3d avatar movie reviews

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, avatar: the way of water.

Now streaming on:

James Cameron wants you to believe. He wants you to believe that aliens are killing machines, humanity can defeat time-traveling cyborgs, and a film can transport you to a significant historical disaster. In many ways, the planet of Pandora in " Avatar " has become his most ambitious manner of sharing this belief in the power of cinema. Can you leave everything in your life behind and experience a film in a way that's become increasingly difficult in an era of so much distraction? As technology has advanced, Cameron has pushed the limits of his power of belief even further, playing with 3D, High Frame Rate, and other toys that weren't available when he started his career. But one of the many things that is so fascinating about "Avatar: The Way of Water" is how that belief manifests itself in themes he's explored so often before. This wildly entertaining film isn't a retread of "Avatar," but a film in which fans can pick out thematic and even visual elements of " Titanic ," " Aliens ," "The Abyss," and "The Terminator" films. It's as if Cameron has moved to Pandora forever and brought everything he cares about. (He's also clearly never leaving.) Cameron invites viewers into this fully realized world with so many striking images and phenomenally rendered action scenes that everything else fades away.

Maybe not right away. "Avatar: The Way of Water" struggles to find its footing at first, throwing viewers back into the world of Pandora in a narratively clunky way. One can tell that Cameron really cares most about the world-building mid-section of this film, which is one of his greatest accomplishments, so he rushes through some of the set-ups to get to the good stuff. Before then, we catch up with Jake Sully ( Sam Worthington ), a human who is now a full-time Na'vi and partners with Neytiri ( Zoe Saldana ), with whom he has started a family. They have two sons—Neteyam ( Jamie Flatters ) and Lo'ak ( Britain Dalton )—and a daughter named Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), and they are guardians of Kiri ( Sigourney Weaver ), the offspring of Weaver's character from the first film.

Family bliss is fractured when the 'sky people' return, including an avatar Na'vi version of one Colonel Miles Quaritch ( Stephen Lang ), who has come to finish what he started, including vengeance on Jake for the death of his human form. He comes back with a group of former-human-now-Na'vi soldiers who are the film's main antagonists, but not the only ones. "Avatar: The Way of Water" once again casts the military, planet-destroying humans of this universe as its truest villains, but the villains' motives are sometimes a bit hazy. Around halfway through, I realized it's not very clear why Quaritch is so intent on hunting Jake and his family, other than the plot needs it, and Lang is good at playing mad.

The bulk of "Avatar: The Way of Water" hinges on the same question Sarah Connor asks in the "Terminator" movies—fight or flight for family? Do you run and hide from the powerful enemy to try and stay safe or turn and fight the oppressive evil? At first, Jake takes the former option, leading them to another part of Pandora, where the film opens up via one of Cameron's longtime obsessions: H2O. The aerial acrobatics of the first film are supplanted by underwater ones in a region run by Tonowari ( Cliff Curtis ), the leader of a clan called the Metkayina. Himself a family man—his wife is played by Kate Winslet —Tonowari is worried about the danger the new Na'vi visitors could bring but can't turn them away. Again, Cameron plays with moral questions about responsibility in the face of a powerful evil, something that recurs in a group of commercial poachers from Earth. They dare to hunt sacred water animals in stunning sequences during which you have to remind yourself that none of what you're watching is real.

The film's midsection shifts its focus away from Sully/Quaritch to the region's children as Jake's boys learn the ways of the water clan. Finally, the world of "Avatar" feels like it's expanding in ways the first film didn't. Whereas that film was more focused on a single story, Cameron ties together multiple ones here in a far more ambitious and ultimately rewarding fashion. While some of the ideas and plot developments—like the connection of Kiri to Pandora or the arc of a new character named Spider ( Jack Champion )—are mostly table-setting for future films, the entire project is made richer by creating a larger canvas for its storytelling. While one could argue that there needs to be a stronger protagonist/antagonist line through a film that discards both Jake & Quaritch for long periods, I would counter that those terms are intentionally vague here. The protagonist is the entire family and even the planet on which they live, and the antagonist is everything trying to destroy the natural world and the beings that are so connected to it.

Viewers should be warned that Cameron's ear for dialogue hasn't improved—there are a few lines that will earn unintentional laughter—but there's almost something charming about his approach to character, one that weds old-fashioned storytelling to breakthrough technology. Massive blockbusters often clutter their worlds with unnecessary mythologies or backstories, whereas Cameron does just enough to ensure this impossible world stays relatable. His deeper themes of environmentalism and colonization could be understandably too shallow for some viewers—and the way he co-opts elements of Indigenous culture could be considered problematic—and I wouldn't argue against that. But if a family uses this as a starting point for conversations about those themes then it's more of a net positive than most blockbusters that provide no food for thought. 

