytiri ( Zoe Saldaña ), are now parents to two teen sons, Neteyam ( Jamie Flatters ) and Lo'ak (Britain Dalton), as well as a young girl named Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), and Kiri ( Sigourney Weaver ), the teen daughter they adopted after she was born under mysterious circumstances. Jake has helped the Na'vi fight against the Sky People (humans trying to mine and extract Pandora's resources), but the onslaught of the humans' military operations ramps up when they launch a new mission: sending a select group of avatars with the uploaded consciousness and memories of the long-dead Col. Quaritch ( Stephen Lang ) and his loyal soldiers. Quaritch and his Na'vi-fied squad terrorize Jake and Neytiri's Omaticaya clan until Jake convinces Neytiri that their immediate family should leave and seek refuge with the far-off island dwelling Metkayina clan, who are a different shade of blue and boast fin-like tails and flipper-like hands. Their leader, Tonowari ( Cliff Curtis ), and his spiritual leader mate, Ronal ( Kate Winslet ), tentatively grant Jake and Neytiri's family sanctuary, but eventually Quaritch tracks them down and brings the war of the Sky People to the water clans.

Is It Any Good?

James Cameron 's crowd-pleasing sequel is a spectacular technical achievement that, while overlong, manages to dazzle the senses enough to prove that the director is still a visionary. Avatar: The Way of Water isn't a movie you see for its layered, complicated plot. The storyline is simple, and the dialogue is mostly expository or cliché, particularly when Quaritch talks. But it doesn't quite matter, because Cameron puts the movie's $350 million budget to remarkable use in all of the underwater sequences, the incredible creature effects, and the overall immersive return to Pandora. It's worth seeing on the biggest screen possible, in 3D if you can. Yes, the three-hour-plus runtime is long, but it's easy to get lost in the movie's memorable world-building. The motion-capture performances are fascinating to behold, and Winslet and Curtis are welcome additions to the cast. Of the young actors, Dalton stands out as Neytiri and Jake's troublemaking younger son, Lo'ak, who befriends an outcast tulkun (the sacred alien whales). Also worth noting is Jack Champion as Spider, the human boy raised among the Na'vi but whose mask marks him as different. His bond with Kiri, who's also a little bit different, seems headed toward romance, but it's too early to tell (not to mention complicated).

Lang's Quaritch is only slightly less unhinged in this installment than he was in the first film. But he's far from the only antagonist. The Na'vi face seemingly insurmountable odds as the humans' tech gets better and deadlier. The action sequences come mostly in the third act, but there are moments of pulse-pounding peril throughout that will make audiences clutch their seats (or their partners). There's even an extended ship-sinking sequence that's reminiscent of Titanic , right down to how people grip the railing and hold their breath as areas flood. While there's no Pandoran quartet playing classical music, composer Simon Franglen uses the late James Horner's original themes to create an evocative score as the Na'vi fight for their lives. With Avatar: The Way of Water , Cameron and cinematographer Russell Carpenter have created something monumental in scope, so much so that the movie's flaws don't prevent it from being stunning.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the visual and special effects in Avatar: The Way of Water . How do they compare to those in the first movie? How has technology changed since that one was released?

What themes does James Cameron consistently work into his films? Compare aspects of Avatar to the Terminator movies and Titanic . What similarities can you find?

Discuss the difference between how humans dealt with the Na'vi in the first movie and in this sequel.

How do the different tribes from Pandora interact, work together, and use teamwork to achieve their goals? Why is that an important character strength ?

The language and culture of the Maori people indigenous to New Zealand provided director James Cameron with inspiration for the sea-based Metkayina people. What are respectful ways to acknowledge other cultures?

Movie Details

In theaters : December 16, 2022
On DVD or streaming : March 28, 2023
Cast : Zoe Saldana , Sam Worthington , Kate Winslet , Sigourney Weaver
Director : James Cameron
Inclusion Information : Female actors, Black actors, Latino actors
Studio : Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Genre : Science Fiction
Topics : Adventures , Ocean Creatures , Space and Aliens
Character Strengths : Courage , Perseverance , Teamwork
Run time : 192 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : sequences of strong violence and intense action, partial nudity and some strong language
Awards : Academy Award , Common Sense Selection
Last updated : May 15, 2024

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John Wesley and Avatar: The Way of Water

Sarah Welch-Larson • December 20, 2022

Applying the Methodist minister’s understanding of grace to James Cameron’s Avatar sequel.

James Cameron’s Avatar movies are landmark events, showcases for eye-popping imagery and the latest in film technology. While they have also rightly been criticized for telling “white savior” stories, the films still allude to worthwhile ideas. Through the arc of their main character, for instance, we can see different expressions of the Christian understanding of grace.

The first Avatar introduced us to the world of Pandora, a distant moon inhabited by a tall blue alien species called the Na’vi. We discover Pandora through the eyes of a paraplegic former Marine named Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), who can remotely pilot a Na’vi hybrid body, or “avatar,” through a mental link. His mission is to infiltrate the Na’vi and convince them to cooperate with humans, who have come to Pandora to exploit its natural resources. But when the humans attack the Na’vi, Jake joins the people he was ordered to betray. At the end of the first Avatar , Jake’s consciousness is transferred into his avatar body, making him a permanent member of the Na’vi.

Cameron treats Jake’s transfer of consciousness as a kind of rebirth, going so far as to show his human body and his Na’vi body lying on the ground next to each other in the fetal position, with vines forming an umbilical cord between the two. The 2009 movie ends with Jake opening his eyes in his new body as triumphant music swells, implying that Jake has been granted salvation in the form of a second body and a chance at a new life—a kind of grace.

This is close to, but not quite the same, as a Christian understanding of grace—justifying grace in particular. Jake seems to be given his new Na’vi body because he deserves it, but the point of justifying grace is that it can never be earned, only accepted through faith. In his sermon, “ The Scripture Way of Salvation ,” Methodist founder John Wesley refers to justifying grace as “pardon” and “the forgiveness of all our sins,” which occurs at the moment of putting faith in Christ. Once justified by faith, a person is saved. They then proceed to live out their lives under the influence of sanctifying grace, which is the ongoing process of God’s love at work in the believer’s life. (Wesley also outlines a third kind of grace in this sermon called preventing grace, which is the common desire of humankind to do good regardless of their salvation; Wesley refers to this kind of grace as “conscience.”)

Jake has been granted salvation in the form of a second body and a chance at a new life—a kind of grace.

Avatar: The Way of Water , Cameron’s long-awaited follow-up to the first film, illustrates the second kind of grace, that which sanctifies. The ongoing work of sanctification is the work of putting aside sin through God. Cameron shows that grace through Jake’s personal journey in the sequel. Jake might be a Na’vi physically, but he still holds on to pieces of his old life. He still wears a vest from his time in the human Marines. He treats his sons more like members of a military squad than like members of his own family, demanding they refer to him as “sir” instead of “dad.” Jake expects his children to behave with the discipline of soldiers as they carry out raids on the humans who still want to exploit Pandora’s resources. His oldest, Neteyam (Jamie Flatters), is obedient and dutiful, but his younger son, Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), chafes at Jake’s rules and feels like an outsider in his own family. Jake, for his part, rarely demonstrates his love for his children, commanding their respect rather than expressing how he feels about them.

Jake moves from a position of authority back to being an outsider himself through the course of The Way of Water . Because they’re targeted by the human military, Jake and his family are forced to relocate to a new village in an island archipelago. They’re no longer in familiar territory; instead of the imposing trees that used to be their home, they must all grow accustomed to life among Pandora’s reefs and oceans. Jake and his family learn how to dive from their new hosts—a process that mirror’s Jake’s arrival on Pandora in the first film. They spend their days swimming in the clear waters of the reef, learning how to ride the seal-like creatures that inhabit the coastal waters. Jake’s adopted daughter Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) spends her days floating among the fish, her curiosity and delight about their new home lending the movie the tone of an enthusiastic nature documentary. Jake becomes a student alongside his own children, in some ways more peer than parent, learning just as much from his children about their new place on Pandora as he teaches them.

Throughout their new life on the edge of the ocean, Jake has a difficult time letting go of his identity as a disciplinarian and a former soldier. But his time on the water does soften his heart somewhat. As the movie progresses, Jake and Lo’ak begin to develop a healthier relationship with each other—a kind of sanctifying grace, grounded in love instead of fear. In exile, Jake comes to accept that he’s no longer a leader, but a guest. When their hosts accept Lo’ak as a member of their tribe, Jake finally comes to see his son as an expert in his own right, someone who can be trusted instead of being told what to do.

