Avatar: The Way of Water

2170. Sixteen years have passed since Jake Sully aided the Na'vi in repelling the human incursion on Pandora, forcing most of them to return home to Earth. With the resource situation on Earth deteriorating, humankind returns to Pandora with a vengeance, establishing a major presence and using specially-grown Na'vi clones inhabited by personality downloads of Colonel Quaritch and his men to hunt down and kill Sully. Sully and his family relocate to the coastal Metikayina clan to seek refuge, but it's not long before the war comes to this new tribe.

Avatar was the most financially successful movie of 2009 and, indeed, all time (despite briefly losing the title to Avengers: Endgame, before a canny re-release saw it reclaim the crown). Remarkably, despite having voluminous notes for a sequel, director-writer James Cameron chose not to proceed immediately with more films. Instead, he spent a lot of time in pre-production, developing scripts and ideas. He eventually came up with plans for four sequels, beginning shooting in 2017 and filming all of the second and third films back-to-back, along with some material from the fourth film.

In the meantime, Avatar's legacy seemed to almost immediately dim. With no sequels, prequels or ill-advised spin-offs featuring minor side-characters, the movie fell out of the popular consciousness and the Marvel Cinematic Universe became the biggest thing at the box office. For many years Avatar has existed as a meme, its very name being mentioned inevitably resulting in immediate chortling references to Dances with Wolves and Ferngully, and how the sequels would inevitably crash and burn.

The Way of Water, the first up of this sequel series, perhaps inevitably crushed such predictions with ease, becoming the third highest-grossing movie of all time (and three of the top four are all James Cameron joints). "Never bet against James Cameron," became its own, rebutting meme instead.

Enough of the context, what of the film? Avatar: The Way of Water is very much "moar Avatar." If you hated the first film, there will be little here to change your mind. If you loved it, you'll probably love this one even more. For those who were middling on it, The Way of Water improves a lot of things about the first film to make it a somewhat stronger prospect. The visuals of the first film were incredible but advances in CG technology have just about managed to start taking the shine off some of them (even if 99% of movies still look worse, thanks to rushed production schedules). The Way of Water is effortlessly superior, the CG is photo-realistic in almost every shot, the visual design is sumptuous and Cameron uses excellent direction to make sure we read and comprehend what's going on in every frame. Cameron is also still the master of action, bringing his Aliens and Terminator 2-honed skills to bear in epic battle sequences which outshine anything in the first film and where everything from the geography of an undersea chase sequences to the choreography of a single combat scene are well-handled.

When it comes to story and character - things the first film was only adequate at - the movie is a bit more of a mixed bag. For the most part, it's fine. There's a lot of new characters to meet here, with Sully and Neytiri producing three children and adopting two more, and that's before we even meet the massive new water tribe. Cameron establishes character and emotion with brisk efficiency, although a few characters do get more development, particularly rebellious son Lo'ak and walking mystery box Kiri. The characters are solid enough to get the job done, and the performances are all pretty good. Neytiri is the one character sold a little short, with relatively little to do other than cry, hiss and occasionally do that jumping through the air firing her bow in slow motion thing. Even Stephen Lang's splendid scenery-chewing villain spiel is let down a little by his performance almost entirely being restrained to CG.

As a piece of storytelling art, The Way of Water will not be winning any major awards, but as a sheer visual spectacle and feast, it's highly compelling. The worldbuilding of Pandora takes a big step up here with the introduction of a second sentient species, and the underwater scenery whets the appetite for someone to make a movie version of subsurface video game masterpiece Subnautica.

Where the film enters shaky ground is its pacing. For most of its first two-thirds, this is pretty good, with the film rotating between action setpieces, character-building moments and worldbuilding vignettes in a fairly compelling manner (and better than the first movie, which had to slow down for its long-winded romance plot). What lets it down is longest, most drawn-out grand finale since Peter Jackson turned the concluding two-page battle from The Hobbit into an entire two-and-a-half hour movie by itself. This finale is divided into two parts, a massive battle sequence which segues into a tense disaster movie sequence. Both of these are brilliantly-directed and either would have made a great finale, but by putting them both sequentially into the film, Cameron over-eggs the pudding. Over a third of the movie's already-stupendous length is dedicated to this finale, which is definitely too much.