There has been so much conversation about the cultural impact of "Avatar" recently, as superheroes dominated the last decade of pop culture in a way that allowed people to forget the Na'vi. Watching "Avatar: The Way of Water," I was reminded of how impersonal the Hollywood machine has become over the last few decades and how often the blockbusters that truly make an impact on the form have displayed the personal touch of their creator. Think of how the biggest and best films of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg couldn't have been made by anyone else. "Avatar: The Way of Water" is a James Cameron blockbuster, through and through. And I still believe in him.

Available only in theaters on December 16th. 

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

Now playing

We Were the Lucky Ones

Robert daniels.

Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus

Glenn kenny.

Problemista

Monica castillo.

Kaiya Shunyata

Dune: Part Two

Film credits.

Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)

Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence and intense action, partial nudity and some strong language.

192 minutes

Sam Worthington as Jake Sully

Zoe Saldaña as Neytiri

Sigourney Weaver as Kiri

Stephen Lang as Colonel Miles Quaritch

Kate Winslet as Ronal

Cliff Curtis as Tonowari

Joel David Moore as Norm Spellman

CCH Pounder as Mo'at

Edie Falco as General Frances Ardmore

Brendan Cowell as Mick Scoresby

Jemaine Clement as Dr. Ian Garvin

Jamie Flatters as Neteyam

Britain Dalton as Lo'ak

Trinity Bliss as Tuktirey

Jack Champion as Javier 'Spider' Socorro

Bailey Bass as Tsireya

Filip Geljo as Aonung

Duane Evans Jr. as Rotxo

Giovanni Ribisi as Parker Selfridge

Dileep Rao as Dr. Max Patel

• James Cameron

Writer (story by)

• Amanda Silver
• Josh Friedman
• Shane Salerno

Cinematographer

• Russell Carpenter
• Stephen E. Rivkin
• David Brenner
• John Refoua
• Simon Franglen

Latest blog posts

The Scene That Clint Eastwood Cut to Make Unforgiven a Classic

Ape Shall Not Kill Ape: A Look at the Entire Apes Franchise

​Criterion Celebrates the Films That Forever Shifted Our Perception of Kristen Stewart​

The Estate of George Carlin Destroys AI George Carlin in Victory for Copyright Protection (and Basic Decency)

'Avatar' 4K Re-Release Review: James Cameron's Pandora Has Never Looked So Beautiful

James Cameron's space epic has aged like fine wine.

In 2009, James Cameron released Avatar , a sci-fi adventure that revolutionized the cinema industry by offering the most realistic digital world ever created. At that point, Cameron had already pushed practical effects to its limits with Titanic , another box office giant still holding strong as one of the most successful films of all time. But with Avatar , he proved that it was possible to develop a movie almost entirely inside a computer and still make it look real. Since then, Hollywood has been trying– and mostly failing–to mimic Cameron’s digital magic. However, after thirteen years, can Avatar still amaze us? After all, technology evolved so much that the movie cannot remain as beautiful as we remembered it, right? Lastly, is it worth spending our hard-earned money on an expensive 3D ticket? Well, unfortunately for your wallet, the 4K remastered version of Avatar is well worth another trip to theaters, especially for the lucky people who can catch it on IMAX 3D.

There’s no question that Avatar ’s stunning digital world and immersive 3D technology helped to boost the original box office beyond Hollywood’s wildest dreams. Avatar eventually became the highest-grossing film ever at the time of its release, and the film remains near the top of all-time box office earners. It’s no wonder that after Avatar ’s release, many big blockbuster titles were distributed in 3D, as big studios tried to make money with the new technology. However, no other movie ever got close to reproducing what Cameron did. That’s mainly because the filmmaker took a long time to make sure Avatar would look as he wanted it to, instead of rushing the post-production and release. So, with an improved image and sound quality, Pandora never looked so good, and the alien planet is ready to suck you again into a world of wonder and mystery.

After more than a decade, we could expect Pandora to be less remarkable, but Avatar might look even better after the new 4K remaster. We’ve been overloaded with CGI-based productions that always feel artificial for a while now. So many movies just feel off that sometimes we wonder if the issue doesn’t come from the technology itself instead of individual productions. With Avatar ’s remastered version hitting theaters, there’s no doubt rushed development is at fault. After thirteen years, Cameron’s classic puts any recent superhero production to shame. Maybe big studios wouldn't be willing to wait a decade before releasing each franchise installment. Still, Avatar stands to the test of time to show how thoughtful post-production can turn some movies into eternal classics.

