I went to see the re-release of the first one a few months previous and it's still awesome. Cliched as fuck yes, but it's pulpy fun, the story structure is solid, it looks fantastic, the score is great, there are lots of really strong performances, the world design is so cool, and Cameron's mastery is on full display with not a single shot or edit that is any less than perfect. I had long said that as soon as my 3D telly packed in, I'd never watch this movie again, but I'm starting to think that maybe I would watch it in 2D after all...
So now I've seen The Way Of Water and... I quite liked it. It felt like Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes to Avatar's Dawn: it does a lot of cool world-building and looks even more amazing, but it also feels a lot more franchise-minded, it's not as lean.
I thought the jungle was a great choice for 3D in the first movie, but I hadn't considered how good the ocean would be - loads of opportunity for different layers of focus with all the sea life swimming around, plus you've got characters who can swim in and out of the screen and vertical space to play with as well. I really enjoyed the amount of time it spent just getting to know these new surroundings, meeting the new characters, social structures, stuff like that. Honestly it only really started to sag when it was building up to the final battle, which didn't feel as epic or as tightly structured as the first movie's climax. I think it suffered a little from not really having any human characters, too.
I'd definitely watch another one, and I'll probably watch this one at the cinema again if I happen to be visiting friends in a city with a substantially better cinema set-up (say London for the BFI), but will I pick it up on 3D blu-ray? I'm not sure. Might wait and see if Avatar 3 manages to make this one feel a bit more vital in retrospect.
Rating: Pretty Good.
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