There is still a lot to enjoy here. James Cameron has built a career on building incredible worlds, delivering mind-blowing visuals, and orchestrating action setpieces you will remember for decades, and he delivers on all of that here. The story could be a little stronger and a little more original, and the ending could have been truncated by a good twenty minutes without losing much, and as Cameron sequels go, the placings of Aliens and T2 in the pantheon are not exactly being troubled by this movie, but it's still an enjoyable slice of epic cinema of the kind we don't see enough of these days.

Avatar: The Way of Water (****) is available to watch worldwide on physical media and streaming services. A third film is already in the can and will be released in December 2024.

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First teaser trailer for AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER released

Disney have released the first teaser trailer for Avatar: The Way of Water, the long-gestating sequel to James Cameron's 2009 movie.

The sequel sees the return of Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), who have relocated to a coastal area of Pandora and are raising a new family in peace. The film will focus extensively on underwater photography and filming.

The original Avatar was a massive smash hit on its original release, earning $2.8 billion and becoming the highest-grossing movie of all time, displacing Cameron's own Titanic (1997). Its crown was temporarily lifted by Avengers: Endgame in 2019, which outgrossed it by just $8 million, but Avatar reclaimed it in March 2021 thanks to a Chinese re-release of the original movie.

Avatar: The Way of Water will be released on 16 December this year, following a release of the "remastered" version of Avatar on 23 September. Three more Avatar movies are expected to follow in December 2024, 2026 and 2028 respectively.

AVATAR 2 gets new title and drops first footage behind closed doors

The long, long-gestating Avatar sequel has dropped its first footage (not for public consumption yet, though). Under conditions of high secrecy, attendees at CinemaCon in Las Vegas got to see several minutes of material. It is believed some of this material will be publicly released as the film's first trailer in a couple of weeks.

The sequel - the first of four films to follow on from the 2009 original - is now entitled Avatar: The Way of Water. The film returns to the moon of Pandora and the Na'vi, but will focus on a new coastal region where original film protagonists Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) have relocated and spent years living in peace, raising a new family. The film will feature extensive underwater photography and filming.

Director James Cameron has spent most of the last decade working on the sequel project, with early development starting after Avatar's hugely successful release in 2009, when it became the highest-grossing movie of all time (displacing the previous record-holder, Cameron's 1997 film Titanic). Avatar temporarily lost the crown to Avengers: Endgame in 2019 but regained it in 2021 thanks to a limited re-release.

Press and public opinion over the sequels has become divided, with Avatar routinely derided for its lack of a long-term impact on popular culture and a storyline that felt over-familiar, and many predicting the sequels would struggle to make any impact at the box office. However, others have advised betting against James Cameron, who has arguably never made a wrong move in his career and frequently achieved massive, smash-hit successes despite difficult shoots and technological limitations. The last two sequels Cameron made were Aliens (1986) and Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991), which are formidable precedents.

Avatar: The Way of Water has a reported budget of $250 million, meaning it will likely have to do $750 million to break even (assuming a large marketing and merchandising campaign, which seems probable). Cinemas may have to upgrade their 3D equipment to show the film in its best light, which is an unwelcome expense following on from difficult times during the pandemic. Theatre chains are wary after the 3D boom following the release of Avatar a decade ago, which was a mixed success for them, and the likely fact that the only films that will push 3D in the same way are The Way of Water's three sequels. Still, the argument has also been made that offering a genuinely new, fresh experience that pushes things forward like Avatar did in 2009 could help cinemas rebound amidst increased competition from streaming.

Avatar itself has been "remastered" and will hit cinemas on 23 September this year, with Avatar: The Way of Water to follow on 16 December. Avatar 3, 4 and 5 are scheuled to follow on 20 December 2024, 18 December 2026 and 22 December 2028.

