Avatar

Ahead of Avatar: The Way Of Water's long-awaited theatrical release this weekend, many critics applauded the movie as a worthy sequel and a technical marvel ...

Avatar: The Way Of Water received two Golden Globes nominations Monday, for Best Motion Picture, Drama and Best Director. [The Atlantic](https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/12/avatar-2-way-of-water-movie-review-james-cameron/672448/) said the movie is a savior to hungry moviegoers and praised its “decadence,” writing, “for cinemas that have been starved of authentic spectacle, finally, here’s a gorgeous three-course meal of it,” and that the film’s emotional and visual aspects “blew me away.” [Variety](https://variety.com/2022/film/reviews/avatar-the-way-of-water-review-james-cameron-zoe-saldana-sam-worthington-1235451995/) disagreed slightly, and hailed the movie just for its technical feats, noting “there is almost zero dimensionality to the characters. Director James Cameron said the sequel needs to be “the third- or fourth-highest-grossing film in history” for it to break even. [The Hollywood Reporter](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/avatar-the-way-of-water-james-cameron-sequel-1235279758/) called The Way Of Water “hugely entertaining” and said it’s “a big movie, monumental even, that justifies its three hours-plus of screen time and its mammoth financial investment,” citing the film’s nine-figure production budget. That’s Avatar: The Way Of Water’s rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 81 reviews. The floatingly bland plot is like a children’s story without the humor; a YA story without the emotional wound; an action thriller without the hard edge of real excitement.”

In 2009, James Cameron's Avatar became the highest grossing film ever released. Thirteen years on, can his follow-up – starring Sam Worthington and Zoe ...

The Way of Water clocks in at 192 minutes, which is half an hour more than the first Avatar, but after the opening scenes, when the humans land on Pandora, the story is barely moved on at all. You won't find out here, because The Way of Water is now officially part of a Lord of the Rings-style continuing franchise, so it doesn't bother to stand up on its own. Yes, we may have had a 13-year wait for the first Avatar sequel, but apparently there are three more due to come out in 2024, 2026 and 2028. The stage is set for a rip-roaring adventure, a space opera sprinkled with debates on the ethics of colonialism and assimilation. If The Way of Water is anything to go by, that's not a prospect to relish, but let's hope Cameron uses those sequels to address one key point, at least. He is a stripy-blue Robin Hood - and he has a stripy-blue Sheriff of Nottingham to contend with. It's nice and scenic, of course, and all of Cameron's technological obsessions are on show. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), his mind now permanently installed in a blue alien Na'vi body, is the chief of his clan, and he and his wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) have four children. The invaders raze miles of jungle in a fiery apocalypse, much like the one at the start of Terminator 2. More importantly, it saps the narrative of the high-stakes urgency it had when he was leading his troops against the bad guys. One of Jake's sons bonds with a lonely whale. The villainous Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) was killed at the end of Avatar, but his memories were transferred to a Na'vi body, so now he is just as super-strong and super-tall as Sully.

Thirteen years after the original, James Cameron resurrects the Na'vi, adding children, ocean reefs and a hint of 'Titanic'

For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. Compare Standard and Premium Digital For a full comparison of Standard and Premium Digital,

You can't knock James Cameron's visual gifts, but though the story itself is designed to seem engagingly complex, there's nothing about it that's ...

Their dialogue is translated into subtitles for the uninitiated—that means you and me—and they’re the best feature of The Way of Water by far. The Way of Water is the wave of the future, rolling in whether you like it or not. How much you care about the carcasses washed up on the beach in its wake will define what kind of moviegoer you are. Even though the intricacies of Cameron’s technique aren’t easy or cheap to replicate, the almost certain success of The Way of Water will help shape what kinds of movies get greenlit by big studios tomorrow, defining the future of the big-screen experience. It is a spectacle of sorts, if a 3D spectacle is what you’re after. The skin of the tulkun is adorned with sacred symbols resembling those of the Maori. But a movie about people with blue and blue-greenish skin engaging in fantastical sky and water battles, that you put on 3D glasses to watch? It doesn’t occur to Sully, until the last minutes of the film, how much danger he’s bringing to the Metkayina and their ways, but never mind that. It also takes him forever to cotton to the importance of the whale-like tulkun, gentle, perceptive beasts who are spiritual twins to the Metkayina. He and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), his warrior bride, have a family of four kids, including an adopted daughter, feisty science nerd Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), the daughter of Jake’s old friend Grace (also played by Weaver), who died in the first picture. No one had ever seen anything like it, which didn’t make it a great movie, though its novelty did help make it one of the top-grossing movies of all time. Now Avatar: The Way of Water, that first sequel, is here.