RELATED: Even If You Hate the Movie, ‘Avatar’s Cultural Impact Can’t Be Ignored

But the new coat of paint Avatar receives in this remaster would be wasted if Cameron’s epic couldn’t move the audience. So what about the story? Does Avatar still have a theme that can resonate in the current cultural landscape? Unfortunately, the movie's ecological message aged too well, as thirteen years later, we face the irreversible destruction of the planet by human hands. The real-world situation is so dire that we've been discussing the colonization of other planets more seriously now, making Avatar all the more relevant. The movie has greedy corporations destroying lives to increase their profits, indigenous communities threatened with extinction due to the predatory exploration of the environment, and even scientists who get ignored when their voices challenge the status quo. It’s somewhat sad to notice how Avatar has become more relevant over time.

Even those unwilling to think about Avatar 's major themes can still have a good time, as the movie is an action-packed crowd-pleaser that hits all the right notes. First, the film is an underdog story in which a broken man finds meaning and becomes a leader against all odds. Second, it is also a military story in which a soldier defies command to fight for what is right. Third, Avatar is a tale of man versus nature, where the symbiotic relationship with the world around us is more powerful than the metal machines humanity builds. Finally, it’s a love story in which two people from different worlds unite their hearts and their tribes. It’s impossible to remain indifferent in theaters, and thanks to more than a decade of distance from the original release, it’s possible to cheer for Jake and the Na’vi as if we were watching their story for the first time.

With the 4K remaster of Avatar hitting theaters, there’s no doubt left about why the movie continues to be an outlier at the box office. Cameron’s epic can still thrill the audience with breathtaking set pieces, bring them to tears with moving moments, and amaze people willing to explore a fantasy land like no other. Every frame is developed with such care that the movie remains one of the most beautiful works of art ever created by Hollywood. The IMAX 3D version of Avatar , in particular, makes revisiting Pandora even more staggering, as it allows us to watch Cameron’s work just as the filmmaker intended. With an ultra-realistic sound and image, Avatar can numb our senses to the outside world and take us on an unforgettable two-and-half-hour trip through a land filled with beauty and amazement.

The remastered version of Avatar is currently available in theaters and IMAX.

• Tickets & Showtimes
• Trending on RT

Avatar: The Way of Water First Reviews: A Magical, Visually Sublime Cinematic Experience Well Worth the Wait

Early reviews of james cameron's long-in-the-making sequel say it feels like an immersive theme park thrill ride with interesting characters, breathtaking action, and a better story than the first..

TAGGED AS: First Reviews , movies , news

The first of Avatar’ s sequels is finally here, 13 years after the release of the record-breaking original. For those who’ve been anxiously looking forward to Avatar: The Way of Water and those who have been doubting its necessity, the good news is that the movie is worth the wait and another work of essential theatrical entertainment from James Cameron. The first reviews of the follow-up celebrate its expected visual spectacle as well as its slightly improved script and new cast members. You’re going to want to return to Pandora after reading these excerpts.

Here’s what critics are saying about Avatar: The Way of Water :

Does it live up to expectations?

The Way of the Water is a transformative movie experience that energizes and captivates the senses through its visual storytelling, making the return to Pandora well worth the wait. – Mae Abdulbaki, Screen Rant

Spending more than a decade pining for Pandora was worth it. Cameron has delivered the grandest movie since, well, Avatar . – Johnny Oleksinski, New York Post

This latest and most ambitious picture will stun most of his naysayers into silence. – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

Is it better than the original?

Like all great sequels, The Way of Water retrospectively deepens the original. – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

Avatar: The Way of Water is as visually exhilarating and sweepingly told as its predecessor; the plot is more emotionally vigorous. – Johnny Oleksinski, New York Post

(Photo by ©Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

So it’s not just more of the same?

Any “been here, actually do remember this” déjà vu washes all the way off the minute the action finally plunges under the surface. – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

[It is] meticulous world-building as astonishing and enveloping as anything we’ve ever seen on screen. – Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly

The brand-extension imperatives that typically govern sequels are happily nowhere in evidence. – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

Does it have a better script?

The sequel’s story is spread a bit thin, though there is certainly more depth than the first film. – Mae Abdulbaki, Screen Rant

In terms of narrative sophistication and even more so dialogue, this $350 million sequel is almost as basic as its predecessor, even feeble at times. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

The story is still just okay. – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

Will we care enough about the story and characters regardless?