Jake doesn’t foster a fully restored relationship with Lo’ak by the end of the movie. He remains an imperfect parent, at times unable to see his children as anything but the soldiers he wants them to become. His demands for perfect obedience without grace or understanding had driven a wedge between him and his sons. But Jake recognizes his mistakes and repents of them, movements which speak of a sanctifying grace. He’s in the process of restoring a right relationship with Lo’ak, a process that isn’t yet complete, but that is ongoing.

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Avatar: The Way of Water

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

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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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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.

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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–

The Wordview Behind Avatar and a Christian Perspective on Movies / Film

I n case you missed it, Avatar is breaking all sorts of records (worldwide) at the box office. As many have pointed out, very cool special effects, and 3-D. But what is the worldview embedded or displayed in this film. Worldviews are not expressed in pop-culture as propositions in a syllogistic argument; rather they are “incarnated” and show you a way to be human and think about your world. Every artistic from does this. We aren’t merely entertained at the movies, we are instructed–whether that is fireproof , invictus , or avatar . So it is always appropriate to ask what did I learn (consciously or subconsciously) by viewing this film?

For example, here is what Cameron said at the film’s London premiere: “We have this tendency to just take what we want. And that’s how we treat the natural world as well. There’s this sense of we’re here, we’re big, we’ve got the guns, we’ve got the technology, therefore we’re entitled to every damn thing on this planet. That’s not how it works, and we’re going to find out the hard way if we don’t wise up and start seeking a life that’s in balance with the natural life on Earth.” (for more click here)

Here is a review that my friend Sean McDowell (teacher, author, and apologist) wrote about the Worldview of Avatar and then below is a resource for watching film in a whole new way.

“The year is 2154, and humans are attempting to mine the valuable mineral unabtanium from the planet Pandora. Humans have virtually destroyed their own planet and desperately need extra-planetary resources to survive. Jake Sully, a wounded marine, is assigned to infiltrate the seemingly hostile indigenous aliens (the Na’vi) to win their trust and talk them into relocating their colony, which happens to be situated right atop a massive amount of unabtanium.

If he can successfully infiltrate the Na’vi people and negotiate their relocation, then the humans will not have to force them to move through military intervention (those of you who are observant already notice the political insinuations about the U.S. allegedly only going to war in Iraq for oil).

To infiltrate the Na’vi, Jake transposes his consciousness into an Avatar body under the supervision of Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver).

Once inside Pandora, Jake meets Neytiri, a female alien who saves his life and introduces him to the rest of the Na’vi, who eventually accept him as one of their own. Neytiri plays the role of the mentor (ala Obi-One Kanobi, Mr. Miyagi, and Gandolf) who shows him all the ways of the Na’vi.

Through his experience with the Na’vi, Jake’s loyalty begins to change. He becomes a true Na’vi, which raises the question: which side will Jake choose? Avatar really tells the same story as movies such as The Last Samurai, Brother Bear, and Dances with Wolves—where a foreigner has preconceptions about an “alien” culture, yet upon spending time with them and learning their ways, realizes that his new “home” is truly the more benevolent, and that his original ways were really inhumane.

From the perspective of a 3-D film experience, Avatar is truly remarkable. I completely forgot that I was wearing glasses for most of the film! This is a huge step beyond the 3-D glasses with red and blue lenses (anyone remember Jaws 3?). The scenery on Pandora is nothing short of breathtaking. There are floating mountains, beautiful water falls, fascinating creatures, and luminescent plants that react to touch (Heaven?). Even though I think the film has potential to cause considerable spiritual confusion, I can’t help but give Cameron credit for his storytelling and creativity. Now, on to the worldview analysis…

ANTI-CAPITALISM

Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) plays a slimy, sleazy, flippant corporate “pig” only interested in the monetary bottom-line. His character is reminiscent of Paul Reiser from Aliens. He has no concern for the life on Pandora and is gladly willing to destroy them to obtain unabtanium unless a diplomatic solution can be reached. At one point Parker says to Grace, “What do they want? We’ve tried money and education, but nothing works.” The inference is clear: these nature-loving creatures don’t want anything that Western corporate capitalist culture has to offer. In fact, it’s the capitalists who need to learn a lesson from the Na’vi.

It might be possible to chalk this character up as a criticism of corporate greed rather than a criticism of capitalism per se. However, I’m just not convinced because this portrayal seems to go along too consistently with the anti-capitalist fervor that has been resonating in our culture recently. It’s certainly ironic that Avatar has a central character negatively portraying (and stereotyping) capitalists when it’s already grossed over 1 billion dollars! But this is a minor theme in the movie.

PANTHEISTIC SPIRITUALITY

It would be virtually impossible to miss the not-so-subtle pantheism that pervades the entire film. The Na’vi are spiritually connected to their entire world, including the plants and animals. Their home is a humongous tree, which is clearly representative of the idea of Mother Earth. The Na’vi are so connected to nature that they say of prayer of gratitude, and sometimes even cry, when they kill an animal for food. The audience is given a virtual lesson in pantheism while Neytiri mentors Jake into their way of life. A pantheistic explanation is given for EVERY aspect of life including what they eat, how they pray, how they worship the planet, and how they relate to each other. Avatar is filled with rituals that are overseen by a Shaman (there is a scene of tree worship that is so realistic my wife almost walked out. In her words, it was demonic).

The pantheistic worldview doesn’t simply play a background role to make the film plausible, like the Force does in Star Wars. Rather, pantheistic spirituality is literally preached to the audience through the characters and their interactions.

But there is a subtle difference that sets it apart from other pantheistic movies (such as Lion King, Pocahontas, or Star Wars).

SCIENTIFIC NATURALISM

While Avatar clearly portrays pantheistic spirituality in a positive light, I think it may be subtly subverting it with a naturalistic worldview. The naturalist in the film is clearly Grace Augustine (whose name is taken from St. Augustine who wrote, “The City of God”). She is the scientist who is constantly looking for a natural explanation for their spiritual behavior. While the Na’vi talk in spiritual terms (they describe “seeing” as looking into a person’s depth), there does seem to be a physical explanation lurking beneath all their behavior. Below the ground are cords that connect all the trees on the planet, like a giant network of computers. To “connect” with the animals, the Na’vi have to physically connect their hair to the animals’ manes. And to hear from their ancestors, they have to physically connect to the trees, not unlike connecting to the Internet. This is significantly different from the Star Wars films, for example, in which Luke, Yoda, and Darth Vader are capable of manipulating reality from a distance.

So, what is the moral of the story? Here’s my take: People ought to forsake greedy Western capitalism and embrace pantheistic spirituality, even though such practices have a perfectly natural explanation.

There is much more that could be discussed about in this film (e.g., environmentalism, or the way it portrays the military). I had great discussions in my classes this past week and have had many discussions with other young people as well. Even though this movie will likely cause considerable spiritual confusion, it provides a great opportunity for parents and youth workers to engage young people in worldview conversations…..” ( Read the rest on his blog )

For an excellent training guide on how to watch films with discernment, see Hollywood Worldviews by film-maker Brian Godawa.

Product Description

“Do you watch movies with your eyes open?

You buy your tickets and concessions, and you walk into the theater. Celluloid images flash at twenty-four frames per second, and the hypnotic sequence of moving pictures coaxes you to suspend disbelief and be entertained by the implausible.

Unfortunately, many often suspend their beliefs as well, succumbing to subtle lessons in how to behave, think and even perceive reality. Do you find yourself hoping that a sister will succeed in seducing her sibling’s husband, that a thief will get away with his crime, that a serial killer will escape judgment? Do you, too, laugh at the bumbling priest and seethe at the intolerant and abusive evangelist? Do you embrace worldviews that infect your faith and then wonder, after your head is clear, whether your faith can survive the infection?

In this thoroughly revised and updated edition of his popular book, Brian Godawa guides you through the place of redemption in film, the tricks screenwriters use to communicate their messages, and the mental and spiritual discipline required for watching movies. Hollywood Worldviews helps you enter a dialogue with Hollywood that leads to a happier ending, one that keeps you aware of your culture and awake to your faith.”

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, avatar: the way of water.