Thirteen years in the making, James Cameron's insipid, overlong followup to his sci-fi record-breaker is a very expensive beached whale.

Frankly, there isn’t a single interesting visual image and the whole thing has the non-briny smell of a MacBook Pro. The submarine world of this film is, in its way, its chief character and its whole point. Now, after 13 years of unimaginably expensive pixel-crunching, the aquatic followup has arrived, with a third and a fourth on the way.

No matter if you've spent a second of your life in the past 13 years thinking about what's happening on Pandora or how Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri ...

Is that the magic of the movies? The action is there, too, of course, and it’s exciting because you’ve become invested in the family and worried about the kids who are never where they’re supposed to be and are often in danger because of it. But Cameron knows his way around a thrilling sequel, and the water for that matter (and references his own greatest hits in this film, too). Sometimes we’re just sitting in the water with Kiri who is also sitting in the water. And you’ll forget all about checking the time from the first shot of Pandora and Jake’s earnest exposition about what’s been going on in the past decade. The film isn’t just visually compelling, either, it’s spiritually rich as well — a simple but penetrating story about family and the natural world that is galaxies better than the first.

Avatar: The Way of Water is almost upon us, and we're finally heading back to Pandora to see what new adventures James Cameron has conjured for the sequel.

On the RDA side of things, Colonel Quaritch is killed in action during the final duel against Jake and the Na’vi, but he’ll come back to Avatar: The Way of Water as a Recombinant. So, while Jake wins a battle in Avatar that allows Pandora to remain in peace for many years, humanity is a plague, and Quaritch will soon be back to restart the war. Grace, in her Avatar body, to access the living database of Eywa, uploading a copy of herself and being granted eternal life in Pandora. [Michelle Rodriguez](https://collider.com/tag/michelle-rodriguez/)), the pilot who betrayed Colonel Quaritch in the final battle, didn't even get a chance to become part of Pandora. Nature is alive in Pandora and comes to the rescue of Toruk Makto and the Na’vi. After months among the Na’vi, Jake is convinced that the native people of Pandora are right to be hostile to humans and that Earthlings should just leave the moon. Since the superconductor properties of Pandora's soil rubbed off its flora and fauna, the Na'vi evolved in a way that allowed them to access information stored in animals and plants. And even more curious is that the Na'vi, as a species, evolved a unique braid they use to commune with Eywa and Pandora's fauna. As a final rite of passage before being considered part of the tribe, every Na’vi needs to tame their own ikran, a dangerous flying creature that becomes the warrior’s mount. In short, the entire moon of Pandora works like a supercomputer, probably due to the natural presence of unobtanium as a superconductor. As the weeks pass, Jake starts to understand the Na’vi and their symbiotic connection to nature. [Avatar: The Way of Water](https://collider.com/tag/avatar-2/) is almost upon us, and we're finally heading back to Pandora to see what new adventures [James Cameron](https://collider.com/tag/james-cameron/) has conjured for the sequel.

So far, domestic pre-sales for the film total $38 million, which puts the film ahead of Top Gun: Maverick, the current highest-grossing movie of the year, but ...