AVATAR reclaims box-office crown from AVENGERS: ENDGAME

After twenty months on top, Avengers: Endgame has lost the crown of the highest-grossing movie of all time (unadjusted) back to James Cameron's Avatar, which has reclaimed the prize it held for a decade from 2009-19.

The move comes courtesy of a reissue of the film in China, which has added $9 million to the 2009 3D movie's total. Although not much in the large scale of things, the gap between the two movies was only $7.8 million. With the reissue expected to remain in cinemas for several more weeks, Avatar may be able to pull out a stronger lead as well, with its total re-release haul anticipated to be around $50 million. Both films have grossed just under $2.8 billion worldwide.

James Cameron will be pleased to retake the crown he'd held of being the world's highest-grossing director for two films back to back. Avatar displaced Cameron's own Titanic, originally released in 1997.

These figures are unadjusted for inflation; so adjusted, the highest-grossing movie of all time would still be Gone with the Wind (1939), although Avatar would still be an impressive second place, ahead of Titanic, Star Wars (1977) and Endgame.

The news will be encouraging to Cameron, who recently wrapped back-to-back shooting on Avatar 2 and Avatar 3, which are scheduled for release on 16 December 2022 and 20 December 2024 respectively. Avatar 4 and 5, which have had some material shot for them during production of the preceding two movies, are also greenlit with anticipated release dates in December 2026 and 2028.

Disney, which now owns both the Avatar and Marvel franchises, is of course very happy with the situation.

AVENGERS: ENDGAME becomes the highest-grossing film of all time

Avengers: Endgame has surpassed Avatar's box office to become the highest-grossing movie of all time (unadjusted for inflation). Marvel Studios supremo Kevin Feige announced the feat at the San Diego Comic-Con.

Not only has Endgame achieved the feat, it has done so about half the time that Avatar managed. The film remains in cinemas and may get an additional boost from re-releases further down the line (something Avatar also made use of to achieve its haul).

For the first time since the release of Titanic in 1997, James Cameron is no longer the highest-grossing director of all time, having passed that baton on to Endgame directors Anthony Russo and Joe Russo. However, Cameron will come out swinging as Avatar 2 is scheduled for release on 17 December 2021, and he'll be wanting his crown back.

Disney, which owns both Marvel and, after the acquisition of 20th Century Fox earlier this year, the Avatar franchise, is of course laughing all the way to the bank.

Disney confirm STAR WARS movies will resume in 2022, alongside AVATAR movies and INDIANA JONES 5

It turns out that the "long hiatus" for Star Wars that Disney has been planning won't be that long after all: the next Star Wars movie after The Rise of Skywalker will arrive in December 2022, a relatively modest three years later.

Rumours persist that one or both of the new Star Wars trilogies will be set in the time period explored by video games such as Knights of the Old Republic.

That's still a retreat from Disney and Lucasfilm's previous stance, which seemed to be heading towards getting two or more Star Wars movies into the cinema every year, similar to the Marvel Cinematic Universe's approach. However, the box office failure of Solo: A Star Wars Story appears to have spooked Disney and they have now backed off from "over-exploiting" the franchise.

That doesn't mean that the future is Star Wars-free however. There will be a Star Wars movie released every other year from 2022 for at least three movies, and they will be interspersed with four more movies in James Cameron's Avatar series. There are also multiple animated and live-action Star Wars TV series in development for the Disney+ streaming service, with the first live-action show, The Mandalorian, due for release late this year or early next.

Lucasfilm are also now actively working on a fifth Indiana Jones film, which is expected to be Harrison Ford's swansong in the role.

The current release schedule is as follows:

• December 2019: Star Wars - The Rise of Skywalker
• December 2021: Avatar 2
• December 2022: Untitled Star Wars Film 1
• December 2023: Avatar 3
• December 2024: Untitled Star Wars Film 2
• December 2025: Avatar 4
• December 2026: Untitled Star Wars Film 3
• December 2027: Avatar 5

There is no indication what the new Star Wars movies will actually be about, however. Game of Thrones producers D.B. Weiss and David Benioff have been developing a new series of films, as has The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson. However, both series are apparently on the backburner until Weiss and Benioff complete all Game of Thrones-related responsibilities later this year, and until Johnson's next movie is released, also later this year. It is possible that the two trilogies could be released on a rotating basis (meaning there's potentially three more Star Wars movies to follow these ones, taking us up to 2032!).

