Avatar: The Way of Water * * *

Yeah well I thought it was a bit wet. That's a pun but I kind of mean it.  

Story wise it's puerile. It's like The Little Mermaid (G) pumped up to PG to allow explosions and nastiness,  but still the same easy to understand dialogue and story.  The bad people are horrible and the good people are really good.  But in it's own simplistic way it covers Migration, Colonization, Racism, Whaling, De-forestation, American aggression and intimidation.

Aliens are not little green men
They are tall blue ones.

The dialogue is like Saturday Morning Cartoons - a mixture of coy sentimentality with moral guidance and tough-guy bravado.

It's pretty simple. You probably won't need to have seen the first one to get this.  Still on the planet of "Pandora", the hybrid family of a human that defected to become one of the locals (and mutated accordingly) are on the run as his ex -comrades come to hunt him down.  Fleeing the forest they take refuge amongst the water people who live on the islands: (their escape is the best part).

Visually it's spectacular and if that's what you're looking for you will not be disappointed.  It is literally another world.  (The imagery reminded me of  the album sleeves of the 70's band "Yes").  Though even the most amazed viewer might get bored in the middle bit when we are watching them play underwater for what seems eternity.  It started to feel like I was watching a screen saver. A lot of that could have been cut. It's indulgent three hour length seems quite unnecessary.

It's weird to think that this is the same director who blew us away nearly forty years ago with Terminator, which even today stands as one of the best sci-fi films ever, and now he's doing this childish picture book stuff.  

But in other ways I get it.  Forty years ago I enjoyed reading books written by William Burroughs, Charles Bukowski, Ray Bradbury et al: but now I get more satisfaction reading Goodnight Moon to my grandson. 

Maybe that's where James Cameron is at at too. Good for him.