Avatar: The Way of Water splashes into theaters on December 16. The first Avatar is fondly remembered by many for its groundbreaking use of stereoscopic 3D technology, which is why it's no surprise that audiences will be returning to Pandora in the same format as well. So far, domestic pre-sales for the film total $38 million, which puts the film ahead of Top Gun: Maverick, the current highest-grossing movie of the year, but behind Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

The 2009 hit film Avatar was a watershed event for Imax Corp., and the release of the long-awaited sequel has underlined what investors see as a strong case ...

The sequel from James Cameron has already sold $38 million in advance ticket sales.

Though, that said, GameSpot's [Avatar: The Way of Water review](https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/avatar-the-way-of-water-review-dead-in-the-water/1900-6418013/) marks the movie as mediocre, noting, "The problem is that Jake Sully is about as engaging and likable as a piece of driftwood." Avatar: The Way of Water may rake in $250 million to $350 million internationally this weekend, according to Variety. [the review roundup for Avatar: The Way of Water](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/review-roundup-for-avatar-the-way-of-water/1100-6510001/). Looking past this weekend, Avatar: The Way of Water won't have much competition in the blockbuster space in the coming months. Early tracking estimates for Avatar: The Way of Water show the sequel starting off with a bang. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness as well as Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

So far in 2022, only "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" and "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" — both Disney Marvel hits — have surpassed $150 million ...

It is the only film to cross $250 million in Imax history. - The first "Avatar" grossed more than $200 million in China and counting, per Box Office Mojo. - There's little competition heading into the holiday season. - Still, the second "Avatar" installation is expected to be Cameron's first-ever film to cross $100 million in its domestic weekend debut this weekend. - "This is exactly the kind of movie that demands to be seen in a theater with a communal experience," said Boxoffice Pro analyst Shawn Robbins. The highly anticipated Avatar sequel "The Way of Water" is expected to dominate this week's box office when it hits theaters on Friday, 13 years after the original James Cameron Avatar film first debuted in December 2009.

2022 has been quite a big year for the filmmaking industry. Not only are audiences finally returning to theaters, but the year has been packed to the brim ...

We also get to see an all-new subspecies of Na'vi and an all-new tribe, where the inhabitants have adapted to their seaside lifestyle with fin-like arms and light blue skin, with the tribe's matriarch being played by previous James Cameron collaborator, Kate Winslet (Titanic). The trailer also briefly introduces the rest of Jake and Neytiri's children, and Spider, a human boy who has to wear an Expopack in order to breathe Pandora's atmosphere. We also get a brief reintroduction to Jake Sully, the protagonist of the previous film who left his human body behind to join the Na'vi culture and forever be with his one true love, Neytiri, now of whom is the leader of the Omaticaya tribe. The first trailer for Avatar: The Way of Water keeps plot details under wraps, instead choosing to focus on the incredible world of Pandora that we haven't properly seen on screen in over a decade. The new film also picks up several years when the last one left off, still following human-turned-permanent Na'vi Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his partner Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), still living their lives on the beautiful jungle planet of Pandora and now raising a family of their own. [Top Gun: Maverick](https://collider.com/tag/top-gun-maverick/) (2022) as well as the other mind-blowing multiversal adventure with [Everything Everywhere All at Once](https://collider.com/movie/everything-everywhere-all-at-once/) (2022).

The latest box office projections find the Avatar sequel bringing in a staggering $525 million. That's $175 million domestic and $350 million overseas. Clearly, ...

Avatar: The Way of Water is due for release on December 16, 2022. Well, it looks like sparing no expense may have been well worth it, with Avatar: The Way of Water currently on track for a massive box office taking in its opening weekend. [Avatar: The Way of Water](https://movieweb.com/movie/avatar-2/), has reportedly resulted in one of the most expensive movies ever made.

The long-awaited sequel "Avatar: The Way of Water" is set to snare between $150 million and $175 million domestically during its opening weekend.

