Avatar: The Way of Water, the latest installment in the Avatar franchise, is Pandora’s triumphant return back to our screens. The Way of Water picks up 12 years after the previous movie left off. Jake Sully, now the chief of the clan, raises his children (Neteyam, Lo’ak, Tuk and Kiri) with his wife Neytiri. With the “sky people” threatening their way of life, the Sullys soon flee to the turquoise archipelagos, where the water tribes reside. 

One of my favorite aspects of The Way of Water is its groundbreaking use of special effects. Despite being ten feet tall, blue, and having long tails, whether it be the Na’vi laughing or sobbing, you can still clearly see the emotion on their faces and easily empathize with them, as if they were a human character. The further exploration of Pandora is a highlight as well. The vibrant colors of marine life are nothing short of stunning, and can be fully appreciated in the scene where Kiri explores the ocean with fluorescent fish following her. It is beautiful, showing that Pandora is more than just Hometree. 

Unfortunately, I don’t love everything about this movie. I really didn’t like how they reused the plot from the first movie. They even went so far as to bring some characters back from the dead into Recombinants, people who are revived into Na’vi. This reignites old rivalries from the first movie, which is a bit redundant to say the least. All of the militants follow more or less their same demise from the first movie, except for a certain character.

 I wasn’t entirely impressed with the storyline involving new character Spider, because in some of his scenes, he could’ve just as easily been a standalone character. Maybe I’m being overly nit-picky, but I think it was unnecessarily dramatic. 

The Way of Water is a perfectly fine movie. The plot is fine. The characters are fine. The pacing is fine. I don’t hate the movie, but I don’t think it’s worth all the critical acclaim and becoming one the highest grossing movies of all time. It’s a perfect movie if you want to rewatch the first movie, but want a change of scenery, with a few new characters thrown in there.