Avatar: The Way of Water

How are we feeling about the Avatar franchise? The original Avatar was released on December 18th , 2009. Thirteen years ago, Do you even remember 2009?  The song of the year was "Boom Boom Pow" by The Black Eyed Peas. The current iPhone was the 3GS !!! And we had Avatar which became the highest grossing movie of all time. Now we have this. With a reported budget of $250 million , based on the trailer, this thing is poised for the big screen. Do we even go to movie theaters anymore? The big caveat is it clocks in at just over 3 hours ( 3 hours 10 minutes) !! Is there an intermission? Gone With the Wind (3 hours 42 mins) had an intermission. . Ben-Hur (3 hours 32 minutes) had an intermission, 2001: A Space Odyssey  ( 2 hours 19 minutes) had an intermission . Dances With Wolves ( 2 hours and a minute) had an intermission. I think intermissions are cool but alas Avengers: Endgame (3 hours, 2 minutes)  2022’s Elvis (2 hours, 39 minutes) didn't have intermissions. We have history and precedent with Avatar The Way of the Water's director, writer and producer James Cameron in his Titanic (3 hours, 14 minutes)  and Avatar (2 hours, 40 minutes) flicks having nary an intermission. In fact Cameron has told us to pound sand. He told told Empire magazine: “I don't want anybody whining about length when they sit and binge-watch (TV) for eight hours. ... Here's the big social paradigm shift that has to happen: It's OK to get up and go pee.” Sigh. A new trailer for Avatar: The Way of Water came out this week ,amping up the hype train. 

This new full Avatar 2 trailer follows a teaser trailer that came out in May and drew 25 million views in five months. And its visually spectacular. Cameron shot many sequences underwater, using new cameras developed for that purpose.

Getting into the nuts and bolts of the plot. Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Stephen Lang, CCH Pounder and Giovanni Ribisi are among those reprising their roles from the  original film, with Sigourney Weaver back in a different part. Worthington plays Jake Sully, who left his human body to wed Saldaña's Neytiri and join her in life on Pandora. Weaver played a human, Dr. Grace Augustine, in the first film, but returns as Jake and Neytiri's daughter Kiri. Kate Winslet joins the cast as a free diver named Ronal. Winslet learned free diving for the film and reportedly held her breath for a whopping seven minutes.

It opens nationwide December 16th. 

Note three sequels to this film are planned, coming in 2024, 2026 and 2028 and I do believe principal filming has begun for the 2024 release. 

Are we going to see this at the theater?

Trailer here: