Avatar: The Way of Water

James Cameron went away for more than a decade to turn his U.S. Military versus eco-warrior aliens movie into a five-picture franchise.

If I thought about this at all, it was only on a family vacation to Disney World and a visit to Avatar land inside Animal Kingdom. I did sometimes wonder why the guy who proved himself to be one of the most successful filmmakers of all time chose to dedicate decades to this particular story.

As the film grew closer my Movie Friend (MF) kept telling me this was going to be one of the best movies of the year.

I remained unconvinced and unmoved.

“He’s cooking,” MF said.

MF says a lot of things. He falls in and out of love with a lot of movies. He saw about 120 new releases this year and he calls it a slow year.

But, one thing MF has is decent instincts and good taste. So even though I wasn’t planning on seeing Avatar 2 in the theater I broke down and went to an IMAX 3D showing with MF by my side.

About 15 minutes into it, after the first battle and when Jake Sulley is trying to find a way to discipline his kids but sounds too much like a battle commander and not enough like a father I leaned over to MF and conceded.

“Dang it, you were right,” I said.

If we had bet on it I would have owed him money.

Avatar is not Star Wars because few things in life can be among the very best that cinema and sci-fi have to offer. But Avatar: The Way of Water is close to Empire Strikes Back. It’s a movie that is so good that it retroactively improves on its predecessor and shows that Cameron’s bet on the Na’vi makes a lot of sense.

Having done the hard work of setting up the science fiction world, the stakes and most of the major players in the first one, Cameron is free to spend three hours telling a story without a ton of exposition. The movie no longer needs to explain the Na’vi just as a new Star Wars thing no longer needs to explain a Jedi.

As the movie opens the aliens of Pandora have lived in harmony for about 20 years without those pesky humans and Jake Sulley and his wife Neytiri have two sons, a daughter, an adopted daughter, and a human child that was left behind that they have also adopted.

But the humans (sky-people among Pandora) return and the forest Na’vi are once again immediately outgunned and outmanned.

Cameron and his team give everyone in this large cast reasonable issues, personalities, and motivations. He also brings back his Marine villain from the first movie in a unique way and gives the characters an excuse to discover a new portion of Pandora with a tribe that has a connection to the ocean in the same way the first movie was set in a forest.

The running time was a very serious discussion before the flick was released but any experienced moviegoer knows that a bad movie is always too long and the running time on a great movie will be of no consequence. Avatar: The Way of Water finds the right balance between family drama and action, it never drags and it wraps up all of its storylines in mostly satisfying ways.

It’s very much the second part of a multipart story though. In the same way that Empire ended on a cliffhanger, The Way of Water doesn’t so much end as come to a comfortable stopping point in the story.

Once again, Avatar’s evil marine commander gets all the best lines.

A marine can’t be defeated. You can kill us, but we‘ll just regroup in hell.

Miles Quaritch

But dialogue has never been Cameron’s strong suit and just like in the first movie what’s important to Cameron and his team is the visuals, the unique aliens, and the broad nature lovers vs. machines story.

This is one of the best movies of the year and it justifies the time, hassle, and expense of seeing a movie in a theater. If you haven’t caught it yet and you enjoy sci-fi spectacle on a big screen then I can’t recommend it enough.

At one point in the flick, one of the characters hangs out with the Na’vi version of a sentient whale. They have become friends and under a glorious sun, they float in the water together in what most cinema lovers would call a perfect shot.

At that point, MF leaned over to me and smiled.

“Movies man,” he said.