Various other proposed stand-alone Star Wars movies, such as a Boba Fett film, appear to have been killed. Others, such as the proposed Obi-Wan movie, have been re-purposed as TV proposals instead.

RIP James Horner

One of the greats of the film composing world, James Horner, passed away on Monday. He started composing for film in 1978 with The Lady in Red and was still active at the time of his death. He is best-known for composing the soundtracks for the two highest-grossing movies of all time, Avatar and Titanic.

Horner was an concert hall composer before moving into films. His first soundtrack of genre interest was Battle Beyond the Stars in 1981, but he hit the big time when he was picked to score Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan the following year. His score was highly praised for the way it backed both the action and character moments perfectly. He also scored Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.

This moved Horner into the big leagues and he scored many of the most well-known movies of the 1980s and 1990s, including 48 Hours, Krull, Cocoon (and its sequel), Commando, An American Tail, *batteries not included, Willow, Red Heat, The Land Before Time, Field of Dreams, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Glory, The Rocketeer, Patriot Games, The Pelican Brief, Clear and Present Danger, Legends of the Fall, Braveheart, Apollo 13, Jumanji, Deep Impact, The Mask of Zorro and The Bicentennial Man.

In 1986 Horner began a highly fruitful collaboration with the director James Cameron. He produced the acclaimed soundtrack to Aliens before working with the director on Titanic. Horner won his only two Academy Awards for the film, both for the score and for the song "My Heart Will Go On" (sung by Celine Dion). In 2009 they reunited so Horner could produce the score for Avatar. Both Cameron and Horner had indicated that Horner would return to score the Avatar sequel trilogy, but it's unknown if Horner had already begun working on that project at the time of his passing.

James Horner was acclaimed as one of the "Three Js" of film scoring in the latter part of the 20th Century, alongside the late Jerry Goldsmith and the still-going-strong John Williams. He soundtracked many of favourite movies of all time and he will be missed.

James Cameron confirms three AVATAR sequels to be released in 2016-18

James Cameron has confirmed that there will now be three sequels to his 2009 movie Avatar, to form a four-film storyline. These films will be shot back-to-back and released in December 2016, 2017 and 2018 respectively. Cameron has hired new writers to help him get the three scripts ready in time.

Previously, Cameron had suggested there would be two sequels and locations visited would include Pandora's oceans and other moons in the same system. However, his ambitions for the sequels have grown larger, requiring three full movies to explore.

Avatar was released in December 2009 and is the highest-grossing movie of all time, making just under $2.8 billion worldwide. A limited run for the extended edition of the film plus DVD and Blu-Ray sales have extended that to well over $3 billion worldwide.

Avatar

In the year 2154, the human race has journeyed to the nearby star system of Alpha Centauri. There, on the jungle moon of Pandora, they have discovered 'unobtanium', a mineral which is of immense (if somewhat vague) value to humanity. The native Na'vi race are somewhat unwilling to let the invading humans to strip-mine their planet, and an escalating conflict is the result. To try to broker the peace, a science team has created a series of genetically-engineered Na'vi bodies called avatars. Driven remotely by humans in VR tanks, the colonists hope to be able to negotiate effectively with the aliens.


Jake Sully arrives on Pandora to work as an avatar-driver, replacing his twin brother who was supposed to ship out but was killed just before departure. Sully is a paraplegic ex-marine who rapidly finds himself enjoying his life as an avatar, since it allows him to walk again. During a mission into the jungle, Sully becomes separated from the rest of his team and meets up with a local native tribe, who (after some initial culture clash misunderstandings) take him under their wing and train him in their ways. Whilst Sully gets to know the Na'vi better he finds himself being pumped for information of possibly military value by the colony's military commander, Colonel Quaritch, whilst Dr. Augustine uses his position to gain fresh scientific knowledge on the Na'vi. Eventually, when the colonists decide that the negotiations are not proceeding to plan and they need to take military action to secure the unobtanium, Sully finds his loyalties being severely tested.

