OK, Maybe I Am Excited For 'Avatar: The Way of Water'
Thirteen years ago, in a shitty, moldy theater in suburban Pittsburgh, I took my buddy to see Avatar. This was before we knew James Cameron's sci-fi epic would make a bazillion dollars and become one of the highest-grossing films of all time, nabbing nine Academy Award nominations along the way.
None of that. Just me, my buddy, and a pair of 3D glasses, probably still lots of germs from the last kid who saw Avatar. But in a year when we were all rocking with Wii Sports and the iPhone 3GS—damn near the Stone Ages, really—watching the Na'vi, whatever the hell that was, run and skip and jump out of the same screen where I saw Chronicles of Narnia felt damn near transcendental. 3D was cool, back in the day! Especially if you were in high school. It's a theatrical experience I'd never forget. Now, it's worth repeating, nearly 13 years later, Disney is hyping up the film's sequel, Avatar: The Way of the Water, in advance of its December 16, 2022 release date. Here's our reaction to the new trailer for the film, as well as the most recent news about the future of the Avatar franchise.
Does the New Trailer Live Up to the Hype?
Well, friends, we're finally returning to Pandora. The new trailer for Avatar: The Way of Water dropped this Wednesday morning. It looks like Jake and Neytiri have built a family and grown older on Pandora, but they now face new challenges and tragedies. The trailer reveals some of the extraordinary underwater performance-capture shots that James Cameron had been developing over the past few years. In a recent interview, Cameron said that he spent a lot of time in between Avatar films indulging in his passion for deep-sea exploration. The glory and the wonder of the watery world is on full display in the second trailer for The Way of Water. Along with new adversaries, the preview features stunning new creatures that we’ve never seen before. We also glimpse of teases of moments that harken back to the powerful bond between Jake and Neytiri, with a touching utterance of the classic phrase, “I see you.” The promise of a trip back to immersive experience of Pandora is looking more and more tantalizing. Hell, maybe Cameron will pull off another miracle.
What Did the First Trailer Show Us?
It's a little strange, seeing a movie released in 2009 make a nostalgia play, but that's exactly what the first The Way of the Water trailer aims for. Instead of giving a full idea of what Jake Sully and Neytiri are up to outside of starting a family, the preview tried to remind us of why we fell in love with Pandora in the first place, the oohs and aahs you get from another planet popping out of an IMAX screen. The problem is, over the past decade or so, we've gotten a little bit spoiled. We're at the dawn of the Metaverse, whatever that is! Virtual reality headsets, smartphones, video games—the things that transport us to other worlds—have sprinted ahead of the flag Avatar planted in 2009 as the can't-beat technological achievement. Suddenly, those 3D glasses don't seem so whiz-bang. It's sad, but true. Technology tends to outpace itself.
If Avatar: The Way of Water wants to stun the world like it did back in 2009, it's going to need much more than some gorgeous views of Pandora. We're going to have three more Avatar sequels after The Way of the Water. So Avatar can't really rely on shocking us all via a pair of 3D glasses, giving another once-in-a-lifetime visual feat a la The Arrival of a Train. This time, we'll need a genuinely unforgettable story behind it all. Here's hoping we get that.
Where is Avatar Going After The Way of Water?
We've long known that Cameron envisions the Avatar saga as a five-film epic, with much of the untitled Avatar 3 (currently set for a 2024 release) already filmed. Avatar has always been more or less Cameron's vision, but he surprisingly revealed that he may not direct the final two Avatar films. “The Avatar films themselves are kind of all-consuming,” Cameron told Empire. “I’ve got some other things I’m developing as well that are exciting. I think eventually over time–I don’t know if that’s after three or after four–I’ll want to pass the baton to a director that I trust to take over, so I can go do some other stuff that I’m also interested in. Or maybe not. I don’t know.”
Now, the fate of Avatar may very well be decided this December, when we see if audiences will welcome the sci-fi epic with the same fanfare they did back in 2009. We'll keep this story updated in the meantime.
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