Avatar: The Way of Water is such a staggering improvement over the original because its spectacle doesn’t have to compensate for its story; in vintage Cameron fashion, the movie’s spectacle is what allows its story to be told so well. – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

The movie’s overt themes of familial love and loss, its impassioned indictments of military colonialism and climate destruction, are like a meaty hand grabbing your collar; it works because they work it. – Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly

Watching The Way of Water , one rolls their eyes only to realize they’re welling with tears. – Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair

I’m sorry, but as I watched The Way of Water  the only part of me that was moved was my eyeballs. – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

Are there any standout performances?

Saldaña and Winslet have poignant moments…and Dalton and Champion are standouts among the young newcomers. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

The most dynamic portrayal probably belongs to Lang, whose Quaritch is so relentless in his pursuit of Jake that he becomes a force of nature. – Tim Grierson, Screen International

How is the action?

The open-water clash that dominates the final hour is a commandingly sustained feat of action filmmaking. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

Any hack can make stuff blow up real good; Cameron makes stuff glow up real good. – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

Are the visuals as spectacular as they’re supposed to be?

One can’t say enough good things about the film’s visuals — each frame is more breathtaking and magical than the last. – Mae Abdulbaki, Screen Rant

The world both above and below the waterline is a thing to behold, a sensory overload of sound and color so richly tactile that it feels psychedelically, almost spiritually sublime. – Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly

What’s most astonishing about The Way of Water is the persuasive case it makes for CGI. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

(Photo by Mark Fellman/©Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

But how is that high frame rate?

It’s a rather soulless feel, as it was in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit films. But it can make you feel like you’re sharing the same space with the characters. – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

While the approach can sometimes prove distracting, the film is far more persuasive than Ang Lee’s recent experiments in the form. – Tim Grierson, Screen International

The use of high frame rate (a sped-up 48 frames per second) tends to work better underwater than on dry land, where the overly frictionless, motion-smoothed look might put you briefly in mind of a Na’vi soap opera. – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

Does it feel like more than just your average movie?

At times you don’t feel like you’re watching a movie so much as floating in one. – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

There are times when it can seem as if there isn’t a screen at all, and that the action is unfolding right in front of you. – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

It’s truly a movie crossed with a virtual-reality theme-park ride. – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

Do we need to see it in a theater?

It’s the most rapturous, awe-inducing, only in theaters return to the cinema of attractions since Godard experimented with double exposure 3D in Goodbye to Language . – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

Will it leave us excited for Avatar 3 ?

Where it will flow next is a mystery, and it’d be disingenuous of me to suggest I’m not eager to find out. – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

Avatar: The Way of Water opens everywhere on December 16, 2022.

On an Apple device? Follow Rotten Tomatoes on Apple News .

Related News

Weekend Box Office Results: Godzilla x Kong Holds Strong

30 Most Popular Movies Right Now: What to Watch In Theaters and Streaming

The Most Anticipated Movies of 2024

TV Premiere Dates 2024

Free Movies Online: 100 Fresh Movies to Watch Online For Free

Movie & TV News

Featured on rt.

April 8, 2024

25 Most Popular TV Shows Right Now: What to Watch on Streaming

Top Headlines

• Best Movies of 2024: Best New Movies to Watch Now –
• 25 Most Popular TV Shows Right Now: What to Watch on Streaming –
• 30 Most Popular Movies Right Now: What to Watch In Theaters and Streaming –
• Best Horror Movies of 2024 Ranked – New Scary Movies to Watch –
• Box Office 2024: Top 10 Movies of the Year –
• Best TV Shows of 2024: Best New Series to Watch Now –

Filed under:

Avatar 2 marks a dramatic step forward for director James Cameron

But The Way of Water is a step back for the endlessly distracting HFR presentation

Share this story

• Share this on Facebook
• Share this on Reddit
• Share All sharing options

Share All sharing options for: Avatar 2 marks a dramatic step forward for director James Cameron

​​There are two thoughts that you never want to cross your mind at a movie theater. One is “Did I just step in gum?” The other is “Is this supposed to look this way?”

Avatar: The Way of Water , James Cameron’s fundamentally enjoyable and exciting sequel to the 2009 blockbuster Avatar , is meant to represent a major technological advance in cinematic exhibition. Time will tell whether that’s the case. But the fact is that many viewers will have a vexing experience if they see the picture in what’s considered the optimum format.

The first press screenings of the long-delayed 192-minute opus, which reportedly cost somewhere between $250 million and $400 million to make, were held at theaters equipped to project the film in a high frame rate (HFR). You may have experienced this with Gemini Man , Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk , or Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy. It’s fair to say that HFR hasn’t really taken off, unlike the wave of 3D that temporarily changed the cinema landscape when Avatar was released. But director/explorer Cameron boasted in October that he’d found a “simple hack” that would work as a game-changer. In short, he used advanced technology to essentially toggle The Way of Water between 48 frames per second and the traditional 24.

