Twelve years ago on December 18th, 2009 James Cameron took the cinema world by storm with his cinematic masterpiece Avatar. Truly a theater going experience of a life time I saw that film over three times in IMAX 3D but finally after twelve long years Cameron releases Avatar: The Way of Water. Does it surpass its predecessor or blow it out of the water? (yes pun intended) to this question I say disappointingly no.

I will get the obvious out of the way first, Avatar: The Way of Water much like the first film is a cinematic marvel! This film is beautiful and absolutely gorgeous. While returning to the traditional forests and mountains of Pandora was great the true beauty lies in its underwater world. The underwater sequences were absolutely stunning. I can only imagine how this film looked in IMAX 3D I'm sure it's incredible in any premium format.

Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana return as Jake and Neytiri though they both take a backseat in favor of they're children. As for the children they were not strong enough to carry this film. Constantly getting themselves into trouble over, and over, and over again as well as never listening. Now granted this can be excused as they are kids who don't really know better and haven't had to face the threats Jake and Neytiri have. So I am slightly willing to give a pass here as long as Cameron realizes in the future these characters must be matured, I will only accept "kids will be kids" for so long and after what these kids went through I expect them to be matured in a third film.

The return of Stephen Lang and Sigourney Weaver was wonderful they both gave great performances and I loved having the Colonel back he was a great villain in the first film and is a great villain again here. Sigourney Weaver plays Jake Sully's adopted daughter Kiri and I have to say she did so fantastically, how a 73 year old woman convinced me that she was a child is beyond me but she did it.

Now to talk about the negatives. The story is just a recycled narrative of the first film and Cameron for some reason is content at just rehashing the same story beats throughout the entire second act. You did all this in the entirety of the first film so why are we doing this all over again. The third act is less a booming climatic battle but more of personal conflict and vendetta between Jake and the Colonel. Which wasn't bad because the story being told was more of a intimate story of family and the Colonels quest for revenge. But then what was the point of the sea people taking part in this "battle" they disappeared so fast. There's a clear indication of a grander conflict here but it's just not touched upon in favor of this personal conflict which would've been okay if it was resolved but it wasn't.

Which was another draw back, the scope of a grander story is here but is just abandoned almost immediately. Perhaps this grander story will be picked up in the additional sequels Cameron has planned but unfortunately its just not used here. The first act in my opinion was the best this film had to offer, Cameron wasted no time in getting straight to business which I was incredibly grateful for. After about ten minutes of reintroducing Jake and Neytiri and introducing their kids we are immediately treated to the humans return and the ensuing conflict. Unfortunately due to the fast paced nature of the first act the explanation for their return is rather glossed over, like if you blick you miss it.

Speaking of weak explanations, while I definitely enjoyed the return of Stephen Lang and Sigourney Weaver the explanation as to how was just soo... why? To me. I'd go into further detail but that is spoiler territory and I don't want to give anything more away as I feel I already have. Now the run time, I personally felt every minute of the 3 hours and 12 minutes admittedly that last 12 minutes is credits but still 3 hours is a longtime for what was the most part to me a rehash of things we already saw. I must say though the first hour of this film flew by as I was thoroughly entertained by the action but things slowed down immensely afterward when going into the second act.

Lastly and this is more of a personal problem, James Cameron just has to bring something political and preachy here. More of his humanity is evil and the natives are good crap. The forced empathy for the sea people after seeing the aftermath of the whaling sequence was just annoying. It all came off as a poor "save the whales" message which was made pretty clear during said sequence. Anyway I just did not care as I rolled my eyes extensively to this weak forced sympathy attempt.

Well this review really got away from me so I'll start wrapping things up. I was thoroughly hoping that this second viewing was going to help maintain my score but it just lowered it because of the story repeats of the first film, a rather lackluster final act, a overbloated run time, and of course Cameron's typical political, preachy nonsense I have to say it was just average to slightly below average.

Second viewing thoughts: I want to take this chance outside my review to mention the 3D and HFR (High Frame Rate) experience. The 3D format is second to none, it elevated all the spectacular visuals to booming heights. Also the 3D technology added a layer of immersion to the underwater sequences I have never experienced in a cinema. Now throw in higher frame rates with this 3D and it is just stunning! The high frame rate made everything look soo smoth, it was gorgeous and because of the immense cgi usage in this film the high frame rate made the 48fps (Frames Per Second) sequences look like a video game and I loved every minute of it. I yearn for the day video games can look as good as this film does. Unfortunately the transitions between the standard 24fps and 48fps was at times unnatural and made for a bit of a turn off.

This second viewing also just highlighted this films shortcomings particularly in the story department, while a first viewing things were more tolerable this second viewing just made everything I was slightly annoyed by to being extremely annoyed by. The children are just stupid and not at all that interesting and because of the recycled story it made the 3 hours unbearably long.

At the end of the day I firmly believe this film is only getting high scores because of fantastic visuals and James Cameron. A terribly boring story, and a run time that is completely unnecessary makes this beautiful mess of a film extremely average, but because it's been a long time since Avatar it recieves eights, nines, and tens. Well James Cameron isn't getting a pass from me.

By the end of the film I was just extremely disappointed even more so than my first viewing. While the 3D technology and HFR affect carry things to amazing heights, you can't just rely on amazing technology to make a good film. Now because my score for this second viewing was so dependent on the 3D, HFR format I'm going to have to for the first time in my reviews give two different scores.

2D non HFR: IMDb: 4/10 Letterboxd: 2/5

3D w/ HFR: IMDb: 5/10 Letterboxd: 3/5

Watched in Theaters.