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James Cameron wants you to believe. He wants you to believe that aliens are killing machines, humanity can defeat time-traveling cyborgs, and a film can transport you to a significant historical disaster. In many ways, the planet of Pandora in " Avatar " has become his most ambitious manner of sharing this belief in the power of cinema. Can you leave everything in your life behind and experience a film in a way that's become increasingly difficult in an era of so much distraction? As technology has advanced, Cameron has pushed the limits of his power of belief even further, playing with 3D, High Frame Rate, and other toys that weren't available when he started his career. But one of the many things that is so fascinating about "Avatar: The Way of Water" is how that belief manifests itself in themes he's explored so often before. This wildly entertaining film isn't a retread of "Avatar," but a film in which fans can pick out thematic and even visual elements of " Titanic ," " Aliens ," "The Abyss," and "The Terminator" films. It's as if Cameron has moved to Pandora forever and brought everything he cares about. (He's also clearly never leaving.) Cameron invites viewers into this fully realized world with so many striking images and phenomenally rendered action scenes that everything else fades away.

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. One can tell that Cameron really cares most about the world-building mid-section of this film, which is one of his greatest accomplishments, so he rushes through some of the set-ups to get to the good stuff. Before then, we catch up with Jake Sully ( Sam Worthington ), a human who is now a full-time Na'vi and partners with Neytiri ( Zoe Saldana ), with whom he has started a family. They have two sons—Neteyam ( Jamie Flatters ) and Lo'ak ( Britain Dalton )—and a daughter named Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), and they are guardians of Kiri ( Sigourney Weaver ), the offspring of Weaver's character from the first film.

Family bliss is fractured when the 'sky people' return, including an avatar Na'vi version of one Colonel Miles Quaritch ( Stephen Lang ), who has come to finish what he started, including vengeance on Jake for the death of his human form. He comes back with a group of former-human-now-Na'vi soldiers who are the film's main antagonists, but not the only ones. "Avatar: The Way of Water" once again casts the military, planet-destroying humans of this universe as its truest villains, but the villains' motives are sometimes a bit hazy. Around halfway through, I realized it's not very clear why Quaritch is so intent on hunting Jake and his family, other than the plot needs it, and Lang is good at playing mad.

The bulk of "Avatar: The Way of Water" hinges on the same question Sarah Connor asks in the "Terminator" movies—fight or flight for family? Do you run and hide from the powerful enemy to try and stay safe or turn and fight the oppressive evil? At first, Jake takes the former option, leading them to another part of Pandora, where the film opens up via one of Cameron's longtime obsessions: H2O. The aerial acrobatics of the first film are supplanted by underwater ones in a region run by Tonowari ( Cliff Curtis ), the leader of a clan called the Metkayina. Himself a family man—his wife is played by Kate Winslet —Tonowari is worried about the danger the new Na'vi visitors could bring but can't turn them away. Again, Cameron plays with moral questions about responsibility in the face of a powerful evil, something that recurs in a group of commercial poachers from Earth. They dare to hunt sacred water animals in stunning sequences during which you have to remind yourself that none of what you're watching is real.

The film's midsection shifts its focus away from Sully/Quaritch to the region's children as Jake's boys learn the ways of the water clan. Finally, the world of "Avatar" feels like it's expanding in ways the first film didn't. Whereas that film was more focused on a single story, Cameron ties together multiple ones here in a far more ambitious and ultimately rewarding fashion. While some of the ideas and plot developments—like the connection of Kiri to Pandora or the arc of a new character named Spider ( Jack Champion )—are mostly table-setting for future films, the entire project is made richer by creating a larger canvas for its storytelling. While one could argue that there needs to be a stronger protagonist/antagonist line through a film that discards both Jake & Quaritch for long periods, I would counter that those terms are intentionally vague here. The protagonist is the entire family and even the planet on which they live, and the antagonist is everything trying to destroy the natural world and the beings that are so connected to it.

Viewers should be warned that Cameron's ear for dialogue hasn't improved—there are a few lines that will earn unintentional laughter—but there's almost something charming about his approach to character, one that weds old-fashioned storytelling to breakthrough technology. Massive blockbusters often clutter their worlds with unnecessary mythologies or backstories, whereas Cameron does just enough to ensure this impossible world stays relatable. His deeper themes of environmentalism and colonization could be understandably too shallow for some viewers—and the way he co-opts elements of Indigenous culture could be considered problematic—and I wouldn't argue against that. But if a family uses this as a starting point for conversations about those themes then it's more of a net positive than most blockbusters that provide no food for thought.

There has been so much conversation about the cultural impact of "Avatar" recently, as superheroes dominated the last decade of pop culture in a way that allowed people to forget the Na'vi. Watching "Avatar: The Way of Water," I was reminded of how impersonal the Hollywood machine has become over the last few decades and how often the blockbusters that truly make an impact on the form have displayed the personal touch of their creator. Think of how the biggest and best films of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg couldn't have been made by anyone else. "Avatar: The Way of Water" is a James Cameron blockbuster, through and through. And I still believe in him.

Available only in theaters on December 16th.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)

Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence and intense action, partial nudity and some strong language.

192 minutes

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

Joel David Moore as Norm Spellman

CCH Pounder as Mo'at

Edie Falco as General Frances Ardmore

Brendan Cowell as Mick Scoresby

Jemaine Clement as Dr. Ian Garvin

Jamie Flatters as Neteyam

Britain Dalton as Lo'ak

Trinity Bliss as Tuktirey

Jack Champion as Javier 'Spider' Socorro

Bailey Bass as Tsireya

Filip Geljo as Aonung

Duane Evans Jr. as Rotxo

Giovanni Ribisi as Parker Selfridge

Dileep Rao as Dr. Max Patel

James Cameron

Writer (story by)

Amanda Silver
Josh Friedman
Shane Salerno

Cinematographer

Russell Carpenter
Stephen E. Rivkin
David Brenner
John Refoua
Simon Franglen

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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’: Long, loud, eye-popping and forgettable

The highly anticipated sequel to James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ is a sometimes-beautiful bore

It’s been 13 years since the original “Avatar,” one of the most overrated and forgettable “important” movies of the 21st century. So forgettable that viewers will be forgiven for not quite remembering who’s who and what’s what in “Avatar: The Way of Water,” a sequel few people asked for, outside of the franchise’s obsessive auteur, James Cameron, and pandemic-era theaters desperate to lure audiences back into the habit of big-screen moviegoing.

As “ Top Gun: Maverick ” proved earlier this year, as long as a sequel is smart, well-written, beautifully cast and stylishly executed, it can take all the time it needs getting here. “The Way of Water” doesn’t necessarily check all those boxes, but what it does right will offer spectators moments of awe, full-body immersion and genuine beauty. Cameron, co-writing here with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, from a story he collaborated on with Jaffa, Silver, Josh Friedman and Shane Salerno, has never been known for his subtle narrative or sophisticated dialogue: “The Way of Water” is frequently clunky and ham-handed in its storytelling, and the words spoken by its characters — human, humanoid and in between — aren’t particularly memorable. But there’s no denying the power of images that can only be described as transporting — literally and figuratively.

“The Way of Water” catches up with “Avatar’s” protagonist, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a decade after he’s decided to retire from service with the Marines and take up residence on Pandora (the planet he was sent to colonize), become a member of the native Na’vi tribe and marry Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). As “The Way of Water” opens, we’re introduced to Jake and Neytiri’s spirited children: sons Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) and Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), as well as a little girl named Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss). They’ve also adopted Kiri, a sensitive adolescent whose mother, Grace Augustine, was played by Sigourney Weaver in the first “Avatar.” Here, by way of both digital wizardry and her own vocal gifts, Weaver delivers an impressively convincing portrayal of her younger self as a curious, tuned-in girl with profound powers to connect with the universe.

Meet the people who never stopped thinking ‘Avatar’ was cool

Kiri is one of the fully realized characters in “The Way of Water,” which centers on Jake’s efforts to save his family when rapacious forces once again threaten the peaceable kingdom of Pandora. The gung-ho leader of that hegemonic mission is another familiar face: Quaritch (Stephen Lang), Jake’s ally turned nemesis who was vanquished but has been reconstituted to resemble the towering blue-skinned ectomorphs who inhabit Pandora.

For the first 45 minutes or so, “The Way of Water” busies itself with introducing, reintroducing, explaining and setting up — and also establishing the idyllic family life Jake is trying to hard to preserve. Once he’s forced to flee the forest, the Sullys take refuge with the Metkayina people, whose seaside redoubt resembles the Maldives with way more fantastical flora and fauna.