On paper, this sounds like a nice compromise. But three-plus hours of the shifting dynamic, without the ability to just settle into one or the other, is actually worse than simply watching an entire HFR movie. To use an old expression, you can’t ride two horses with one behind. And this is all the more upsetting because so much of the film is truly splendid.

Avatar: The Way of Water tells a simple but engaging story in an imaginative, beautiful environment. It’s more than three hours long, and it unfortunately takes close to a full third of that time to get rolling. But once it does — once former human Marine turned Pandoran native Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), his Na’vi mate Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), and their brood of four half-Na’vi, half-Avatar children take refuge from the forest in a watery part of the world — the sense of wonder hits like a tidal wave.

The story setup is simple: Sky People (the rapacious, militarized humans of the Resources Development Administration) are back on Pandora after the events of Avatar , and this time, they want something even more unobtainable than the element unobtainium. No spoilers, but let’s say that extracting this stuff from Pandora isn’t just dangerous, it’s a crime against everything the Na’vi hold dear. Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), reborn in a cloned Na’vi Avatar body, is leading the charge to kill that turncoat/insurgent Jake Sully, and won’t let anything stand in his way. Oorah!

In the second hour, the action picks up. Jake and Neytiri’s family becomes a collective fish out of water, almost literally, moving in with an aquatic tribe of Na’vi and adapting to its aquatic lifestyle. This is where Cameron’s rich soak in his invented world is most fulfilling. There’s about an hour of just floatin’ around a reef. The Sully kids have scuffles with the local bullies; the oddball daughter learns how to plug her hair into sponges and reefs; the adorable runt puts on translucent floaty wings and zooms around. It goes on for a quite a while, and the display of visual creativity is breathtaking.

Hour three is when things get wild. Cameron, an action director with few equals, is in conversation with himself, upping the stakes and testing his own resume. There’s a thrilling, emotional chase, and then a daylight battle sequence that’s propulsive, energetic, and original. It involves a gargantuan sea beast coming in off the top rope in a way that left my theater cheering.

Cameron isn’t generally known as a comic director, but there’s always been a humorous element to his action sequences. Think of Jamie Lee Curtis caterwauling and mugging during the causeway rescue in True Lies , or Robert Patrick’s T-1000 rising up from behind a soda machine as killer checker-patterned goop in Terminator 2: Judgment Day . What, we weren’t supposed to laugh at that first reveal of Sigourney Weaver in the mech suit in Aliens ? But the battle in the last third of The Way of Water is different.

Maybe Cameron reacquainted himself with the work of Sam Raimi. Maybe he’s drinking from the same cup as S.S. Rajamouli , who made the magnificent, absolutely ludicrous Indian import RRR . In The Way of Water , Cameron leans all the way into manic mayhem, smash-cutting from one outrageous image to the next. The final act of this movie shows off a freeing attitude he’s never fully embraced before in his action — even action that’s strikingly similar, like the massive sinking ship sequence in Titanic . James Cameron has some expertise in this arena, but this time out, it feels like he’s having a lot more fun.

It’s unlikely that The Way of Water will be a financial watershed on the same level as 2009’s Avatar . The 3D tech was so new back then, and the world-building and the use of CGI environments were both so unprecedented. It was a once-in-a-lifetime move forward for film technology and immersive storytelling. Much like Disney’s recent sequel Disenchanted , The Way of Water is arriving in a cinematic environment that was completely reshaped by its predecessor — and there are no tricks here that move filmmaking forward in the same way.

The closest Cameron comes is that shifting HFR trick, which winds up being more of a distraction than a bonus. Think about the change you notice at the perimeter of the screen when watching a Christopher Nolan or Mission: Impossible movie in an IMAX theater. The material shot in the large IMAX format blows out to fill the whole frame, changing the aspect ratio. The back and forth of the masking at the top and bottom can be intrusive. Eventually, you get used to it, or you recognize it isn’t that big a deal. The change back and forth with HFR — an enormous screen toggling with a “motion smoothing” effect — is not something the eye and brain can get used to.

What’s more, this is Avatar. Most of the time, what’s in the frame is computer-generated imagery (a telepathic alien whale the size of an aircraft carrier, primed for vengeance!), so it already looks unusual. If the whole movie were in HFR, perhaps one would settle in, but jumping between the two — often from shot to shot in the same action sequence, or even within the same shot , as it is being projected in some cinemas — is simply an aesthetic experiment that fails.