Perhaps most important about "The Way of Water" China release is that it will take place on Dec. The Chinese box office contributed around $265 million to "Avatar's" global tally a decade ago, but the market has grown significantly since. Disney saw success with this strategy when it released "Avengers: Endgame" on the same day in the U.S. Since cinemas reopened in the country, it has been one of the fastest markets to recover and generate box office success. In fact, a staggering 56% of seats heading into the film's opening weekend have been programed for 3D showings, according to data from EntTelligence. The movie will need the boost. More than 70% of "Avatar" ticket sales came from foreign markets in 2009. The film ultimately generated $760 million in the U.S. The China factor The movie, which opens this week, is set to snare between $150 million and $175 million domestically during its opening weekend. James Cameron films have historically engaged general audiences deep into their theatrical windows, though it's worth considering that the box office climate has changed even since his previous Avatar film in 2009." While the first movie only opened with $77 million in 2009, "Avatar" had unparalleled staying power at the box office.

Like the original film, the second Avatar movie is expected to break several box office records following its worldwide release on December 16.

The views expressed here are that of the respective authors/ entities and do not represent the views of Economic Times (ET). The film was the first to gross more than $2 billion globally and $700 million in the United States. In fact, about $100 million of the movie’s opening revenue is expected to be from China, which has already accounted for $21 million of pre-sales. As per media reports, the film is expected to rake in more than $350 million from overseas markets, taking the overall collection predictions beyond $500 million. According to media reports, the movie’s domestic pre-sales have reached $38 million, which is more than that of “Top Gun: Maverick”, the biggest box office hit of 2022. Furthermore, the holiday movie season is about to peak, with no considerable competition to the movie.

(Bloomberg) -- The 2009 hit film Avatar was a watershed event for Imax Corp., and the release of the long-awaited sequel has underlined what investors see ...

Hollywood and worried theater owners are counting on the long-awaited sequel to close out 2022 in grand fashion after a tough fall season. If tracking is ...

It picks up a decade after the original and follows their family, with additional stars including franchise newcomers [Kate Winslet](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/t/kate-winslet/). [Avengers: Endgame](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/avengers-endgame-clocks-at-3-hours-longest-marvel-movie-1197113/) (three hours and 2 minutes) and Cameron’s Titanic (three hours and 14 minutes). Sony and Marvel’s Spider-Man: No Way Home, released in December 2021, continues to hold the record for the best global debut of the pandemic era debut at $583 million (No Way Home likewise didn’t play in China). The Way of Water is certain to do enormous business on premium screens, including Imax. 2 and No. Disney, home of 20th Century, stresses that the sequel’s success depends more on its long term legs, versus a mega-opening number. Hollywood and worried theater owners are counting on the long-awaited sequel to close out 2022 in grand fashion after a tough fall season. It could open to as much as $100 million, although a major COVID-19 outbreak in Beijing could complicate matters. The two films rank No. [Titanic](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/t/titanic/) [Kate Winslet Responds to Fat-Shaming Comments About Why Jack Couldn’t Get on the Door in ‘Titanic’](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/kate-winslet-responds-fat-shaming-titanic-leonardo-dicaprio-1235284012/) [Heat Vision](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/e/heat-vision/) [Donald Glover to Star in, Produce Spider-Man Movie Based on Villain Hypno-Hustler (Exclusive)](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/donald-glover-to-star-in-spider-man-movie-hypno-hustler-1235283667/) [Margot Robbie](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/t/margot-robbie/) [Brad Pitt, Damien Chazelle on Shooting ‘Babylon’ Movie’s Wildest Scenes: “A Lot of Nudity”](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/brad-pitt-damien-chazelle-babylon-wildest-scenes-1235283634/) [box office](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/t/box-office/). [Avatar](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/t/avatar/) 2 is one of the few recent Hollywood tentpoles to receive a release.

The long-awaited sequel “Avatar: The Way of Water” is set to snare between $150 million and $175 million domestically during its opening weekend.