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It’s at this point that the visual wonders of “The Way of Water” come fully into frame, with Cameron and his visual effects team creating gorgeous underwater vistas of corals, undulating filaments, neon-colored plant life and creatures that float, soar, lunge and balletically breach. The most exhilarating moments of the film come by way of Kiri’s explorations of her new habitat and the adventures of her siblings, who befriend similarly feisty but finned and green-skinned Metkayina kids (their parents are played by Cliff Curtis and Kate Winslet). “Finding Nemo” has nothing on the world that Cameron builds undersea, with a far more vibrant color palette and arresting detail than he evinced in the first installment.

The irony of “The Way of Water” is that, for all its kid-centric action, it’s most likely far too intense for anyone under 10. While the Sullys learn how to hold their breath and Lo’ak befriends a whalelike leviathan who’s just as misunderstood as he is, Quaritch is on their trail, leaving nothing but suffering and destruction in his wake. Once he colludes with a greedy boat captain, played with sleazy relish by Brendan Cowell, the twin evils of militarism and capitalism create a thrashing, deeply disquieting tableau of gruesome cruelty and carnage — violence that reaches its peak in a loud, protracted fight sequence that forms the movie’s cacophonous climax.

If wanton destruction punctuated by moments of psychedelic visual splendor and New Age-y philosophizing is your bag, “The Way of Water” provides plenty of value. But as far as the computer-generated techniques have come in the intervening years, there are sequences that are shockingly unattractive, especially live-action scenes whose high frame rate gives them the cheesy, motion-smoothed look of a bad soap opera.

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The action in “The Way of Water” is ultimately overwhelming, betraying an uncomfortable truth about Cameron: He might preach environmentalism and balance, calling on Indigenous peoples for their gentle worldviews and material culture. But at heart, he’s just as aggressive and all-commanding as the bad guys he portrays with such oorah swagger. As the annihilation reached its punishingly fevered pitch at a recent screening, the crashes and rumbles and explosions weren’t just deafening, they were palpable to the point that I wondered who was kicking my seat. Then I realized: It was James Cameron all along.

PG-13. At area theaters. Contains sequences of strong violence and intense action, partial nudity, and some strong language. 192 minutes.

Review: An exercise in Na’vi gazing, ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ will cure your moviegoing blues

A CGI image of a blue man riding on the back of a winged creature over a body of water.

Thirteen years after the first ‘Avatar,’ James Cameron finally returns to the distant moon of Pandora in this transporting, radiantly personal sequel

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In “Avatar: The Way of Water,” the director James Cameron pulls you down so deep, and sets you so gently adrift, that at times you don’t feel like you’re watching a movie so much as floating in one. From time to time he brings you to the bottom of an alien sea, shot with stunning hyper-clarity in high-frame-rate 3D and teeming with all manner of surreally strange fish — all oddly shaped fins, decorative tentacles and other vestiges of an otherworldly, faintly screw-loose evolutionary timeline.

You can imagine the fun (and the headaches) that Cameron and his visual-effects wizards must have had designing this brilliant ocean-floor nirvana. You can also see an astronomical budget (reportedly north of $350 million) and an extraordinarily sophisticated digital toolkit at work, plus a flair for camera movement that, likely shaped by the director’s hours of deep-sea diving, achieves an exhilarating sense of buoyancy.

Much as you might long for Cameron to keep us down there — to give us, in effect, the most expensive and elaborate underwater hangout movie ever made — he can’t or won’t sustain all this dreamy Jacques-Cousteau-on-mushrooms wonderment for three-plus hours. He’s James Cameron, after all, and he has a stirringly old-fashioned story to tell, crap dialogue to dispense and, in time, a hell of an action movie to unleash, complete with fiery shipwrecks, deadly arrows and a whale-sized, tortoise-skinned creature known as a Tulkun. All in all, it’s marvelous to have him back (Cameron, that is, though the Tulkun is also welcome). He remains one of the few Hollywood visionaries who actually merits that much-abused term, and as such, he has more on his mind than just pummeling the audience into submission.

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Cameron wants to submerge you in another time and place, to seduce you into a state of pure, unforced astonishment. And he does, after some visual adjustment; 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 (“The Blue and the Beautiful,” surely). But then he can captivate you with something as lyrically simple — but actually, as painstakingly computer-generated — as a shot of his characters sitting beside the water at night, their faces and bodies reflecting the digital phosphorescence below. Any hack can make stuff blow up real good; Cameron makes stuff glow up real good.

In this long-running, long-gestating sequel to his 2009 juggernaut, “Avatar,” Cameron returns you to that distant moon called Pandora, though most of the action unfolds far from the first movie’s majestic floating mountains and verdant rainforests. We encountered that dazzling, soon-to-be-despoiled Eden through the eyes of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a square-jawed, soft-hearted ex-Marine sent by his ruthless corporate overlords to infiltrate the Na’vi, a powerful race of blue-skinned, yellow-eyed, cat-tailed humanoids who lived in astonishing oneness with all living things. Transplanted into his own genetically tailored Na’vi body, or avatar, Jake didn’t take long to switch allegiances and turn against humanity, having fallen hopelessly in love with Pandora’s beauty and also with a Na’vi warrior princess, Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña).

“Avatar” was a thrilling moviegoing experience and a pioneering showpiece for performance-capture technology, which allowed Cameron and his actors to endow their Na’vi characters with astonishingly detailed and lifelike gazes, gestures and physiognomies. The movie was also built on a consciously thin story, with thudding echoes of anti-imperialist westerns like “Dances With Wolves” and the fondly remembered eco-conscious animation “FernGully: The Last Rainforest.” But then, Cameron’s cutting-edge technophilia has always been married to, and complemented by, an unapologetic cornball classicism. And if it was easy to snicker at “Avatar’s” hippy-dippy sincerity, it was also easy to surrender to its multiplex transcendentalism, its world of synthetically crafted natural wonders. Here was the rare studio picture that seemed enlivened, rather than undermined, by its contradictions.

If anything, those contradictions hit you with even greater force in “Avatar: The Way of Water,” which fully and subtly immerses you in the Na’vi world from start to finish. The level of computer-generated artifice on display in every landscape and seascape is cumulatively staggering, in ways to which even the first movie, toggling insistently between Jake’s human and Na’vi experiences, didn’t aspire. Just as crucially, the stakes have risen, the emotions have deepened and the brand-extension imperatives that typically govern sequels are happily nowhere in evidence.

A blue, CGI woman holding a bow and arrow while interacting with a blue, CGI man in a fiery landscape

That might seem remarkable, considering that the “Avatar” series (at least three more movies are planned), like all properties of the former Fox Studios, now belongs to Disney, speaking of ruthless corporate overlords. But then, it’s no surprise that the director of “Aliens” and “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” two of the most indelible sequels in action-cinema history, knows a thing or two about intelligent, expansive franchise building. And as “The Abyss” and “Titanic” bore out, Cameron also knows a thing or two about water, which is where this latest sequel finds its sweet spot: Welcome to Pandora’s beach.

But first, there’s a truckload of exposition to get through. As in the first movie, Jake obliges with the kind of grunting film-noir-gumshoe voiceover that reminds you, in ways more endearing than irritating, that snappy exposition will never be one of Cameron’s strong suits. (He co-wrote the script with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver.) Several years after shedding his own avatar and being reborn as a full-blown Na’vi, Jake has mastered his post-human way of life. He and Neytiri are parents to four Na’vi children: two teenage sons, Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) and Lo’ak (Britain Dalton); an 8-year-old daughter, Tuk (Trinity Bliss), and an adopted teenage daughter of mysterious provenance named Kiri. She’s played by Sigourney Weaver, a casting choice that naturally ties her to Dr. Grace Augustine, Weaver’s deceased scientist from the first movie, initiating a mystery that will presumably be unraveled further down the franchise road.

Weaver’s casting also raises some odd, potentially discourse-sowing questions about Kiri’s chaste (for now) bond with a young human male and fellow foundling named Spider (Jack Champion), who likes to run, bare of chest and foot, with the Sully clan. But if their friendship makes for an optimistic portrait of interspecies harmony, Cameron doesn’t linger on it for long. Instead, he unleashes a grave threat that drives Jake and Neytiri from their Omaticayan jungle home and sends them fleeing to the ocean, where they seek refuge with a civilization of Na’vi reef dwellers known as the Metkayina.