This is not just being picky. The changes mean that the tempo of the action on screen looks either sped up or slowed down as the switches occur. Shots in higher frame rate couched between ones that are lower (and there are many) look like a computer game that gets stuck on a render, which then spits something out super fast. To put it an old-school way, it looks like The Benny Hill Show .

It’s just fascinating that Captain Technology, James Cameron, would want it this way. And it’s unfortunate. Because the entire message of the Avatar films is about environmentalism and preservation, about respecting the world as it is. It seems like Pandora’s creator would recognize that sometimes the best move is to leave well enough alone, instead of looking for ways to fix something that didn’t need fixing in the first place.

Avatar: The Way of Water will be released Dec. 16 in theaters.

Andor, Moon Knight, and more Disney Plus shows are available to pre-order on 4K Blu-ray

How morph went from marvel cannon fodder to x-men cartoon canon, iwájú is one of the coolest shows on disney plus.

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

• Upcoming Movies and TV shows
• Trivia & Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
• Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

Movies / TV

No results found.

• What's the Tomatometer®?
• Login/signup

Movies in theaters

• Opening this week
• Top box office
• Coming soon to theaters
• Certified fresh movies

Movies at home

• Netflix streaming
• Prime Video
• Most popular streaming movies
• What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

• Monkey Man Link to Monkey Man
• The First Omen Link to The First Omen
• The Beast Link to The Beast

New TV Tonight

• Chucky: Season 3
• Mr Bates vs The Post Office: Season 1
• Fallout: Season 1
• Franklin: Season 1
• Dora: Season 1
• Good Times: Season 1
• Beacon 23: Season 2

Most Popular TV on RT

• Ripley: Season 1
• Sugar: Season 1
• 3 Body Problem: Season 1
• A Gentleman in Moscow: Season 1
• Parasyte: The Grey: Season 1
• Shōgun: Season 1
• We Were the Lucky Ones: Season 1
• The Gentlemen: Season 1
• Palm Royale: Season 1
• Best TV Shows
• Most Popular TV
• TV & Streaming News

Certified fresh pick

• Ripley Link to Ripley
• All-Time Lists
• Binge Guide
• Comics on TV
• Five Favorite Films
• Video Interviews
• Weekend Box Office
• Weekly Ketchup
• What to Watch

Best Movies of 2024: Best New Movies to Watch Now

25 Most Popular TV Shows Right Now: What to Watch on Streaming

What to Watch: In Theaters and On Streaming

Awards Tour

Weekend Box Office Results: Godzilla x Kong Holds Strong

The Most Anticipated Movies of 2024

• Trending on RT
• Play Movie Trivia

Avatar Reviews

“Avatar” remains a transporting experience – an entertaining blend of old-fashioned adventure and technological wonder.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 8, 2024

'Avatar' is not just a visual display. It contains heart, humor, and all the aspects needed to make it a well-rounded story. Sure, the script could have been punched up with something more poetic and less obvious. Still, it’s not a bad egg.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jan 9, 2024

To be sure, this is an engaging experience in every sense, from the dramatic to the visual to the visceral. This is how blockbusters should be.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 28, 2023

STUNNING epic. Zoe Saldana performance… A fantastic one

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

It’s the world of Pandora married to the groundbreaking technology used to bring it to life that makes "Avatar" impressive, but it otherwise comes across as hollow, spectacle for the sake of it with little else to offer.

Full Review | Jul 6, 2023

Cameron is a master filmmaker whose movies will endure long after he stops making movies.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jun 23, 2023

While the visuals might rate four stars, the screenplay guarantees this falls well below more compatible marriages of substance and style found in such ground-breakers as the original King Kong, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Cameron’s own Terminator films.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 16, 2023

A groundbreaking technical achievement in filmmaking. The impressive visual effects and amazing world building more than make up for one of Cameron's weaker stories. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 8, 2023

Combining cutting-edge technology with classic, earnest storytelling is firmly the hallmark of this series, and it honestly gave me almost everything I wanted from it.

Full Review | Dec 16, 2022

Three hours breeze into deep relationships, action-packed sequences, and a tale that deserves to be repeatedly seen in cinema. #diandrareviews

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 14, 2022

It’s not just that we’ve seen the tale before… it’s that every aspect of the screenplay is terrible.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Dec 7, 2022

Cameron’s epic can still thrill the audience with breathtaking set pieces, bring them to tears with moving moments, and amaze people willing to explore a fantasy land like no other.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Oct 12, 2022

Avatar still elicits much of the same wide-eyed wonderment.