Perhaps most important about "The Way of Water" China release is that it will take place on Dec. The Chinese box office contributed around $265 million to "Avatar's" global tally a decade ago, but the market has grown significantly since. Disney saw success with this strategy when it released "Avengers: Endgame" on the same day in the U.S. Since cinemas reopened in the country, it has been one of the fastest markets to recover and generate box office success. In fact, a staggering 56% of seats heading into the film's opening weekend have been programed for 3D showings, according to data from EntTelligence. The movie will need the boost. More than 70% of "Avatar" ticket sales came from foreign markets in 2009. The film ultimately generated $760 million in the U.S. The movie, which opens this week, is set to snare between $150 million and $175 million domestically during its opening weekend. Cameron told GQ that the film will James Cameron films have historically engaged general audiences deep into their theatrical windows, though it's worth considering that the box office climate has changed even since his previous Avatar film in 2009." While the first movie only opened with $77 million in 2009, "Avatar" had unparalleled staying power at the box office.

A 3-hour Avatar sequel, a documentary on shoe king Salvatore Ferragamo, and Netflix debuts Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths.

In this season of filmmakers looking inward (James Gray with Armageddon Time, Steven Spielberg with The Fabelmans) comes this comedy-drama from Oscar-winning Mexican filmmaker Alexander Gonzalez Iñarritu (The Revenant). Directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name). The plot involves a threat to the Na’vi and the Sullys fight for safety.

The film 'Avatar' is one of director James Cameron's major successes—and it showed at the box office, as well as through a new fanbase sharing a love of 3D.

They have physical power that is admirable, and to be part of that, and included, it was just so flattering that Jim asked me, because Jim does not suffer fools,” Winslet explained. “There are a lot of surprises in terms of where the story goes in this film, that we’re not putting into the trailers and the TV spots and all that. And I think it was part of, you know, Jim [James Cameron] realizing that story was about them being warriors, and taking on the battles of the clans and things like that,” Worthington explained. But it also goes a lot deeper, in terms of the heart and the emotions,” Cameron continued. But, the quest to the second edition of the film wasn’t exactly an easy decision. Over a decade after the premiere of the first film, 13 years to be exact, the anticipated sequel will be hitting theaters this weekend.

James Cameron says pregnant warriors in "Avatar 2" advance female empowerment on screen.

“Avatar: The Way of Water” opens in theaters nationwide Dec. The things that really ground us and give us power, love, and a purpose? Speaking to Robert Rodriguez as part of [Variety’s “Directors on Directors” series,](https://wp.me/pc8uak-1lBRhc) Cameron spoke about the female empowerment in his long-awaited “Avatar” sequel. [James Cameron](https://variety.com/t/james-cameron/)’s “ [Avatar: The Way of Water](https://variety.com/t/avatar-the-way-of-water/)” is jam-packed with extraordinary visuals that moviegoers have never seen before on the big screen. And I thought, ‘Well, if you’re really going to go all the way down the rabbit hole of female empowerment, let’s have a female warrior who’s six months pregnant in battle.'” And then you have one of the characters go into battle pregnant.

And even if you remember the adventures of Jake Sully and Neytiri fondly, you may have gotten fuzzy on the details in the intervening years. What were people ...

[The Way of Water](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/12/avatar-the-way-of-water-review-spectacle-worth-the-wait) really doesn't rely that much on knowledge of the first movie. But plot-wise the thing to know is that Jake and Neytiri fall in love, Neytiri kills Quaritch at the end of the final battle, and in the end the humans are forced off Pandora. The visual dazzle of Avatar will come right back to you at the start of The Way of Water, and there's significant effort put into recapping the events of the first movie at the beginning because 13 years is a long time. The Way of Water also introduces entirely new environments and cultures on Pandora, so after the first hour, almost everything familiar from the first film is left behind in favor of something brand new—no research required. [The Running of the Billionaires](https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2012/11/the-running-of-the-billionaires?itm_content=footer-recirc&itm_campaign=more-great-stories-120622)(2012) So the humans on Pandora are basically divided into two groups: the ruthless military and business types, led by Giovanni Ribisi's weaselly tycoon Selfridge and then Stephen Lang's Colonel Quaritch, and the scientists led by Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver). In the original Avatar, Jake and the rest of the science team lie down in tanning-bed-type boxes to connect with their avatar bodies, which move freely around Pandora. [Ozempic Landed the Hollywood Market](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/11/ozempic-hollywood-diet-drug?itm_content=footer-recirc&itm_campaign=more-great-stories-120622)for Fast Results and Diet Drugs And like many cultures throughout history, they're not thrilled when the interloper humans arrive on Pandora, and especially when they start mining for a precious resource dubbed unobtanium. And even if you remember the adventures of Jake Sully and Neytiri fondly, you may have gotten fuzzy on the details in the intervening years. This reporter overheard a woman outside the theater telling her friend how much she liked the new one, and how now maybe she'll go back and watch the first. But after Jake embeds himself with a Na'vi tribe, falls in love with the chief's daughter Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), and eventually leads a rebellion against the humans, he ditches his human body at the end of the film to live full-time as his Na'vi self.

