James Cameron finally made a sequel to Avatar! Why? Was this movie really necessary, no not at all because when you make a movie that basically retells the story of two different movies, your sequel is not going to be anything unique, it’s going to be a continuation of the same regurgitated story you told before? That’s the best description I can give of Avatar: The Way of Water. I am not saying that James Cameron made a terrible movie. I’ve certainly seen worse this year, but at the end of the day, all this famous director did was make something shiny with his new technology.  The movie is visually stunning. The Avatar sequel will blow you away. It’s a beautiful-looking movie. And it’s very impressive in 3D, but that’s all. James Cameron put all his resources into making the most visually stunning movie that has ever been made, unfortunately, the story is what got sacrificed. Does that mean you shouldn’t see the Avatar sequel, no, go see it out of curiosity, but understand that you are not watching a great story, but the next evolution in filmmaking.  This movie is just as memorizing as the first time we got to see a CGI dinosaur in Jurassic Park.

I admit that I am not a fan of the first Avatar movie. It’s another movie that was visually stunning for the time and was a gorgeous movie to watch in 3D. But that was so 2009 and 13 years later James Cameron has made an even more visually stunning movie. But the original Avatar was simply just a remake of Dances with Wolves or even the movie FernGully. The themes of the original movie were not unique, James Cameron was trying to tell the plight of the American Indian in the late 19th century during western expansion starting with the railroad. In the name of progress, the US government basically stole their land and used excuses such as manifest destiny. Essentially, we wanted the land and the resources. That’s a tale as old as time. Anytime somebody invades somebody else’s country, it’s usually for the resources. That’s the story of Pandora and of course, the main character who has been sent there to help falls in love with the natives. Jake Sully is John Jay Dunbar from Dance With Wolves. The characters are the same.  Now when it comes to a sequel what kind of unique story can you tell, well when you’re telling the plight of the American Indian within a Sci-Fi movie, there is no unique story. The sequel to Avatar is basically what the sequel to Dances with Wolves would have been. The main characters who are living a peaceful life will be hunted and have to go into hiding bringing the war to the doorsteps of wherever they’re hiding. In this movie, we get to see the Sea Clans of Pandora and their connection to water and Aquatic Life. It is very interesting. There’s a new mythology to be explored in Pandora. And the way James Cameron made this movie it was visually the most beautiful water movie ever made.

However, the story was entirely too predictable. The antagonist from the first movie will come back and hunt down Jake Sully and his family. Sure, we get to meet new characters and see a different part of Pandora. I’m all for that. It’s not that Pandora isn’t interesting, but again it comes down to telling a great story, and simply put, the sequel to Avatar didn’t do that. We’ll get to what is wrong with this sequel in a moment. However, there is no denying that this is a beautiful-looking movie and it is worth seeing in 3D. I’m glad I had that experience even though I will never watch it again in 3D. It definitely reminds me of getting to experience the first movie back in 2009. Even though the movie wasn’t very good, it was still an incredible experience in the theater. There’s no denying what James Cameron has done through visual effects. He changed the game. If it weren’t for him and the motion capture technology, then we wouldn’t have gotten to see a young Kevin Flynn in Tron Legacy. We wouldn’t have gotten to see a young Luke Skywalker in the Mandalorian or the Book of Boba Fett. Maybe the reason the sequel took so long as he needed to reinvent the technology to make this better than it’s predecessor and James Cameron deserves all the accolades he can get for what he has accomplished. I’m sure he’ll win an Academy Award, but despite what he’s accomplished with visual effects, he’s ignored the most important part of making a good movie…. telling a good story.