Full Review | Oct 5, 2022

The emotional stakes presented in the final battle make it so powerful, going beyond the physical scale of the sequence and what the visual effects artists achieved to create a stunning, rousing piece of filmmaking.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Sep 30, 2022

Thirteen years after its release, 'Avatar' still proves to be an exceptional blockbuster that makes the most of a simple and predictable story, to develop a visually awesome and emotional experience that must be had in the cinema. Full review in Spanish.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Sep 28, 2022

The standard in modern blockbuster filmmaking. I don’t make the rules.

Full Review | Sep 26, 2022

A meaningful blockbuster that fails to play ignorant to craft or soul, it is no wonder that so many have fallen in love with the world of Pandora and the drama that takes place on it.

[W]atching Avatar‘s 4K HDR format on IMAX 3D looks more incredible and visually stunning than the original 3D version in 2009.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Sep 25, 2022

...still a gorgeous sci-fi epic, but the characters are nowhere near as detailed.

Full Review | Sep 24, 2022

Cameron and his artists have so lovingly imagined the moon of Pandora that every shot of the film contains new wonders.

Full Review | Sep 23, 2022

‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ Review: It’s Even More Eye-Popping Than ‘Avatar,’ but James Cameron’s Epic Sequel Has No More Dramatic Dimension

The underwater sequences are beyond dazzling — they insert the audience right into the action — but the story of Jake Sully and his family, now on the run, is a string of serviceable clichés.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

• ‘The People’s Joker’ Is a Comic-Book Fantasia More Authentic Than Just About Any Comic-Book Movie 2 days ago
• ‘The Antisocial Network: Memes to Mayhem’ Review: A Netflix Doc Smartly Tells an Internet Hate Story: When 4Chan Met QAnon 3 days ago
• ‘Bad Faith: Christian Nationalism’s Unholy War on Democracy’ Review: A Scary Look at the Potential Soldiers of a Second Trump Reign 6 days ago

There are many words one could use to describe the heightened visual quality of James Cameron ’s original “ Avatar ” — words like incandescent, immersive, bedazzling. But in the 13 years since that movie came out, the word I tend to remember it best by is glowing . The primeval forest and floating-mountain landscapes of Pandora had an intoxicating fairy-tale shimmer. You wanted to live inside them, even as the story that unfolded inside them was merely okay.

“Avatar: The Way of Water” has scenes that will make your eyes pop, your head spin and your soul race. The heart of the movie is set on At’wa Attu, a tropical island reef where Jake Sully ( Sam Worthington ), the Na’vi insurrection leader who started off as a disabled U.S. Marine and became a Pandora forest dweller through his Avatar identity (he’s basically a half-breed), his now-wife, Neytiri ( Zoe Saldaña ), and their four children have taken refuge from the “Sky People” — the corrupt military cutthroats who are now fighting to colonize Pandora so that the people of Earth can have a future. On the island, Jake and his family form an uneasy alliance with the Metkayina clan, who live in harmony with their aquatic surroundings, and who look a lot like the Na’vi except that their skin is light teal and they have Maori-like tattoos.

“The Way of Water” cost a reported $350 million, meaning that it would need to be one of the three or four top-grossing movies of all time just to break even. I think the odds of that happening are actually quite good. Cameron has raised not only the stakes of his effects artistry but the choreographic flow of his staging, to the point of making “The Way of Water,” like “Avatar,” into the apotheosis of a must-see movie. The entire world will say: We’ve got to know what this thrill ride feels like .

At its height, it feels exhilarating. But not all the way through. Cameron, in “The Way of Water,” remains a fleet and exacting classical popcorn storyteller, but oh, the story he’s telling! The script he has co-written is a string of serviceable clichés that give the film the domestic adventure-thriller spine it needs, but not anything more than that. The story, in fact, could hardly be more basic. The Sky People, led again by the treacherous Col. Quaritch (Stephen Lang), have now become Avatars themselves, with Quaritch recast as a scowling Na’vi redneck in combat boots and a black crewcut. They’ve arrived in this guise to hunt Jake down. But Jake escapes with his family and hides out with the Metkayina. Quaritch and his goon squad commandeer a hunting ship and eventually track them down. There is a massive confrontation. The end.

This tale, with its bare-bones dialogue, could easily have served an ambitious Netflix thriller, and could have been told in two hours rather than three. But that’s the point, isn’t it? “The Way of Water” is braided with sequences that exist almost solely for their sculptured imagistic magic. It’s truly a movie crossed with a virtual-reality theme-park ride. Another way to put it is that it’s a live-action film that casts the spell of an animated fantasy. But though the faces of the Na’vi and the MetKayina are expressive, and the actors make their presence felt, there is almost zero dimensionality to the characters. The dimensionality is all in the images.