When “Avatar” first hit theaters in 2009, audiences had never seen anything quite like it before. James Cameron's science-fiction spectacle became a ...

But after finding a support system through Kelutral, “The Way of Water” isn’t just a long-awaited return to an alien world he loves. “This is a movie about blue space cats,” Perrin chuckles. I had to return to the doldrum of reality, trying to figure out what I was going to do with my adult life,” Perrin says, recalling his experience after seeing “Avatar.” “I had been struggling with depression and I didn’t know what it was. Now, the “Avatar” community is entering uncharted waters: the release of another series entry — and an epic-length, even more technically dazzling one at that. “I never thought that my life would be so changed for the positive when I saw some movie about blue space aliens.” While post-“Avatar” depression took a toll on him, the group helped Perrin find the language to recognize his own mental health troubles. The solution he found worked best for him was simply allowing himself to be fully drawn in — a credo he has shared with others. Perrin and Williamson are both members of Kelutral, an online “Avatar” fan community established on the messaging app Discord. “I felt like that was an amazing dream, but now I had to wake up. “The first time I experienced it was probably several years after, just rewatching it on Blu-ray,” Williamson says. Jacob Williamson, a 25-year-old physicist living in Atlanta, Ga., was also a latecomer to post-“Avatar” depression. “I reexperienced it in 2018 after visiting Pandora — The World of Avatar at Disney World.

James Cameron returns to Pandora, and to the ecological themes and visual bedazzlements of his 2009 blockbuster.

He wants to conquer the world in the name of the underdog, to celebrate nature by means of the most extravagant artifice, and to make everything new feel old again. The differences among the Na’vi — physical as well as cultural — add an interesting new dimension to the anthropology of Pandora, and to the film’s aesthetic palette. You feel it in a horrifying scene of tulkun slaughter that aspires to the awful, stirring sublimity of the last chapters of “Moby-Dick,” and also in the restlessness of Lo’ak, Spider and Kiri as they try to figure out their roles. Afraid that Quaritch and his men will bring slaughter to the forest, Jake and Neytiri seek the protection of Ronal (Kate Winslet) and Tonowari (Cliff Curtis), chieftains of a reef-dwelling Na’vi clan. He has a long-simmering vendetta against Jake, and much of “The Way of Water” is concerned less with large-scale imperial ambitions than with personal dramas of loyalty and betrayal. There are a lot of those, in the air and underwater, fistic and fiery, sad and rousing, nearly every one of which will remind you of stuff you’ve seen a dozen times before. Where “Avatar” found inspiration in lizard-birds, airborne spores and jungle flowers, the sequel revels in aquatic wonders, above all a kind of armored whale called the tulkun. The first “Avatar” fused Cameron’s faith in technological progress with his commitments to the primal pleasures of old-fashioned storytelling and the visceral delights of big-screen action. Thirteen years later, “Avatar: The Way of Water” — the first of several long-awaited sequels directed by James Cameron — brings with it a ripple of nostalgia. Like them, he is now tall, slender and blue, with a mane of dark hair and a braid that connects him to members of other species. It was a revisionist western, an ecological fable, a post-Vietnam political allegory — a tale of romance, valor and revenge with traces of Homer, When was the last time you put on a pair of those?

