Critics of James Cameron’s sequel

“The sequel to Cameron’s 2009 box office hit Avatar: The Way of the Water is simply bigger and better than its predecessor in every way,” wrote reviewer Eric Francisco.

“It requires the largest screen you can find so that its most powerful elements – from incredible scale and artful spectacle to a fuller spectrum of emotion and thematic romanticism – can be fully absorbed,” he said.

Francisco noted that there were some hitches in the film’s plot and Cameron’s “own inability to fight back” regarding elements of the next installment in the franchise. From the looks of it, there are a few unresolved narratives that viewers will have to wait to see in future Avatar films.

“As is the case with most of Cameron’s films, what elevates his work is the bravado of his execution, allowing magnificent beasts and sets to take center stage on the screen, while large-scale battles have tight spatial and rhythmic coherence,” wrote he. “Both are always awe-inspiring. The bioluminescent creatures and caves are not just a dazzling sight to distract us, they work in tandem with the narrative to create a revelation.”

“Avatar 2 is definitely a showcase for visual effects company Weta FX (Pandora Na’vi characters’ faces have been made even more expressive),” wrote Charlotte O’Sullivan in her review.

“But I never thought that Cameron was God’s gift to cinema,” she added. “Throughout most of Titanic, my gut feeling was, ‘Just drown already,’ and some of the 68-year-old director’s worst tendencies show up in Avatar 2: all too familiar plot twists, overdone music. and endless footage of obscenely slender, self-consciously sexualized Na’vi bodies.”

Despite this, The Way of Water is “breathtaking,” O’Sullivan wrote, noting that after leaving the theater, she “felt like she had experienced something special.”

Like many others, O’Sullivan pointed out that the story of “Water’s Path” left a lot to be desired.

“Story-wise, this film is treading water,” she wrote. “But that’s okay, because the water is beautiful.”

Ma commented that The Path of Water was “stunningly beautiful”, comparing it to watching a David Attenborough documentary rather than CGI. However, she says the visuals aren’t enough to outweigh the lackluster plot.

“This story is a simple chase story, just a blueprint for what Cameron seems most eager to achieve, which is to see how far he can take the technological and visual aspects of filmmaking,” she wrote.

“The 3D visuals are undeniably cool, but that’s not the only reason to watch this movie,” she added. “It’s all glitz and spectacle, so for a film about the emotional depths between the Na’vi and their environment, it’s all, unfortunately, superficial.”

“In Avatar: The Way of the Water, director James Cameron sinks you so deep and floats you so gently that at times you feel like you’re not so much watching the movie as you are floating in it. wrote reviewer Justin Chang.

“As much as you’d like Cameron to leave us there – essentially to give us the most expensive and elaborate underwater party movie ever made – he can’t or won’t support all that dreamy Jacques-Yves Cousteau.” – surprise from mushrooms for more than three hours, ”he wrote. “After all, he’s James Cameron and he’s got an exhilarating old-fashioned story to tell, shitty dialogue to hand out, and, over time, a hell of an action movie to unleash with fiery shipwrecks, deadly arrows, and the size of a whale.” . , the tortoiseshell creature known as Tulkun.”

Chang said it was “wonderful” that Cameron’s presence is back on the big screen. He notes that the famed director has long been questioned for his choices in film projects – people thought he was crazy to direct Titanic – but “his latest and most ambitious film will silence most of his naysayers.”

Not everyone was enamored with Cameron’s attention to detail and massive story building.

Avatar: The Way of Water is a one-hour story that fits in a 192-minute bag, wrote Mick LaSalle in his review of the film. “There was potential here for something beautiful, a sweet and touching environmental parable that lasts a maximum of 90 minutes.”

“But no, James Cameron can’t do anything that modest,” he wrote.

LaSalle said that The Path of Water feels bloated with too many ideas competing for space within an already impressive three-hour runtime.

The Way of Water picks up where the first left off and ends with the promise of a sequel,” he wrote. “Long, long sequels. This is not a promise. This is a threat”.