Hello, My Movievaures! Happy New Year and best wishes for 2023! For my first article of the year, I’ll be writing about one of the most expected movies of 2022: AVATAR – The Way of Water. Released by the end of 2022, this movie brought so much excitement as well as its doses of controversy. I will not get too much into the latter, because it doesn’t seem relevant to me other than creating even more debate about subjects that I don’t clearly master. So, let’s do a deep dive into the cinematographic experience. But you know the drill now, let’s get to the non-spoilers part before:

11 years after the events of the first movie, the humans are back on Pandora to prepare it for colonization as the Earth is perishing. This will completely disrupt Jake Sully and Neytiri’s peaceful life that they’ve built throughout the years surrounded by their family and their people. As they try to protect their family from this new danger, they will explore new regions of Pandora, with different cultures and they will build new strong relationships.

Of course, I will start with the visuals of this movie, which is once again outstanding. This was absolutely not a surprise as we got our first experience, already thirteen years ago but, it was splendid anyways. I will not lie, 3D is not my preferred experience, but I did enjoy it anyways for this movie. Sometimes, I had the impression that the action scenes were filmed as a videogame. I don’t know if you get what I’m saying, but some of the close-ups felt like seeing a cutscene on a game. But other than that, everything felt so tangible, so beautiful. It goes without saying that you need to see this movie in theatres and not on a small screen.

None of the less, let’s not forget about the plot. And… well… nothing great there but it wasn’t as bad as the first movie and also as what a lot of people were saying on the net. Yes, there is nothing original in the story, and most. of the subject have already been covered a thousand times. But saying that this movie has no plot whatsoever it’s a bit harsh. It has something to tell, other than the main storyline, especially around acceptance of differences, cultural shocks, parenting, blood and spiritual ties, and of course, the destruction of nature. Indeed, there is no subtlety at all, but this is AVATAR, one of the biggest blockbusters of all time so everyone is a target, and so the message must be simple and clear.

In short, I found this sequel to be better than the first one in the way it tells its story and as visually incredible as expected. This is a blockbuster and must be seen as it is. Nothing more, nothing less. However, the experience is way better than most of the big action movies (Yes, I’m talking about Marvel…) that we had in 2022. I know there is a lot of controversy about the cultural appropriation of the story, and I get some of it but there is nothing new here to be fair, it was also the case in the first one and I don’t think this movie projects a bad image of the cultures it mimics. Well, this is all for today My Movievaures! I hope you enjoyed this first article of the year and let me know in the comments down below your thoughts on the movie. I’ll be back next week, with a new review but in the meantime don’t forget to follow me on Instagram (the_movievaures).