James Cameron's sequel is expected to open big. But box office for 2022 is still lagging pre-pandemic numbers by more than 30%. Blame a lack of movies.

“The Way of Water” was made with 3-D in mind, not as an afterthought. The first “Avatar” opened with a mere $77 million in the U.S. For movies that do get in, China remains uncertain because of the coronavirus situation in the country. [told the Hollywood Reporter](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/james-cameron-interview-avatar-the-way-of-water-franchise-future-1235271483/). It’s a situation that he and cinema operators expect to improve next year as the industry gets closer to a normal rate of releases. If “The Way of Water” hits his goal, he’ll occupy three of the top five slots. Cameron already has two of the top three pictures globally — “Avatar” and 1997’s “Titanic” ($2.2 billion). The average domestic box office for those titles this year is $89.23 million, similar to the average gross per movie in 2019, the organization said. “I don’t think the industry realizes how big this is going to be,” Gelfond said. “The Way of Water” hits theaters as Bob Iger begins his own sequel as Disney’s CEO. and Canada in three days, nearly a low for the year. For the Walt Disney Co., it’s a revival of what the Burbank entertainment titan hopes will be a long-lasting blockbuster franchise.

'Avatar: The Way of Water' made his debut on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes with an 83% approval rate.

The blockbuster still has a long way to go, and its initial reception by the general audiences should indicate what type of In recent interviews, Cameron didn’t mince words when revealing that the franchise is incredibly expensive to make and, depending on how the upcoming entries perform, we have the chance of never seeing this story through to the end. It’s an ambitious project, and the role that the second entry plays is laying the groundwork for countless story possibilities in the world of Pandora, just like Middle Earth keeps inviting fans back for more Lord of the Rings stories and a galaxy far away keeps on generating Star Wars spin-offs. The number is a surprise, but not exactly a shock: Ever since the first teasers and trailers were unveiled by 20th Century Studios, we knew that Avatar: The Way of Water would be a stunning visual spectacle at the very least. Avatar: The Way of Water takes us back to Pandora fourteen years after the events of the first movie. [Avatar: The Way of Water](https://collider.com/tag/avatar-2/) hasn’t even officially premiered, but the overwhelmingly positive reception that the new James Cameron movie received from critics that got to see it in early screenings have already got the title to the “certified fresh” status of [Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/avatar_the_way_of_water?cmp=TWRT_Movie_Avatar2_CF).

Who is Jake Sully? He's an ex-Marine who lost the use of his legs in combat on Earth. When his twin brother, Tommy, a scientist, dies unexpectedly, Jake is ...

In the final scene of “Avatar” — after the RDA has been ordered to leave, save for a few of the human scientists who worked with Grace — Mo’at leads the Omaticaya at Home Tree in the same ritual they used to try to save Grace, this time to put Jake’s mind and soul inside his Na’vi body. In a last-ditch effort, Quaritch — wearing a giant mechanical suit — attempts to destroy the trailer that’s housing Jake’s human body. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) hates Pandora and the Na’vi, and uses Jake to infiltrate them to gather intel on their home. Eywa is the name for the Na’vi deity, the spirit of all life on Pandora — quite literally, as the entire moon has developed a biological capacity to connect with all other life. (It’s on top of a giant deposit of an outrageously valuable mineral called Unobtanium, which is the whole reason why the RDA is on Pandora in the first place, and what allows some of Pandora’s mountains to float in the air.) She’s the daughter of the heads of the Omaticaya tribe of Na’vi, and an agile hunter and warrior.

Beautiful visuals can't make up for the film's oversimplified view of colonialism.