The biggest problem with the Avatar sequel is it’s way too long. Over 3 hours long without an intermission. Good God, can we stop making 3-hour movies that are all about special effects and forget how to tell a good story? If you want to get to the crux of this sequel, it’s about an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes worth of great action scenes and a good story. The rest of the movie is like an underwater documentary explaining the mythology of the Sea Clans in Pandora. It was like watching an ocean National Geographic documentary.  While it’s fascinating, it lingered way too long before we got to any more action. I get that you need to show the audience this new world and explore its mythology, well maybe a documentary on Pandora leading up to this film would have been better so you could actually tell a great story in just under 2 hours. This film did not need to be 3 hours. I’m not knocking the performances. Everybody did a great job. While Sigourney Weaver’s character, Grace is kind of short-lived, getting to know the Sully kids was great. And my hats off to Kate Winslet and Clifford Curtis who played the other Clan leaders. Stephen Lang was great as the Colonel. He’s a great antagonist. You know it’s hard to give a great performance through motion capture. Actors used to think it was extremely hard acting in front of a green screen, now it’s extremely popular, but there’s a whole other dynamic when you’re trying to act with motion capture. It’s not easy so I applaud the cast for turning out great performances. However, it’s not enough. Yes, the enemy would return, and it would force our main characters from their home. Of course, they would have to fight back against the evil corporations who are just plundering the planet. And this time we get to show how Whalers are the enemies of the sea. Yes, essentially there are Whalers in this movie better stealing a Pandora version of whale oil for rich people back on Earth. We’ve seen these themes before in movies.  You can’t give an audience a shiny new thing and expect them to forget the story especially when you’re supposed to have some kind of social message. But that’s kind of what we get, a new shiny object and even if the story is regurgitated, the audience won’t care, right? Wrong! Avatar and its sequel is like three or four movies all in one. I see Dances With Wolves, Quigley Down Under, 1883, and even the Val Kilmer movie Thunderheart all wrapped up in this film. And I could have sworn that some of these underwater shots of the drilling and whaler vessel were reused underwater shots from the movie The Abyss. Hey, James Cameron is allowed to steal from his other movies because they’re his movies, but don’t try to pass it off as some unique thing that we’ve never seen before.

In some ways, I feel like the sequel is better than the original because we do get to explore more of Pandora. The sea and it’s mythology on Pandora are actually interesting. There are a lot of great underwater scenes that help make this movie beautiful. And I feel like they work better than in the original film when they were all in the forest. But you know what the story is right from the beginning. I’m pretty sure everybody will figure out how it ends within the first 10 minutes and of course, it gets perfectly set up for a sequel, which I don’t feel like we really need. There’s no denying that James Cameron has made a visually stunning world. Just like in any great sci-fi or fantasy story, it all comes down to world-building. James Cameron has built a beautiful world, but these stories are not unique and that is the biggest flaw with the Avatar movies, especially the sequel. The second biggest problem is that it takes over 3 hours to tell this story that you should have been able to tell in less than 2 hours. If James Cameron wants us to go to the world of Pandora and really explore, well, then let’s have a series on Disney +. Let’s tell an episodic story where I can watch one episode at a time and then take a break. I know that James Cameron would never do that because he makes movies that are meant to be seen on the big screen. And you know what I’ve enjoyed all his films since the original Terminator.

In a lot of ways, this movie is just regurgitating the story from his other great underwater movie, the Abyss. That’s one of the best movies made of all time and one of my personal favorites when it comes to James Cameron. The story was unique, I had a lot of great underwater shots, and you felt a great connection to all the characters. That’s what Avatar and its sequel should be, but you feel like you’ve just seen it before because you have. Yes, movies borrow themes from other movies. We compare Avatar to Dances With Wolves and Dances with Wolves borrowed a lot of themes from an earlier film called A Man Called Horse. You can borrow themes in certain plot points from other movies that although they feel similar, your story is still unique. That’s not what James Cameron did here. Avatar the way of water is a great big spectacle on the big screen. Yes, it’s meant to be seen on the big screen, but we shouldn’t have to sit there for over 3 hours with 3D glasses just to get to the end of a story that feels like it’s never going to end. The movie is predictable, and it’s not hard to figure out what will happen in the third movie if we ever get it. I wish Avatar could have been more than just a new shiny movie, but at the end of the day, the only thing to marvel at when it comes to the new Avatar is how good it looks. It’s like a girl with just a pretty face and no personality who you have one date with and then you will forget you ever met her. I was blown away by the visuals and I can’t wait to see this kind of technology used in future movies, but overall, the story is average at best. It’s a good one-timer just to say that you had the experience, but is the experience worth remembering? Just like the story of Avatar: The Way of Water, not really.