“Imagine Avengers Endgame, but longer and awful.” said sophomore, Jaden Rigueiro, about the new film, “Avatar: The Way of Water,” and I couldn’t agree more. 

The way of water? More like “The Way of Wasted Time.” The new sequel to Avatar was two hours too long with too many plot holes to count. While visually stunning, you can tell the obvious attempt to try and hide the lazy writing with CGI. Is the movie worth seeing? Kind of. If you love amazing visuals and extremely cool and creative designs, it’s worth it. If you’re more into the plot and storyline, it’s not worth spending $30 on movie theatre food and sitting down in extreme boredom for 3 hours. 

Let’s start with the script because it was the film’s biggest downfall. So many of the lines were written so terribly there was no way an actor could deliver it in a way that seemed serious. The movie was directed by James Cameron, who also directed the first Avatar film. There was a painfully obvious grab from the writers to try and connect with the younger generation, and it physically hurt to watch. The Avatar children in the film were using slang words like “bruh,” “dude,” and “cuz,” which makes no sense. Where would they have learned this from? Where would they have picked this up from if they were not from earth? Their dad never says these once during the film, so how could they even know about it? Not only does it make no sense, but the delivery was also terrible. While an extremely powerful and dramatic scene was playing out, the mood would be slaughtered by one of the boys asking their “cuz” if they’re alright, followed by a “bruh, I’m okay, dude.” 

Another one of the most common complaints was the length of the film. After what seemed like more than an hour, I was still asking myself where the water people were. The entire center of the film doesn’t come in until it’s far too late. When the water people do finally come into play, they spend too much time messing around with what the wildlife is like in their home, and then even more time with the military aspect of the Sky People. Both are fine, but pick one! They spent so much time trying to expand on both aspects for way too long, resulting in a boring movie that has me asking when it was over. I think I got whiplash seeing them go back and forth between the two extremes. I loved seeing the Na’vi interact with the new wildlife; it was one of my pros for the film. Seeing the design for the wildlife and animals in the film is what made it bearable, but it was hard to keep jumping back and forth between the war with the Sky People and some sad whales.

“I felt like visually it was rather stunning, better than the first. The creature design and biology was inspired by real life which I really enjoyed. As for the plot, it was very… interesting. They had SO much going on. I ended up feeling very overwhelmed. It started to hurt my brain,” said Jaden Rigueiro.