In the end, he seems to have succumbed to 13 years of pressure to make The Way of Water bigger and bolder, so that it might be worth the wait. He tries to make up for his lack of narrative imagination with a new visual language, but it doesn’t cover up the holes in his sloppily woven saga. The homogenization of humans erases the complexity of racism on earth. The Water Tribes of The Last Airbender are divided by whether they live in swampy or icy places; the tribes living near the north pole wage civil war against the tribes of the south pole. Cameron could have constructed a Metkayina world that ruptured our preconceptions of the Na’vi, giving them leaders who weren’t another warrior chieftain and his priestess wife, or religious rules that conflicted with the Sullys’. Ultimately, this simplification makes The Way of Water boring. The Way of Water sidesteps a political plot, instead honing in on Quaritch’s individual quest for revenge. Whatever the real-life implications of the film, it was exciting to be invited into the lush, enthralling world of the Na’vi. The Way of Water treats them all as rapacious, bloodthirsty imperialists. The politics of the first Avatar were already lazy. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a former Marine who is paralyzed from the waist down, arrives on Pandora to take the place of his deceased twin brother, one of the avatar program’s founding scientists. The humans’ mission is to mine unobtanium, a highly valuable resource that happens to be the bedrock of the Na’vi’s home.

The movie opens with Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana playing Jake Sully and Neytiri, overseeing a family comprised of Neteyam (Jamie Flanders), Lo'ak (Britain ...

In fact, it’s clear that building and filming the action in this ocean world was a cinematic feat equal to — or even exceeding — the special effects of Cameron’s most notable watery feature, “Titanic.” “Kate enjoyed the freedom of being able to express herself underwater. Of all the actors, Winslet adapted to the water most easily, Cameron says. And as such, he has the nine-foot body of a Na’vi. The tank could hold enough water to allow the filmmaker to replicate ocean conditions. It’s faster and more dangerous that most of the other creatures. The clan also has tattoo patterns that they share with the tulkun. So the Sully family flees to territory held by the Metkayina clan, an island-dwelling people who live in harmony with the surrounding oceans. The clan has a tradition of giving sanctuary to refugees, so the Sully family is welcomed, albeit reluctantly. Since the movie is more than three hours long, you might wonder whether the “wowing” is sustainable. It’s the story of a family on Pandora that faces great difficulties in staying together — and safe — because humans from Earth are once again invading their beautiful world. And most experts predict that the sequel will dominate the box office for the rest of the year — at the very least.

But do we actually need this sequel? Do people remember the original Avatar? Aside from the 3D glasses and 10-foot tall aliens, what was memorable about it? Is ...

It is not a sequel, or part of a connected cinematic universe (yet), or based on an existing property. Avatar 3 is due in December 2024, and two more sequels have been greenlit. Paying $15 for a regular ticket suddenly became $20 for Avatar and the dozens of movies that followed in the period from late 2009 to mid-2012. But do people still talk fondly or nostalgically about Avatar in the way they do, say, Lord of the Rings (2001-2003), Star Wars, or James Cameron’s other era-defining films like Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) and Titanic (1997)? What will happen to Avatar 2? [first used in the 1940s](http://shura.shu.ac.uk/6809/3/Hall_Etymology_of_Blockbuster_(rev).pdf) in film trade magazines such as Variety and Motion Picture Herald. Avatar’s frozen-in-time memorability stems in large part from its status as an “event”. Or the tribe he spent time with? Several billion dollars later, James Cameron announced he was not going to make just one sequel, [but potentially four](https://www.vulture.com/2022/11/avatar-sequel-announcements-timeline-james-cameron.html). Or the planet he landed on? Rabin’s first example was Monster-In Law (2005), a now largely forgotten comedy vehicle for Jane Fonda and Jennifer Lopez. James Cameron’s Avatar 2: The Way of Water, is released worldwide today.

The screenplay and story are written by James Cameron, Rick Jaffa, and Amanda Silver, with co-writers Josh Friedman and Shane Salerno. The film is produced by ...

For block and corporate screenings, click [here](https://lumiere-a.akamaihd.net/v1/documents/ph_-_exhibitor_directory_for_block_screenings_532f53dc.pdf). Grab your tickets now and get ready for an action-packed adventure in the world of Pandora! Ian Garvin”), Giovanni Ribisi (“Parker Selfridge”), and Kate Winslet (“Ronal”).