It’s a shrewd narrative gambit that not only refreshes the scenery (and how!) but also forces Jake, Neytiri and their family to adapt to an entirely new way of life, cueing a second-act training regimen that allows Cameron to show off every square inch of his aquatic paradise. (His key collaborators include his longtime cinematographer, Russell Carpenter, and production designers Dylan Cole and Ben Procter.)

Led by the kind, welcoming Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and his less hospitable wife, Ronal (a glaring Kate Winslet), the Metkayina are a highly evolved clan of water dwellers, as underscored by their aquamarine skin (in contrast to the Omaticayans’ cerulean tones), seashell-and-fishnet jewelry and intricate tattoos, reminiscent of Maori body art. They also boast unusually thick, long tails built for underwater propulsion. For Jake, Neytiri and especially their children, learning to navigate the watery wilderness just outside their new beach-bum paradise will prove a difficult challenge. It’ll also earn them some mockery from the locals, especially Tonowari and Ronal’s own teenage children, in a story that sometimes plays like a teen surfing movie by way of “Swiss Family Robinson.”

Even coming from a filmmaker used to setting intimate relational sagas against large-scale tragedy, the tenderness and occasional sentimentality with which Cameron invests this drama of family conflict and survival feels unusually personal. It can also feel a bit thinly stretched at three hours, but even that seems more an act of generosity than indulgence on Cameron’s part; his attachment to this family is real and in time, so is yours. Audiences expecting propulsive non-stop action, rather than the director’s customary slow build, may be surprised to find themselves watching a leisurely saga of overprotective parents and rebellious teens, biracial/adoptive identity issues and casual xenophobia. They’ll also be treated to some lovely whalespeak courtesy of those mammoth Tulkuns, who turn out to be engaging conversationalists as well as formidable fighters.

If you’re impatient, sit tight: The action is still to come, much of it dispensed by a snarling reincarnation of the first movie’s ex-military villain, Col. Miles Quaritch, here reborn — and played once more by the ferocious Stephen Lang — as a Na’vi avatar implanted with a surviving packet of the colonel’s memories. Bigger, badder and bluer than before, Quaritch 2.0 isn’t looking for unobtainium, the first movie’s stupidly, wonderfully named mineral MacGuffin. All he really wants is revenge against Jake and his family. (It’s personal for him, too.) His Na’vi transformation leaves only a handful of human characters, some of them old friends (Joel David Moore, Dileep Rao), though most of them are puny, inconsequential villains who rain down destruction on the Metkayina and their delicate ecosystem, only to reap destruction in return. Like its predecessor, “Avatar: The Way of Water” is both an environmental cautionary tale and a madly effective opportunity to root against our own kind; by the time the third act kicks in, you’ll be screaming for human blood.

Cameron’s return trip to Pandora has been long in the making and nearly as long in the mocking. Over 13 years of ever-shifting industry buzz about possible sequels, sequels to sequels and countless changes of plan, more than a few have expressed exasperation with the director’s ever-outsized ambitions and even cast doubt on the first “Avatar’s” pop-cultural legacy. It’s hardly the first time Cameron has been dinged in advance for an Olympian folly, and if the pattern holds, this latest and most ambitious picture will stun most of his naysayers into silence. “Never underestimate James Cameron” has become something of a mantra of late when, in fact, the underestimation is crucial. It’s part of the director’s hook, his wind-up showmanship, his belief that moviegoing can be a religious and even redemptive experience. The more he suffers, the more he can thrill us, and the more fully the wonder of cinema can be reborn.

You don’t have to buy into that self-mythologizing to surrender, even if only intermittently, to the lovely, uneven, transporting sprawl of “Avatar: The Way of Water.” Certainly it’s hard not to feel moved and even heartened by the conviction of Cameron’s filmmaking, the unfeigned sincerity with which he directs a young Metkayina woman to solemnly intone, “The way of water has no beginning and no end.” That could be interpreted as a dig at the running time, but it also nicely articulates Cameron’s sense of visual continuity. As with the first “Avatar,” the immersive fluidity he achieves here feels like an organic outgrowth from his premise, a reminder that all life flows harmoniously together.

Where it will flow next is a mystery, and it’d be disingenuous of me to suggest I’m not eager to find out. Until then, Pandora, so long, and thanks for all the fish.

‘Avatar: The Way of Water’

In English and Na’vi dialogue, with English subtitles Rating: PG-13, for sequences of strong violence and intense action, partial nudity and some strong language When: Opens Friday Where: Wide release Running time: 3 hours, 10 minutes

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"Get Rid of Human Beings Now!"

What You Need To Know:

(PaPaPa, PCPC, EEE, FRFR, CoCo, ACapACapACap, C, B, O, LLL, VVV, S, NN, A, DD, MM) Extremely strong, slightly mixed, New Age pagan, politically correct worldview contains very strong environmentalist content and strong communalistic group think philosophy, overt New Age Gaia/Goddess worship and tree worship extolling people over the individual and promoting the connectedness of everything in nature, a strong Marxist overtone, and very strong anti-capitalist content where human capitalists are presented as greedy, merciless thugs abusing the creatures and landscape of another planet, but with some Christian references and allusions with some Christian, biblical values able to be read into the movie, including themes of being born again, sacrificing yourself for others, and respecting nature, but, on closer examination, these themes differ from the revealed, biblical Good News of Jesus Christ, plus some occult content of hearing spirits of dead ancestors; 26 obscenities and 10 profanities; very strong bloody violence with huge battle scenes, people impaled by spears and arrows, stabbings, hatchetings, attacks by vicious animals, poisonings, bloody wounds, death, people caught in the mouths of large creatures, creepy tree grows into people, and people and creatures shot, blown up, and run over, plus ugly alien creatures could cause children nightmares; sexual content includes allusions of sex between partially clad aliens and hints of bestiality with animals and sentient aliens establishing physical and mental connections that are like a spiritual, almost sexual “high”; some upper female nudity on aliens, 10-foot-tall humanoid creatures nearly naked throughout the movie, with partially nude breasts and partial upper nudity, very thin alien clothing, upper and human male nudity; brief alcohol use; smoking and implied drug references; and, greed and exploitation rebuked, and movie promotes an anti-human, reverse racist ideology.

More Detail:

AVATAR excels in 3D special effects. For that reason alone, it should perform well at the box office. Beneath the special effects, however, is a very thin, anti-human, filled-with-plot-holes storyline that goes on and on and on and on. Great entertainment puts plot first, character second, dialogue third, idea forth, music fifth, and spectacle last, as Aristotle noted. James Cameron, the writer and director of AVATAR, reverses this. And, all too often, when you put spectacle first, you turn a great little movie like KING KONG into KING BORE.

In AVATAR, the dialogue is often funky, the ideas are self-contradictory and absurd, the characters are shallow and stereotypical, and the plot is forgotten as Cameron shows off scene after scene of his special effects. If only someone had edited this movie, it may have been more interesting. Those who want to be blown away by special effects, or who are on drugs, may disagree.

AVATAR opens with Jake (played by Sam Worthington), a paraplegic ex-marine, arriving on the planet Pandora, hired to “drive” an avatar. Avatars are like biological clones of the Na’vi, the 10-foot-tall humanoid alien inhabitants of Pandora, combined with human DNA. The human drivers live through the avatars. The human lies down in a sealed box and allows his mind to do nothing but operate the avatar. When the human takes a break from operating his avatar, the avatar drops into a sleep-like state.

Humans are on Pandora to mine an ultra costly mineral called “unobtainium,” a humorous reference invented in the 1950s that references any material that’s unavailable or impractical. The mining operation is run like a military outpost in hostile territory where the atmosphere is toxic to humans. The avatar project, a small part of the overall operation, is run by Grace (Sigourney Weaver) and her little group of humane scientists who want to make friends with and negotiate with the inhabitants of Pandora. Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), the outpost’s brutal defense commander, recruits Jake to use his avatar to gather military intelligence. Grace distrusts Jake but winds up forced to work with him because, in his first avatar outing, he winds up befriending Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), daughter of the leader of the Na’vi aliens.

Jake is torn between his mission as a human and his new “life” as a Na’vi. His acceptance by the Na’vi is brought about by signs of favor shown him by the deity of the Na’vi, Eywa, a pantheistic earth goddess. The movie’s press materials state, “The Na’vi have developed a complex culture based on a profound spiritual connection among all creatures, and the deity they call Eywa.”

The movie contrasts the humans (most of whom are driven by greed) with the Na’vi, who, even in hunting for food, consider themselves one with the creatures they hunt. The Na’vi have a special hair like sexual appendage that enables them to physically connect in a spiritual, mental, and even sexual bond with the creatures they ride or fly. There are Na’vi versions of prayer and worship throughout the movie, which are presented as if they’re something noble and beautiful. In contrast, the only use humans have for God is to spit out his name in profanities.

