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Avatar: The Way of Water is finally here and people can’t decide whether it’s actually any good or not
Danny Jones
The long-awaited Avatar 2 has finally arrived some 18 years after the original and you’d think people would be happy. You’d be wrong.
Well, some of them are and some are a little underwhelmed; others are just plain mad, as it looks like the much-anticipated James Cameron sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, has seriously split opinions.
Releasing on Friday, 16 December in the UK over a decade after the initial buzz of the first Movie and years of jokes about when/if the follow-up would ever actually arrive, Way of Water is simultaneously the biggest and most divisive thing on the box office.
For example, these are all reviews of the exact same moviethough you’d struggled to tell based on these first impressions.
Avatar The Way of Water: lol imagine being dumb enough to bet against James Cameron. or teen alien Sigourney Weaver. or giant whales subtitled in papyrus.
light years better than the first & easily one of the best theatrical experiences in ages. streaming found dead in a ditch.
— david Ehrlich (@davidehrlich) December 6, 2022
Oh, and for no discernable reason, Zoe Saldana is shown the backseat. I’m never going to get the logic behind that decision.
— Robert Daniels (@812filmreviews) December 13, 2022
AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER: Yeah never bet against James Cameron. Trying to spare hyperbole, but I’ve never seen anything like this from a technical, visual standpoint. It’s overwhelming. Maybe too overwhelming. Sometimes I’d miss plot points because I’m staring at a Pandora fish
— Mike Ryan (@mikeryan) December 6, 2022
So, is it good or not?
At the same time as seemingly delighting most moviegoers online, it would seem its critical reception has been far from glowing — in fact, it’s actually been pretty damning.
Here’s a quick round-up of what just a few of the big boys had to say: The BBC called it a “damp squib”, TheTelegraph said it’s like being “waterboarded with turquoise cement”, and The Guardians dubbed it nothing more than two-star “soggy, twee, trillion-dollar screensaver”. Tell us how you really feel…
As is often the case with something as subjective as cinema, there were countless reviews that made us go ‘yikes’ but, at the same time, there were just as many waxing lyrical about how it was a vast improvement on the first iteration and the most visually impressive thing they’ve ever seen.
Either way, Avatar: The Way of Water has already earned six nominations at the Critics’ Choice Awards and the sequel is on track to earn over $525 million its opening weekend, meaning it will easily join its predecessor and subsequent blockbuster among the highest-grossing films of all time.
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Despite all of the debate, Avatar 2 is not only selling plenty of tickets but 3, 4 and 5 are all already on the way and no, we’re not joking.
Not only have the entire third film and large portions of the fourth already been shot, but Cameron and his production team have hinted that as well as not receiving a single note on his script for avatar 4the fifth and presumably final installation will see the audience return to earth.
We’ve waited more than a decade for one sequel but now it looks like you’ll be getting another movie every two years from now on. In the meantime, we’ll go watch Way of Water and get back to you.
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Featured Image — 20th Century Studios
