Overall, Avatar: The Way of Water was a solid movie, worth a see and definitely worth a trip to the theater.

As befits its heritage, it was stunning visually. It had a look different from the original but you still believed that it was based on the same planet, good bit of world building.

The quality of the 3D experience was much improved from back in the day. I recommend springing for the 4DX experience if your local theater supports it. Moving seats, sprinkling water, shooting air and scents makes it a blend of move and amusement park ride. We paid a premium, but this movie made good use of its capabilities.

2 tips for 4DX:

1. As this movie had a lot of action, the fans were blowing air at you all the time making a cold theater even colder – bring a jacket!
2. The seats move around a fair bit and it’s really easy to end up with your food in your lap, even if you are holding it in your hands the whole time. I am a little surprised there wasn’t more of a disclaimer from the theater to be careful but I guess they make more money off of the food than it costs them to clean up afterwards

The plot was fine, if not well worn – this is territory that several movies have covered including the original (more on that later). The cast grew – they introduced 5 new main characters and did a reasonable job giving us enough visual and personality cues to tell them apart. Whether enough was done for us to actually care about all of them is a different matter. Part of what helped tho, is that the movie is looong, clocking in at over 3 hours.

Before I get into more nitpicky plot stuff… I will start out with an obligatory spoiler alert warning if you haven’t yet seen the movie…

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