As you can probably infer from the title of this article, I am incredibly late to this franchise. An Avatar late-bloomer, if you will. As someone who takes pride in being the “pop culture friend”—meaning that I am either all-knowing about entertainment or my friends are alarmingly out of touch—I’ve always known about Avatar. Not that it’s that difficult, considering that it’s literally the highest-grossing film of all time. I mean, Avatar has brought in a mind-blowing $3 billion in box office sales. Despite all of this, however, I never once considered watching the film. All I really knew was that there were blue people, which wasn’t particularly enthralling. Was anyone else also constantly confused about the difference between Avatar and Avatar: The Last Airbender? Seriously, can we talk about the epidemic of naming things “Avatar?”
Needless to say, I eventually got around to watching Avatar…in 2023. The film came out when I was six-years-old and I was 19 by the time I got around to viewing it, but no need to linger on that fact. And the embarrassing thing? It only took three consistent days of random Avatar edits on my TikTok feed to convince me of the film’s greatness. Truly, it’s depressing that I refused to watch the highest-grossing film of all time until TikTok showed me some silly little edits undoubtedly created by a middle-schooler. Suddenly I was obsessed with these blue people. So, in the early days of January, I made my way onto Disney+ (thank god my subscription hadn’t run out) and sat through all 2 hours and 42 minutes of pure cinematic bliss. I knew that as soon as the credits started rolling that my personality would now revolve around liking this film for the foreseeable future. #TeamJakeAndNeytiri members rise up.
Of course, the edits that led me to watching Avatar were a product of the film’s long-awaited sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water. So, naturally, I watched the first film once more a few days later before scurrying over to the movie theater like the weirdly-obsessed Avatar adult that I’ve apparently turned into. The reason this sequel took so long is supposedly because of director James Cameron’s commitment to a long production state in order to focus on the special effects. Thirteen years seems like overkill if you ask me, but I’ll admit that the amount of training and time that goes into a production like that is absolutely insane. Most of the sequel takes place in the water, meaning that all the actors were actually filming and doing their stunts in the water. Kate Winslet learned how to hold her breath for over seven minutes during filming, which makes my chest constrict just thinking about it. Then again, I failed to pass the swimming test at sleepaway camp in 2016, so I might just be projecting my trauma.
Anyways, Avatar: The Way of Water was amazing. The cast consisted of many of the original members, such as Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Stephen Lang and Sigourney Weaver (although her new role in the sequel was a teenager, which was lowkey weird). Some of the new cast members included Jamie Flatters, Britain Dalton, Bailey Bass, Trinity Bliss and Jack Champion. Be warned: if you thought that the original film was long, the sequel is a whopping 3 hours and 12 minutes. I honestly wish that the film was even longer, but the theater-inducing need to pee had set in about halfway through and I was too scared to get up and miss anything. I’m seriously thinking about starting a petition to require intermission for movies longer than 2 hours. Nevertheless, I think the sequel definitely lived up to hype, and I loved the introduction of new characters like Lo’ak (obviously my favorite) and Neteyam (RIP king). Avatar: The Way of Water has become the 5th highest-grossing movie of all time since its recent release in December 2022, and it made James Cameron the only director to have directed 3/5 of the highest-grossing films of all time, with the addition of Titanic. Luckily, for all my Avatar stans, new or old, there will be three more films in the franchise. Hopefully, for my sanity, I won’t be in my nineties by the time the fifth one comes out.