After 13 long years of waiting, the first of four planned sequels, “Avatar: The Way of Water” hit theaters on Dec. 16, 2022. There are truly no words to describe the exhilarating feeling viewers experience when seeing the movie for the first time. Director James Cameron has done an excellent job making it feel as if viewers were truly inside the movie with the characters. Initially, I was a little resistant to watching the film when I realized how long the movie was with it having an over three-hour runtime. However, after finishing the movie I was stunned and wanted to go back to re-watch it. It truly didn’t feel that long because I was so entertained with the intense action that I didn’t realize that I had been sitting down for three hours. Although “Avatar: The Way of Water” has a similar plot to the first movie, I truly believe that the second movie tops the original in every way possible.  

More than a decade after the first film, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) are happy married with their four children, Neteyam (James Flatters), Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss) and adopted teenage daughter, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver). The family is truly happy and living peacefully but that all comes to an end when the sky people return. General Frances Ardmore (Edie Falco) lands on Pandora as a replacement for General Quaritch (Stephen Lang). However, the sky people create their own Navi soldiers, including  Quaritch who was resurrected with his memories from the first movie. Jake is now on the most wanted list, and this leads him and his family to try to find a new home to be able to keep his clan safe. They find sanctuary with the village of the reef people led by Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and his wife Ronal (Kate Winslet). Jake and his family must learn how to live the way of the reef people in order to survive. As soon as they start learning the way of water, the sky people find out where Jake is located and a difficult war rises.  

“The Way of Water” brings a new freshness to the cinematic world. James Cameron wanted to make the movie as realistic as possible, therefore he made the actors actually be in water to film the water scenes which made the movie to feel much more realistic. The performances from the actors truly shows that they wanted to give a real and raw experience to the audience. Cameron made the actors undergo different types of training to prepare  for this movie, one of them being rigorous underwater breathing training since most of the movie is based underwater.  

“The Way of Water” was a truly spectacular experience and the second movie stoodout from  the original film.