The “nice” humans come to have great respect for the diety worshipped by the aliens, including the concept of being “one” with the trees and animals. The bad humans want to destroy the “sacred” site where the Na’vi worship their false goddess.

This is a huge Christmas season movie. What audiences need to know is that the God profaned in this movie is real. The goddess and the spiritual concepts presented in the movie are fiction. The Spirit we need is the Spirit of Almighty God, our Creator, who is only available when we accept the loving gift of His redemption in the name of Jesus Christ, who is God made flesh, who died to pay the penalty for our sins and was raised from the dead to secure eternal life for each of us who accept Him. While we remain here, we are to be stewards of the other living things on earth, not equals.

The humans in AVATAR are all presented as unbelievers. It’s as if humans have no God while every Na’vi worships Eywa the goddess. The reality of life on earth is that there are millions of Christians who worship a loving and compassionate God. Christians who engage in free enterprise are not brutal and greedy. Many of them are kind and generous. They also support missionaries around the world who help the poor and the suffering.

The major problem with this movie is that Cameron tells a story that hates people. This self-loathing eventually has the group think natives triumph over the evil human corporations and sends the humans back to a dying earth where they can all die.

Aside from the theological and philosophical problems with the movie, it is amazing so little attention was made to the dialogue and characters of the alien natives. Even the names of the exotic items are ridiculous. For instance, the rare mineral the earth needs to survive is called “unobtainium.” The planet AVATAR takes place on is Pandora. Pandora is a moon that orbits Polyphemus. Thus, most of the names sound like they came out of a midnight session where everyone was smoking dope.

For hundreds of years, the pagan, communist ideas expressed in this movie circulated among a threadbare group of outcasts with dirty fingernails and greasy hair, who shared their obtuse, occult ideas amongst themselves with manic, alienated glee. Now James Cameron has made these insane views the major bulwark of a very spectacular movie, but the spectacle does not make the views any more coherent, rational, or uplifting.

Ultimately, AVATAR is bad news. What the people in the movie need to deliver them from their greed and the aliens in the movie need to deliver them from their severe group think is the loving salvation available only through the true God, Jesus Christ.

Cameron’s anti-capitalist ideology is more dangerous than Michael Moore, whose recent anti-capitalist documentary will be seen by far fewer people. The truth is that we live in amazing luxury today under capitalism, compared to what we’d have if we lived like Pandora’s aliens. Would you like to get up each morning from a hammock in a tree and hunt for food with a bow and arrow? Capitalism can be brutal and ugly if the capitalist is brutal and ugly, but so can every other economic system. Capitalism can be a beautiful thing in a nation where capitalists live by God’s golden rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

If you want to live in a kinder, gentler, more compassionate world, don’t go hug a tree or look for some earthly version of an Earth goddess. Give your life to God through Jesus Christ and let Him use you to reach out to those trapped in selfishness, greed, pride, and hatred.

Avatar: The Way Of Water Review

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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DVD & Streaming
Action/Adventure , Animation , Drama , Romance , Sci-Fi/Fantasy , War

Content Caution

In Theaters

December 18, 2009
Sam Worthington as Jake Sully; Zoe Saldana as Neytiri; Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Grace Augustine; Michelle Rodriguez as Trudy Chacon; Stephen Lang as Col. Miles Quatrich; Giovanni Ribisi as Parker Selfridge; Joel David Moore as Norm Spellman; CCH Pounder as Mo’at; Wes Studi as Eytucan; Laz Alonso as Tus’Tey

Home Release Date

April 22, 2010
James Cameron

Distributor

20th Century Fox

Movie Review

Jake Sully has been asleep for six years.

More accurately, he’s been in cryogenic stasis five years, nine months and 22 days—the time needed to shuttle him and a crew of scientists and ex-Marine mercenaries from a decaying, resource-depleted Earth to the distant, forest-covered moon Pandora in the year 2154.

The job of the heavies? Protect miners, botanists and engineers from the perils of Pandora. Jake’s task, though he’s ex-military himself, is altogether different. His career was cut short by injuries that left him a paraplegic. Then he got tapped to take the place of his twin brother (a researcher who died unexpectedly) in the Avatar project, led by Dr. Grace Augustine.

Dr. Augustine has pioneered a way to make contact with the moon’s primary population, an intelligent, 10-foot-tall, blue-skinned, wide-eyed humanoid race known as the Na’vi. Blending human and Na’vi DNA, Augustine and her compatriots have bioengineered Na’vi-like bodies that can be linked through immersive virtual reality with “drivers,” of which Jake is one.

And all of that is just the setup before things really get rolling in James Cameron’s hyper-animated technology experiment.

Positive Elements

On the brink of being devoured by predators, Jake is rescued by a fierce female Na’vi warrior named Neytiri. Do Jake and Neytiri fall in love? Of course. But in the process, Jake begins to see the humans’ despoiling presence through the cat-like eyes of Pandora’s indigenous people.

Scowling from the face of the other side of the coin, Avatar’ s villains exhibit a caricatured kind of hyper-colonial wickedness. Parker Selfridge, the humans’ corporate overseer on Pandora, looks upon the Na’vi as animals that must be annihilated. Likewise, Col. Miles Quatrich is a battle-scarred attack dog who’s all too ready to commit genocide.

It’s clear who is heads and who is tails here. And, naturally, it’s only a matter of time before conflict erupts. When it does, Jake, Dr. Augustine and several other humans sacrificially fight on behalf of the oppressed, outgunned population.

The sermon is delivered in stark tones. Yet it’s undeniably true that unprovoked attacks and the taking of others’ land for personal gain is, um, wrong . The film also rightfully elevates the Na’vi’s harmonious relationship with their environment—because while the debate can rage over what it should look like exactly, living peaceably with our surroundings is still a good thing. (On its face, that is. The spiritual components wrapped into this issue are another matter.)

The Na’vi again serve as a counterpoint to the humans who have wrecked their own world and are intent upon doing it to another. Yes, we earthlings take quite a beating in Avatar . But in some ways we deserve to, especially if we identify at all with generally rapacious materialists who have only one thing on their minds—digging out the precious, energy-rich ore known as unobtanium.

Spiritual Elements

Just as the storyline involving the decimation of an indigenous population parallels early American history, so too the Na’vi’s spiritual beliefs often parallel those of Native American religions. The Na’vi worship a goddess known as Eywa, the Great Mother, a deity that seems both personal (the Na’vi pray to her) as well as encompassing the collective energy of Pandora’s living things.

Thus, the Na’vi exhibit high reverence for all plants and animals. And, as mentioned, the film’s environmental message is set against this spiritual backdrop. The trees, the forests and everything in them are not merely part of a natural ecology, but a spiritual one. And the violence perpetrated against Pandora’s creatures is not merely a physical violation, but a spiritual affront too.

The Na’vi’s holiest place is the Tree of Souls. Its airborne seeds are referred to as “pure spirits.” Its branches—more luminous tendrils than bark-covered limbs—are used in prayer rituals. Twice the Na’vi gather before this tree in what could be described as services of corporate healing and worship. In the first, they petition Eywa to save the wounded Dr. Augustine by transferring her soul from her human body into her avatar. The tribe’s spiritual leader, a female shaman (and Neytiri’s mother), says, “The Great Mother may choose to save all that she is in this body,” then prays, “Hear us please, All Mother. … Let her walk among us as one of the people.” Amid those prayers, Augustine tells Jake, “I’m with her [Eywa]. She’s real.” A similar service later involves Jake’ s attempt to become fully Na’vi. Both times, the tribe is seated, undulating and chanting ecstatically.

The Na’vi at times listen to the whispering voices of deceased ancestors. And they psychically bond with flying, almost dragon-like creatures known as banshees. During a funeral service, Neytiri tells Jake, “All energy is only borrowed. … You have to give it back.” Neytiri says of the Na’vi’s initiation ceremony, “Every person is born twice. The second time is when you earn your place among the people forever.”

Jake eventually prays to Eywa, telling her that the humans are about to destroy the Tree of Souls. Neytiri responds, “Our Great Mother does not take sides, Jake. She protects only the balance of life.” [ Spoiler Warning ] But when the planet’s creatures come to the Na’vi’s rescue in the final battle, Neytiri exults that Eywa has answered Jake’s prayers.

A Na’vi leader calls Jake’s avatar “a demon in a false body.” Col. Quatrich says of Pandora’s vicious environment, “If there is a hell, you might want to go there for some R and R.”

Sexual Content

The Na’vi may be aliens, and they may be computer generated, but their physiology still resembles that of humans. And we see quite a bit of it. Their garb is something you might see in a National Geographic pictorial of isolated jungle tribes. Which is to say, there isn’t much there. Both men and women wear little more than loincloths, and the race’s catlike tails don’t fully obscure their backsides. Neytiri and other Na’vi females wear ornamental coverings that don’t really conceal their breasts.

As for the humans, a female pilot wears a tight, cleavage-revealing tank top. And Dr. Augustine is seen unclothed (strategically wrapped in vines). Later, Jake’s nakedness is similarly “wrapped.”

Jake and Neytiri consummate their relationship in a sensuous scene that shows them kissing and intertwined. They sleep together afterward and are said to be “mated for life.”

Augustine alludes to an old masturbation cliché. Quatrich spits out a mocking double entendre about Jake having found “some local tail.”

Violent Content

The humans’ brutal attack begins with gas canisters. And it’s not long before copters unleash missiles that bring the Na’vi’s massive “home tree” down in a scene reminiscent of the World Trade Center’s collapse. Many Na’vi are crushed, impaled or wounded, and we see survivors departing in a line, weeping and wailing. These images recall the Cherokee’s forced migration to Oklahoma along the Trail of Tears.

Aerial clashes involve banshees vs. the humans’ aircraft. And while the Na’vi get mowed down by missiles and gunfire, many of their arrows somehow penetrate cockpits, taking out pilots and gunners.

The situation is similar on the ground. Scores of humans and Na’vi alike fall in a scene that’s similar in intensity to the final battle in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King . Also severe are several of Jake’s close encounters with Pandora’s fearsome beasties.

Specific violent moments worth noting include Neytiri’s taking out a viperwolf with an arrow and later killing a human with two well-placed shots. She also engages in a vicious melee with Col. Quatrich: She’s riding a huge jungle beast while Quatrich controls a mech (a walking, armored vehicle). He repeatedly stabs the animal and kills it, pinning Neytiri beneath it in the process. Elsewhere, an unfortunate human’s head and shoulders end up in a banshee’s mouth. Explosions consume man, alien and beast alike. On fire, a horse-like creature runs for its life. Jake’s avatar nearly knocks the head off one human and hurls others to their deaths.

Crude or Profane Language

About a dozen s-words. Also, 10 misuses of God’s name (including six or seven pairings with “d‑‑n”) and three abuses of Jesus’ name. We hear roughly 20 other profanities (“h‑‑‑,” “a‑‑,” “b‑‑ch,” “b‑‑tard,” “p‑‑‑”) and three crude references to the male anatomy (“d‑‑k” among them).

Drug and Alcohol Content

Dr. Augustine smokes often and drinks a glass of alcohol.

Other Negative Elements

Political barbs cluster among the positive messages about peace, humanitarianism and environmentalism. As if to denigrate current American foreign policy, the film includes the lines, “Our security lies in preemptive attack. We will fight terror with terror.” Somebody references the upcoming “shock and awe” campaign.

Go epic or go home.

That’s James Cameron’s way. His last feature film, 1997’s Titanic , became the highest grossing of all time (without inflation being factored in). And his other résumé entries include such well-known bombasts as Aliens, The Terminator and its sequel, True Lies and The Abyss .

Big, every one. And Avatar is bigger and bolder than them all.

Cameron began working on Avatar in 1994. Fifteen years later we have what some are saying is the most expensive film ever made—one that tops $300 million. And it’s not hard to see where he spent the money. Visually, Avatar is a feast. Lush colors and spectacular creatures dance and splash (and fight). Cameron has arguably out-Lucased Star Wars creator George Lucas when it comes to imagining and rendering a stunning world in a galaxy far, far way. And Cameron’s proprietary 3-D technology will likely enhance the experience for movie “experience” fans. (It gave me a headache.)

But we have to do more here than deliver an artistic critique. Extended scenes of near nudity (blue though it may be), intense violence and more than a little profanity pop out as much as the immersive 3-D imagery does.

Cameron’s message in Avatar is something like this: Genocidal plunderers are devoid of spiritual enlightenment and driven by their compulsive lust for another people’s resources. Time reviewer Richard Corliss wrote of the motif, “This is not only the most elaborate public-service commercial for those of the tree-hugger persuasion; it’s also a call to save what we’ve got, environmentally, and leave indigenous people as they are—an argument applicable to the attempt of any nation (say, the U.S.) to colonize another land (say, Iraq or Afghanistan).”

Says Cameron, “[In] the 16th and 17th centuries … the Europeans pretty much took over South and Central America and displaced and marginalized the indigenous peoples there. There’s just this long, wonderful history of the human race written in blood going back as far as we can remember, where we have this tendency to just take what we want without asking.”

His insurgent solution? Get in touch with your world and its spirituality and stop consuming so much stuff.

Those are great, deep thoughts—to a point. But what kind of spirituality are we talking about here? Reminding me a great deal of Kevin Costner’s Dances With Wolves , Cameron’s depiction of the Na’vi not only elevates tribal customs and rituals, it blurs the boundaries between God and the environment. Here the creator and her creation are indistinguishable.

A postscript: Nine minutes were added to Avatar in a Special Edition theatrical re-release about nine months after it first premiered. According to Cameron, in an interview with the Washington Post , “There are short, sort of, 10- and 15- and 20-second bits that have been added back. And there are a couple of larger chunks in the one-and-a-half to two-minute range.” One of the short adds involves Jake and Neytiri’s marriage/mating scene, prolonging their sensual foreplay just a bit, but actually not adding anything more explicit to the mix. One of the longer adds is a death scene in which Jake ceremonially takes tribal chief Tsu’tey’s life as the leadership of the tribe passes to Jake. Tsu’tey has been critically injured during the fight, and he asks Jake to finish him off. Jake does so with a dagger of sorts. We see the movement but not the contact.

A second video release, the Extended Collector’s Edition set, hit shelves on Nov. 16, 2010. In it are 16 additional minutes of new footage and 45 minutes of deleted, never-before-seen scenes. To the untrained eye—and perhaps even to the trained one—the scenes are barely noticeable and of little or no consequence to the story. Most viewers will be unable to tell the difference—apart from the already long film’s additional length. Most worthy of mention is the alternate beginning in which Jake is in a futuristic city on Earth before he is chosen to succeed his late twin brother, Tommy. We see Jake drinking a shot and trying to protect a woman who is slapped by her abusive boyfriend in a bar. A brawl results, and he’s violently thrown out of the establishment. On the other side of the content coin, a family-friendly audio track (for the original version of the film) is included that’s designed to eliminate profanities. Missed in the filtering process, however, is at least one use each of God’s name and “a‑‑.” Subtitles still contain curse words.

Adam R. Holz

After serving as an associate editor at NavPress’ Discipleship Journal and consulting editor for Current Thoughts and Trends, Adam now oversees the editing and publishing of Plugged In’s reviews as the site’s director. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children. In their free time, the Holzes enjoy playing games, a variety of musical instruments, swimming and … watching movies.

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Avatar movies explore a future where humans deplete Earth's resources, as seen in the world of Pandora.
Sequels introduce new conflicts and character arcs, building off Cameron's intricate world-building.
Films leap years into the future, with upcoming sequels pushing the timeline even further ahead.

James Cameron's Avatar movies are set in a dystopian future, where humans have depleted Earth's resources and need to move outward for survival. The movies are set in the fictional world of Pandora , which is home to tall blue aliens known as the Na’vi, who, unlike humans, care a lot about preserving their ecosystem. The original 2009 film follows Jake Sully falling in love with a Na'vi woman, Neytiri, while the 2022 sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water , explores how Jake and Neytiri with their new family continue to brave the human colonization of Pandora.

The massive critical and commercial success of both films led to the announcement of several upcoming Avatar movies , including Avatar 3, Avatar 4, and Avatar 5, slated for release between 2025 and 2031. All these films will continue to develop Cameron's complex and intricate world-building established in these two films. In particular, Avatar 2 set up the franchise's future with its stunning visual effects, introducing new conflicts, and building more character arcs. Given the number of movies the franchise will soon cover, it's not surprising that they also cover an extensive time period.

