Avatar: The Way Of The Water Review

Rafaelle Martis

The long-awaited sequel to the first Avatar that came out in 2009, Avatar: The Way of the Water, premiered in theaters on December 16th, 2022. The first film was directed by James Cameron, who has directed many successful movies, such as The Titanic and The Terminator. This science-fiction movie portrays a creative world named Pandora that Cameron had brought to life, filled with eight-foot-tall blue aliens.

Avatar: The Way of the Water takes place 14–15 years after the first Avatar movie ended. The movie starts with a recap of what happened in the years that were missed. Jake Sully, the main character in the first movie, has married his previous female lead Neytiri and has five kids: Neyetam, the oldest; Kiri, Dr. Grace Augustine’s daughter raised by the Sully family; Lo’ak, the “trouble maker,” and Tuk, the youngest Sully daughter. While Jake is narrating the recap, his tone indicates that he values the memories he makes with his family. This is until a certain event puts Jake and his family in danger. To save his family, Jake takes his family and travels to the Metkayina clan, one of the water clans. The Sully’s attempt to adapt to their recent move, however, is prevented by their rainforest adaptation features. This gets the Sully kids in trouble with the kids of the Metkayina clan. Avatar: The Way of the Water displays a family dynamic when it comes to moving to new places.

The first Avatar was heavily praised due to its advanced 3D technology in 2009. Avatar won three Academy Awards for best cinematography, visual effects, and product design. This increased the visual expectations for Avatar: The Way of the Water. However, in Avatar: The Way of the Water, James Cameron decided to increase HFR (High Frame Rate). Cameron doubled the average fpm (frames per minute) from 24 fpm to 48 fpm, which allowed the scenes to increase in quality and run smoother. This helped the scenes that take place underwater run smoother. The list of 3D technologies that were used in Avatar: The Way of the Water includes performance capture, virtual reality, 3D printing, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence. The use of augmented reality was used to complement the special effects that were used in the film. Augmented reality is the combination of the virtual world created with graphics and the real world that is being filmed. The technology is what was able to put the ethereal world of Pandora together.

The movie does a great job of presenting a family dynamic within the Sully family. Every Sully family member has their own personality and has adventures that they explore in the movie. The viewers also appreciated the glimpse into the reality of living up to the expectations put on you: “Cameron’s embrace of the idealism of adolescence, of the capacity for moral outrage as well as wonder, is the emotional heart of the movie.” A.O Scott from New York Times. Despite the fact that the film is about Lo’ak discovering who he is and where he fits into a community, the characters are also used to set up the stories for the confirmed upcoming sequels.

Avatar: The Way of the Water has been at the number-one spot for several weeks. The Way of the Water has become the highest-grossing movie of 2022 despite coming out in mid-December, making its income around $1.5 billion, passing Top Gun Maverick. This shows the impact of the Avatar franchise since the first one received $2.92 billion. However, this is not the end of the Avatar series. Cameron has already planned out the next three movies, whose release dates are unknown: Avatar: The Seed Bearer, Avatar: The Tulken Rider, and the final movie, Avatar: The Quest for Eywa.