Avatar: The Way Of Water

 

On Monday, my aunt took me to see 'Avatar: The Way Of Water', the long awaited sequel to the phenomenon 'Avatar'. Now's it's been 14 years since the last one, so there is literally no excuse for this movie to be lackluster. So was it worth the wait?

As much as I am a fan of the previous 'Avatar', I didn't really expect much out of this one, especially plot wise. The plot is pretty much a revenge story between Jake and Quaritch, who somehow turned into an avatar and had a kid. There's nothing really wrong with that, it's just not the 2 strong points of the movie. The first strong point obviously being the visuals. They are absolutely gorgeous. They truly take you to another world and you just can't get enough of it. The second strong point is the dynamic between Jake and his family, which now has the addition of 5 bad kids (well 4 as the oldest one (RIP) was pretty decent). You can tell that they are close and that they love each other very much, and that they stick together no matter what. I would also like to point that I was pleasantly surprised at the development of Jake and Neytiri's relationship. Not that it was bad in the first movie, it was great in the first movie. But I didn't expect Cameron to extend that. Both have become a voice of reason for each other. Whether Jake was being too harsh on one the kids or Neytiri was acting irrationally towards situations. They are each other's backbone and I loved that.    

As for the weak points of the movie, I will gladly say that the writing for the first one is better than this one. Not that the writing in this is bad, there's just a lot of gray areas. For example: Spider. Spider is Quaritch's son whom Jake and Neytiri adopted. Neytiri is a little iffy with him for obvious reasons. Spider is eventually taken by his father and accompanies him in finding Jake. Cameron could've developed the dynamic between Neytiri, Spider, and Quaritch a little more. The thing is It was obvious that Spider knew his dad was bad news, and he just barely did anything to stop him until like the very end. If he was being held against his will (which he was briefly) then It would've been different. It also would've helped if we dug deeper into Neytiri's baggage and seen animosity between her and Spider. At least that would've given Quaritch an advantage to manipulate Spider into coming to his side and a reason for him to turn against the Na'vi. But it went nowhere. 

But overall, the movie was very good, just not great. And that doesn't really bother me since I wasn't expecting much out of this anyway. I do feel that It was worth the wait and I do recommend the movie (not that is needs it as it is now the highest grossing film of 2022). We've got 3 more Avatar's to go and apparently the next one comes out in 2 years. That better be the case, because there is no way in Hell anyone is waiting another 14 years for another one. Thank you.