Because my sense of the passage of time is completely broken, I found it strange and surprising that Avatar: the way of water was "already" available on Disney+. I knew I wanted to see it, and I fully expected to be entertained and swept away, Cameron style. Three hours did seem like a whole lot of time, but of course our first "we will give it half an hour and see how it feels"-session ended up being half the movie, no problem.
Once inside of the movie, the world once again engulfed me. The Avatar movies feel like they make maximum use of current movie technology, and somehow make it all serve to make the movies feel better and more alive, rather than showing off for the sake of it. They feel sharper and more alive than anything else. They live and breathe HDR. Characters walk between shadow and bright daylight, and the difference is sharp and beautiful. I did not need to see those dreadlocks move like that in the rays of sunlight in the entrance to the shady tent, but wow do I enjoy it now that I think about it. And it feels like it is just made to be there, and to make the world alive.
I completely understand why they showed The way of water in their demos of Apple's Vision pro headset, it must be stunning to experience that way. I care somewhere between zero and a negative amount about the story (significantly less than I did in the first movie), but I already want to watch it again. On a bigger screen, if possible. With bigger sound. And sitting as close to that big screen as I can.
The story though … In a show of the same lack of imaginating which would make me unable to create this film, I can not understand why and how they let the story feel this meaningless and … kind of dumb, really? Sure, the story is there to drive showing off the world, and knows it full fell, but I still feel that even less of it would have made the film stronger. Or at least have parent characters say the actual right thing to their kids a few times? Motivate running away and hiding a lot more, or a lot less.
It was also strange in itself to find myself watching a Cameron spectacle and almost dreading the action sequences. The quiet moments of beauty - and there were so many of them - were what I was there for, the action sequences were where the dumb stuff happened, dumb decisions were made, and the story I did not really care about got pushed ever so slightly forward.
Fantastic movie, want to watch again. But may skip some of the plot along the way.