Avatar: The Way of Water is a visual spectacle from start to finish. The scenery, cinematography, and CGI constantly had a smile on my face, but is it enough to carry the film?

While the previous entry had its fair share of story-related problems, the sequel corrects most of my issues and delivers a heartfelt family story. The main improvement from the first entry is character development. I had a genuine emotional connection with the Sully family and was invested in their safety. These feelings created some genuine tension when any of the family members were in danger, I felt my body tense up as I waited to see what the conflict's conclusion would be, which is a gigantic improvement from the first film where I could not care less who died or survived.

The return of Stephan Lang as Colonel Miles Quaritch brought the overly campy villain back to the screen in a bad way. Quaritch is a caricature of a "villain" where his actions and attitude are evil for the sake of being the bad guy. His anger toward Jake Sully does seem a little bit more believable hear as his previous self was murdered by him, but the over-the-top theatrics are just too much for me.

Another aspect of the story that did not feel right to me was the children constantly disobeying their parents for the sake of plot progression. Countless times, Jake Sully's kids would do the opposite of what they were told, leaving them in a vulnerable state to be captured. This danger forced Jake Sully to constantly expose himself and help draw the threat ever closer to his family. The moments that result are great as we get to see the dichotomy between Jake being a father and his militaristic background. This is at the heart of the story and worked for me.

I was surprised to see how well-paced the film was despite its over three-hour runtime. There are some pretty slow parts, specifically the second act, but the visuals and the character journeys that happen during these parts are so interesting that they didn't impact me negatively; I was just happy to see new and beautiful aspects of Pandora.

The performances were fantastic throughout. It is a testament to both the actors/actresses and also the technology that can display such complex emotions and visual nuances on entirely CGI creatures. Sigourney Weaver was a highlight with Kiri, who was at the forefront of the entire film. To be completely honest, I did not even know she was played by Weaver; the mix between her performance and voice modulation created a compelling 14-year-old girl that was a huge part of the story. Sam Worthington was incredible and Zoe Saldana was perfect. Saldana does so much acting with her facial expressions as Ney'tirl, which is on display during many emotional scenes her character goes through. She was a bit sidelined during this film, but when she was on screen, she was impactful.

Avatar has some incredibly heavy themes at play. One of the strongest and most relevant messages was anti-poaching. I mention this because there was such a hard scene in this movie that had me on the verge of tears. It was something I'd never seen in the film; it was both beautiful in the brutality it displayed and the emotional response of the Na'vi.

Overall, this movie is deserving of the hype and needs to be seen on the biggest screen available. James Cameron delivered on the 13 years build-up to the sequel and has gotten me excited for the three sequels planned for the next decade.

Score: 88%
Verdict: Excellent