After Avatar: The Way of Water's ending, it looks like Avatar 3 could further focus on Neytiri's hatred of Spider, but this would be a terrible idea.

The First Avatar Movie Is Set In 2154

All the events of the film unfold within that year itself.

The initial 2009 Avatar film takes place in the 22nd century, over a hundred years into the future. It is set in 2154, meaning that Jake Sully's flashbacks from his time on Earth take place in 2148 , as it takes six years to travel from Earth to Pandora. The entire movie takes place within a relatively short time frame, so all the events unfold within the year 2154 itself. Avatar focuses on how Jake, who is initially tasked with gathering intelligence for the Resources Development Administration (RDA) to mine unobtanium, infiltrates the indigenous Na'vi people but gradually forms a deep bond with them.

Jake forms a particularly close relationship with the Na'vi princess, Neytiri. Over the course of the narrative, he becomes torn between his loyalty to the Na'vi and his mission for the RDA, ultimately leading the Na'vi in a battle against the RDA's oppressive forces. In the climactic conflict, Jake helps the Na'vi defeat the RDA and permanently transfers his consciousness to his avatar , fully embracing his new life as one of the Na'vi. This ending forms the basis for Avatar 2.

Avatar 2: The Way Of Water Takes Place 14 Years Later

It is set in the year 2168.

Avatar 2: The Way Of Water then jumps 14 years from the first film, taking place in the year 2168. It sees Jake Sully and Neytiri, now parents, facing renewed human threats as the RDA returns to Pandora. To protect their family, they seek refuge with the ocean-dwelling Metkayina clan, exploring Pandora's underwater world . As they adapt to this new environment, conflict escalates when the RDA targets the oceanic regions for exploitation. The Na'vi join forces with the Metkayina to defend their home in a climactic battle, which ends with Neteyam's tragic death and the Na'vi's hard-fought victory.

Future Avatar Movies Will Push The Timeline Even Further Into The Future

There will be a 6-year time jump in avatar 4.

" And we even did part of movie four," Cameron added, " because our young characters are all going to have a big time jump in movie four. "

Subsequent Avatar movies will further push the timeline into the future. The Avatar 3 release is slated for December 2025. In an interview with People Magazine , James Cameron confirmed that " three is right on track " for release on December 19, 2025. In fact, he explained that they shot most of Avatar 3 concurrently with the shooting of Avatar: The Way of Water. " And we even did part of movie four," Cameron added, " because our young characters are all going to have a big time jump in movie four . "

" We see them and then we go away for six years and we come back," he clarified about the time jump in Avatar 4 . " And so the part where we come back is the part we haven't shot yet. So we'll start on that after three is released. " No further information is known about the timeline of future Avatar movies. Cameron has yet to shoot the remainder of Avatar 4 and all of Avatar 5 . Avatar 4 is on track for its December. 21, 2029, release, while Avatar 5 is currently slated for December 2031.

The first two Avatar movies are now available to stream on Disney+.

Avatar is a sci-fi action/adventure film created by James Cameron and released in 2009. Set in the fictional world of Pandora in the distant future, humans seek a rare mineral found on the planet but find a race of highly-intelligent beings directly in their mining path. To attempt to communicate and work with them, scientists create body replicas called "avatars," and one man will change the destiny of both races using an avatar of his own.

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AVATAR Christian Movie Review 2009
Avatar : The Way of Water Movie Public Reviews
Avatar 2 Review: Worthy 3D Experience
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Guillermo del Toro Reviews 'Avatar 2'
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Netflix’s Avatar
'Avatar' Review
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COMMENTS

Avatar: The Way of Water
If you liked the last 1/3 of the original "Avatar" movie with the inventive technology, battle scenes, wide scale damage, explosions, and hand to hand combat, in "The Way of Water" you get prolonged battle scenes, destruction, explosions with characters constantly in peril and fighting leading to more long scenes of non-stop gunfire ...
Avatar: The Way of Water (Christian Movie Review)
Avatar: The Way of Water is a triumphant return, a spectacular display of classic cinema and a masterclass in filmmaking by director James Cameron. Before taking the plunge, family audiences should be aware of some content elements. The movie maintains its PG-13 rating by the (blue) skin of its teeth, with plenty of juuust covered alien flesh ...
Avatar: The Way of Water
Thirteen years after the blockbuster release of Avatar, James Cameron takes viewers back to the planet of Pandora and the Na'vi people in Avatar: The Way of Water. Since the events of the first film, Jake Sully is now living fully as his avatar, along with his companion Neytiri and Neteyam, Lo'ak, Tuk, and adopted teenage daughter Kiri, the biological child of Dr. Grace Augustine. They ...
Movie Review: 'Avatar: The Way of Water'
The "Way of the Water" script returns viewers to the fictional moon Pandora and continues the story of the kickoff's two principal characters, the avatar of Earth-born ex-Marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his Pandoran warrior wife, Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña).
Avatar: The Way of Water Movie Review
Long but dazzling return to Pandora has sci-fi violence. Read Common Sense Media's Avatar: The Way of Water review, age rating, and parents guide.
Review of Avatar The Way of Water, director James Cameron
As with the first Avatar film, released in 2009 (see Avatar movie review by Carl Wieland ), the cast includes Sam Worthington, who plays Jake Sully, and Zoe Saldaña in the role of the Na'vi princess Neytiri. The 'new' evolutionary religious theme of the original Avatar movie continues here and readers are encouraged to read the aforementioned review as well.
AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER
Is AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER family friendly? Find out only at Movieguide. The Family and Christian Guide to Movie Reviews and Entertainment News.
John Wesley and Avatar: The Way of Water
Avatar: The Way of Water, Cameron's long-awaited follow-up to the first film, illustrates the second kind of grace, that which sanctifies. The ongoing work of sanctification is the work of putting aside sin through God. Cameron shows that grace through Jake's personal journey in the sequel. Jake might be a Na'vi physically, but he still ...
Avatar: The Way of Water
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.
Avatar: The Way of Water
Set more than a decade after the events of the first film, "Avatar: The Way of Water" begins to tell the story of the Sully family (Jake, Neytiri, and their kids), the trouble that follows them ...
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.
Avatar: The Way of Water review: A big, bold sequel
Thirteen years on, James Cameron takes Pandora under the sea in 'Avatar: The Way of Water,' an astonishing, at times overwhelming sequel.
The Wordview Behind Avatar and a Christian Perspective on Movies / Film
Here is a review that my friend Sean McDowell (teacher, author, and apologist) wrote about the Worldview of Avatar and then below is a resource for watching film in a whole new way. "The year is 2154, and humans are attempting to mine the valuable mineral unabtanium from the planet Pandora. Humans have virtually destroyed their own planet and ...
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: Christian Movie Review
Forget the headache-inducing paper glasses and gimmicky scenes of stuff popping out of the screen at you; this is a completely new kind of movie experience. There are rumors that Avatar took almost 15 years to make—this is only sort of true. In actuality, the technology necessary to make the film reality is what has been years in the making.
Avatar 2 review: a thrilling epic that gambles on how you watch it
James Cameron finally completed Avatar: The Way of Water, which returns Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, and Stephen Lang to the Na'vi world of Pandora. It's a thrill ride that leans into ...
Review
Kiri is one of the fully realized characters in "The Way of Water," which centers on Jake's efforts to save his family when rapacious forces once again threaten the peaceable kingdom of ...
'Avatar 2' review: Na'vi gazing at its finest
Thirteen years after the first 'Avatar,' James Cameron finally returns to the distant moon of Pandora in this transporting, radiantly personal sequel
Avatar
In his first movie since Titanic, James Cameron has made it worth the wait with a stunning milestone in filmmaking—and a storyline surprisingly rich in political and spiritual undertones.
AVATAR
Is AVATAR family friendly? Find out only at Movieguide. The Family and Christian Guide to Movie Reviews and Entertainment News.
Avatar: The Way Of Water
Release Date: 15 Dec 2022. Original Title: 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 ...
Avatar
Fifteen years in the making, James Cameron's latest creation is an eye-popping spectacle of conflict between idyllic aliens and greedy humans—saturated with environmental and spiritual themes.
What Year James Cameron's Avatar Movies Are Set In
James Cameron's Avatar movies are set in a dystopian future, where humans have depleted Earth's resources and need to move outward for survival. The movies are set in the fictional world of Pandora, which is home to tall blue aliens known as the Na'vi, who, unlike humans, care a lot about preserving their ecosystem.

Avatar: The Way of Water

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