“A father protects. It’s what gives him meaning.”

Avatar: The Way of Water is set about a decade after the original film, where Jake and Neytiri have a family together and are now living peacefully. However, once Colonel Miles Quaritch returns in the form of an avatar, along with an abundance of humans, they hunt them down. Jake rehomes his family to a distant island of a race of Na’vi people adapted to the oceans instead of the forest, where they learn their ways. Unfortunately for them, though, Quaritch and the humans aren’t done with them yet, as they search for them throughout the story.

I have to say, I wasn’t a fan really much at all of the Avatar films before this recent rewatch. Though I still wouldn’t say I absolutely love them like a lot of other people, I enjoyed both of them significantly more this time, and think that The Way of Water is a pretty big step up from the original. I don’t have nearly as many problems with it that I do with that one, which I’ll get into later. The visuals and CGI are also significantly better than they were before, even though the first Avatar already had incredible visuals. Avatar looked amazing, but The Way of Water downright just looks like real life. The entire time I was watching it, I tried to pick out a shot that even ever so slightly looked fake, and I simply couldn’t.

But what really makes this movie a big improvement for me overall is the story. It’s a lot less cliché and predictable, and a lot more thematically rich. The whole story is tied to this theme of family, which I found extremely compelling and often poignant at times. I find Cameron’s first Avatar movie to be much more of a visual experience, while this does both that, as well as having a good narrative. What sets this one apart is that if you removed all of the visual spectacle, I think the story would still be compelling and interesting, which was a criticism that I had of the first film, where I thought very much otherwise.

The Way of Water also does what a lot of good sequels should do, by expanding the lore and worldbuilding. We get to see a lot more of Pandora, and I love the idea of these different tribes that live on the planet. I can’t remember what the tribe is called, so I’ll just call it the water tribe, but I really liked the water tribe. I think they were a lot more interesting and compelling than the Na’vi in the original, where, in my review of that movie, I stated that I never really connected with them because of how hostile they were throughout that entire film. The sea people are a lot more likable in that regard (except for a few of them), and so, in turn, I was rooting for them more and cared about them more.

There is a very spiritual and mystical feel to the film as well, which I really liked. As we explore the ocean with the characters, there is a lot more to learn revolving around the spiritual force, Eywa, and it’s all done through the perspectives of the characters as they interact with the elements of the sea as well as the sea creatures. The Na’vi’s belief and allegiance to Eywa feels a lot more like faith here than it did before, where it definitely had more of a “cultish” feeling to it in the original.

The performances were far from bad in the first Avatar movie, but they are definitely a lot better here. Both Sam Worthington and, to a lesser extent but still very much prominent, Zoe Saldaña, have a lot more to convey emotionally because of their characters having to take on the duty of being a father and a mother. I love the sense of fatherhood and motherhood, and think it is extremely well done, and makes their characters a lot richer and more mature than they were previously.

However, the standout performance for me, personally, was Sigourney Weaver as the young Kiri, who is the daughter of Grace from the first movie, adopted by the Sully family. I knew that Weaver voiced the character, but the whole movie, I was curious to know if they used some sort of technology to make her sound younger, and I was almost positive that they used someone else to perform her character’s motion capture, but nope. To my shocking surprise, after doing a bit of research, I learned that Weaver herself not only did all of the motion capture but also went through training to learn how to speak and act like a teenager, which is absolutely amazing. No one else really stands out as much besides one character I’ll talk about in a bit, but the performances are all great overall around the board.

This Avatar movie also has a lot more to say. The overall thematic message of the film is about protecting the ocean and the creatures that live in it, and I think it did an excellent job at conveying that. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always been a big supporter of protecting the ocean, and specifically animals, so this heavily resonated with me. I think The Way of Water had a perfect balance with its theme, not being too heavy-handed.

Colonel Miles Quaritch, the main antagonist, is the other character that really stood out to me. I found him a lot more interesting as an avatar, or Na’vi, than as a human. With him not technically being the original character from the first, but rather an avatar with his memories, I thought he was much more mysterious and intimidating because of how unpredictable he is. He has a sense of ignorance to him that comes with that, where all he really cares about for most of the film is getting revenge on Jake Sully, which I guess makes him mostly one-dimensional, but he does have moments here and there where you see the more human side to him, even if it is a little bit forced and not super compelling.

With the nature of the premise that I talked about at the beginning of the story, there is definitely a sense of doom feeling throughout the majority of the runtime that I think leads to a much better and more impactful third act than the first movie. It’s not as epic in terms of scale, but it has a lot more emotional weight to it, which matters a lot more in my personal opinion. It’s also surprisingly very intense; not to say too much, but there are a lot of underwater sequences that have an extreme “on the edge of your seat” feel to them. The payoffs towards the end feel completely satisfying and earned as well.

When it comes to the more mixed side of things, it really just has to do with the runtime and pacing. About half of the film is really spent just exploring the ocean world and the world of Pandora overall, instead of necessarily progressing the story too much, and so if you aren’t fully bought into this world, I could see the pacing really dragging for you. For me, though, the added lore and everything made it really entertaining to me, and it didn’t drag during my viewing.

Really, the only big, flat-out negative I have would have to be the new character, Spider. He’s not super interesting or compelling, and I see him as more of a plot device to add complexity to the story, especially between the Colonel and the Sully family, rather than a fleshed-out character. He also makes some really weird and odd decisions throughout, and especially at the end, that felt forced and like they were just made to set up a sequel. The film definitely stands on its own, yes, and has a satisfying and complete ending, but this was the one choice that James Cameron made with the end of the story that I didn’t love, though I’m kind of glad he did make it because it sets up Fire and Ash quite well.

I’m still not absolutely in love with the Avatar movies, and honestly wish that James Cameron had spent the last twenty years or so doing other things, but I do have a newfound appreciation for them after this rewatch, and am looking forward to Fire and Ash more than I was previously.