Avatar is director James Cameron's follow-up to Titanic. Fourteen years in the writing and over four years in production, Avatar mixes live-action footage with cutting-edge, state-of-the-art 3D and the very latest developments in CGI. Visually, the film is stunning, with the attention to detail and vibrant colour schemes of the jungle scenes being nothing short of jaw-dropping. The CG characters don't quite blow the viewer away in their level of realism as much as say Gollum in The Lord of the Rings did, but Avatar does represent a significant evolution from even that impressive technical achievement.

The film is a sumptuous visual banquet built around an extremely familiar story. How much you enjoy Avatar will likely depend on your experience of previous traditional archetype action movies. Younger viewers will likely thoroughly enjoy the whole package, whilst older viewers may find themselves overwhelmed by the sheer number of movies, books and video games that Avatar seems to liberally borrow from to construct its story. Star Wars, Dances with Wolves and The Last Samurai are obvious touchstones, as are Cameron's own movies, with elements of Titanic, Aliens and The Abyss all on display. The battle mechs used by the company for security seem to have been airlifted in from The Matrix Revolutions, whilst a stirring pre-battle speech seems to have been cut-and-pasted in from the script for Braveheart. Game players may find the underlying premise highly familiar from several of the Final Fantasy games (VII in particular). Fans of books will also spot strong similarities to the Poul Anderson novella Call Me Joe, whilst the French SF comic AquaBlue shares strong storyline and concept ideas with the movie.

In short, you've probably read, played or seen this story several dozen times before.

However familiar the story, it is quite well-executed in this instance. Some story elements are underdeveloped, and 'unobtanium' sounds like a placeholder in the script that was accidentally left in, but the actors perform their roles more than adequately, with the performance-capture work doing a great job of converting the great jobs by Sigourney Weaver and Zoe Saldana (the movie's stand-out performance by a mile) into their 3D equivalents. Sam Worthington is adequate as the lead, but is not as charismatic or expressive as might be wished. He does convincingly handle the action sequences, however. Michelle Rodriguez is basically playing Vasquez from Aliens but does a great job as well, delivering an enthusiastic performance, whilst Stephen Lang redefines 'badass' as the chief villain, Colonel Quaritch, a character so ludicrously hardcore it goes way beyond parody and almost becomes Art.

Cameron's love of gadgets, vehicles and technology is also on full display here, without quite tipping into the disturbing fetishistic realm of Michael Bay or Jerry Bruckheimer, thankfully. Cameron also delivers some good action sequences, with the climatic massive battle being well-choreographed and easy to follow, unlike some recent CGI extravaganzas which were way too over-the-top and chaotic (such as Revenge of the Sith and Transformers II).

On the downside, the movie's premise - white guy investigates foreign culture and ends up leading them into battle against oppression - is a little bit tedious. It would have been nice to perhaps see an inversion of the cliche (a native Na'vi who meets the humans, bonds with them but discovers they are a threat and has to fight against them?) rather than it being tiresomely trotted out once again. Also, whilst the film has some finality there are perhaps a few too many plot threads left unresolved for the inevitable sequels.

Overall, Avatar (***½) is an entertaining, impressive spectacle which is definitely worth seeing in the cinema. There are some great performances, some central SF ideas nicely explored (the organic USB leads are an intriguing idea and Pandora's ecosystem is vividly depicted) and no-one does big-budget conflict as well as Cameron. After twelve years, he's still got the touch to deliver something rousingly enjoyable. The movie is a little bit too familiar in places and it would have been nice if the script and dialogue had had half as much attention paid on them as the CGI, but the movie still has far more genuine heart than some other recent big blockbusters. It even has a romance more convincing than the one in Titanic.

The movie is on general release worldwide right now, and will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray in 2010. The film is planned as the first in a trilogy, so expect more to follow.