Over winter break, my friends convinced me to watch the new Avatar movie, The Way of the water. I honestly didn’t want to see it at first and I never understood all the hype around the first movie cause it looked lame. I went in without seeing the first Avatar movie but it was still way better than I could have ever expected. The movie starts off with regular military guys from the earth being transformed into an alien called an avatar. Apparently in the first movie humans invaded the planet avatar and some of the humans turned against their own kind and fought with the avatar aliens. The movie’s main premise revolves around this guy named Jake Sully trying to run away from Colonel Miles who transformed himself into an avatar to better navigate through the alien world unseen while also possessing superior fighting skills. The movie’s VFX and overall animation look amazing especially when the setting is on an alien world. Family is a very important theme covered throughout the film and it’s a pivotal reason why the main character Jake Sully makes the decisions he does. They decide to leave their home in the jungle to live in a water environment with avatars that look different from them and with that comes challenges. When they first arrive they are treated like outcasts and not accepted by the rest of the village, but once they realize all of them are really just the same, teamwork becomes more noticeable. Teamwork and ethical standards give the aliens a fighting chance that the humans don’t have, Colonel Miles will go to the farthest extreme to get revenge on the one person he hates the most.
Despite Colonel Miles’ ruthless nature, he captures one of the human children living on the alien planet to gain information on his enemies and instead of torturing him for information, he offers him a chance to help. Miles goes through the planet looking for jake sully ruthlessly and here we see the lines he is willing to cross in order to get his revenge. He burns villages and hurts defenseless people in order to get information. Once Miles finds Jake sully however he takes advantage of the fact he has a family and uses his kids to lure him out from hiding. Jake sully has no choice but to fight so that his kids could live. No good film has all the characters survive by the end and this movie is no different with one of jake sully kids dying towards the end when Jake sully and colonel miles are in an intense fight and he gets caught in the crossfire. In the end, a surprising twist occurs with Miles having the opportunity to kill Jake sully but not doing so because Spider (the kid he took from the alien world) was in danger of being killed if he hurt Jake Sully.
It’s not often you see the main antagonist show any bit of mercy towards the protagonist. I think not watching the first avatar definitely gave me a lot of holes in my knowledge about how all the characters integrated with each other and things like that but I caught on quickly and despite that I found it to be a very good movie and that’s coming from a diehard superhero fan. The storytelling may seem boring at first but the amazing cinematography by the director James Cameron keeps you distracted the whole time from pandoras to great underwater scenes.
The acting is top-notch as you would expect from a film this big but the character draws out their emotions in a way, unlike other films do. The film also explores important themes such as the importance of preserving the environment, the consequences of exploiting natural resources, and the power of unity and teamwork. These themes in specific make the film something worth watching because they show a lot of human characteristics and traits but in an alien body and setting, it is a nice switch up from the aliens being the bad guys and humans being the good guys.
One of the most valuable things I took away from the movie is that revenge can blind you in more than one way if you take it too far. Overall I would definitely recommend this movie to anyone who watched the first avatar movie because it seems like a solid sequel and if you haven’t watched the first movie then definitely go watch it before you see the second one. Score: 7/10
Myuren, this is just the type of blog that I needed to read. I have had so many friends tell me that I need to see Avatar 2 and that it is a great movie. However, I was reluctant because the movie is 3 hours long. However, after reading the entire blog, I can see why I should go watch the movie. Even though you give a great summary of all of the details that occur, I still would want to watch the movie. I remember parts of the first movie and how that movie also focused on family. It makes sense to me that the second movie would carry on the first movie’s idea and it seems it made sense to you as well. When you explored the themes, I was pretty interested because I thought I had an idea of what Avatar 2 would be, but it was in fact something different. This made me want to go see the movie even more. I also liked how you watched the movie and also took some things away from it instead of just watching the movie for pleasure. It’s good sometimes to have movies that help teach you about life.
Hey Myuren, like you, I also went into Avatar 2 without watching the first movie and was very surprised by the plot and visuals. I knew that the first movie was the highest grossing movie of all time at one point in time and I didn’t understand the hype, but I think I do now. Saing the VFX look amazing is an understatement for this movie, it looks more than real, which it should considering they spent a lot of money on the movie. I didn’t like the ending too much because of the fact that Spider went out of his way to save Colonel Miles from drowning when he killed so many. Overall I really enjoyed the movie, my only complaint is that it was too long, but other than that it was great. I agree with the points you mention in your post and I liked when you touched on the themes of the movie.
Hey Myuren, I had to comment on your blog because I think Avatar 2 was honestly one of the best movies I’ve watched in 2022. After having gone to see it in theatres, I immediately became a big fan and am looking forward to James Cameron expanding the franchise to hopefully become as big as Star Wars or Marvel. I’ve been catching up on James Cameron interviews and related film gossip and I’ve heard that apparently all of Avatar 3 and half of Avatar 4 have already been filmed. I believe he was saying that Avatar 3 is going to introduce the Ashe people which are the Navi tribes that live in close proximity to Pandora’s volcanoes. Cameron was saying that with the third movie he wanted to introduce the bad side of the Navi people and instead of constantly showing humans as the villains, he wanted to show conflict occurring between each of the Navi tribes as they fought over land. Cameron, himself, was saying that even though the film is practically ready to be released, they won’t until four years from now just so that they can properly build hype and form a long-running film franchise. I also found out that the original cut for Avatar 2 was actually 9 hours long before they shortened it to 3 hours. Cameron had originally intended on having an aspect of the film focus on how Jake and Neytiri actually travel back to a futuristic version of Earth, which I feel would be insane to imagine what that would have been like for Neytiri. All in all, I’m already a big fan of the beginnings of the Avatar franchise and I’m looking forward to seeing Avatar 3 whenever it comes out. I honestly wouldn’t mind watching the full 9-hour version of the Way of Water if Cameron had released that instead.