Reviewed at AMC Empire, Dec. 6, 2022. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 192 MIN.

• Production: A Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, 20th Century Studios release of a 20 th Century Studios, Lightstorm Entertainment production. Producers: James Cameron, Jon Landau. Executive producers: David Valdes, Richard Baneham.
• Crew: Director: James Cameron. Screenplay: James Cameron, Rick, Jaffe, Amanda Silver. Camera: Russell Carpenter. Editors: David Brenner, James Cameron, John Refoua, Stephen E. Rivkin. Music: Simon Franglen.
• With: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Stephen Lang, Britain Dalton, Sigourney Weaver, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Edie Falco, Jemaine Clement, Giovanni Rabisi, Kate Winslet.

More From Our Brands

Tesla settles lawsuit over fatal autopilot crash of apple engineer, two restored barns add to the bucolic charm of this $12.5 million hamptons farmhouse, uconn hoops spending pays off with second straight ncaa title, the best loofahs and body scrubbers, according to dermatologists, fallout to get early full-season drop on amazon — find out when, verify it's you, please log in.

Is Avatar: The Way Of Water Worth Watching In 3D?

It's easy for audiences to forget what a risk the first "Avatar" was for its time. Leading up to its 2009 release, critics questioned whether the $240 million sci-fi fantasy would find box office success with its lengthy runtime and outlandish concept. Some of these concerns extended to the film's ambitious leaps toward visual effects and 3D technology, with Slate  unfavorably comparing the effects work to that on the "Star Wars" prequel trilogy.

While "Avatar" was far from the first film to use 3D technology, it nevertheless intended to make it relevant in the public eye once again in bigger and better ways than ever before. And boy did it do just that. "Avatar" not only put all hypothetical scenarios of a historic box office failure to rest by becoming the first film to gross $2 billion worldwide (via Collider ), but it also ushered in a renewed interest in 3D technology.

So after taking one of the greatest risks in cinematic history, how does director James Cameron choose to top himself? By making "Avatar: The Way of Water," an even grander and thoroughly expensive 3D venture. Safe to say, if the 3D doesn't impress on the same level or better than the first, Cameron could be in trouble. Thankfully, according to audiences, that doesn't seem to be the case.

Reactions to the film praise the 3D above all else

Just as its 2009 predecessor had to prove its 3D technology to a suspicious public, so does "Avatar: The Way of Water" in an age where 3D movies have largely fallen out of favor. But it doesn't seem like James Cameron's aquatic adventure will have any trouble impressing audiences in that department. Early reactions to the film have been generally positive around the board for multiple reasons, and even those who aren't as hot on the film can't help but compliment the 3D visuals. Nikki Novak of Fandango was floored by the experience, tweeting, "If you think you've seen #Avatar think again. ... The 3D water world & creatures are so surreal it is downright moving."

Meanwhile, Empire's Amon Warmann had problems with the film's subplots but was happy to see the 3D technology be of top quality, tweeting, "The good news is that 3D is good again (yay!), and the action is pretty incredible (especially in the final act)." Similarly, Digital Spy's Ian Sandwell, despite having issues with the film's narrative and overabundance of characters, praised its visuals, tweeting, "Unsurprisingly, #AvatarTheWayOfWater is a visual masterpiece with rich use of 3D and breathtaking vistas."

The world of Pandora continues to amaze audiences, but for the upcoming sequels, will audiences still be as hungry for 3D motion-captured cat people?

Cameron embraces 3D movies as a choice for moviegoers

Even with the praise that "Avatar: The Way of Water" has received for its 3D presentation so far, that doesn't mean its upcoming sequels are entirely out of the water yet. Many see 3D movies as an old trend, as is evident by the rise and fall in popularity that the technique has seen over the decades. However, James Cameron isn't afraid of the outcome. While the "Titanic" director is prepared to cap off the franchise with the third installment should "Way of Water" not do well at the box office, that doesn't mean he doubts the appeal of 3D technology for audiences.

In an interview with Yahoo UK , Cameron discussed his thoughts on the idea of 3D fading into obscurity, explaining, "If you think about the way it worked back then, it was a novelty, and now it's found its level as a consumer choice. So at the time, we had 6,000 screens worldwide that were 3D screens ... Now we have 120,000. Now most big blockbuster movies are made in 3D, so people have a choice. If they like it, they can see it in 3D. If they don't like it, they can see it in 2D." Regardless of what happens with "The Way of Water" in the long run, Cameron remains a reliable source in giving moviegoers what they want, and that trusty reliability might just be what births another box office juggernaut in the making.

Avatar (2009)

• User Reviews

Awards | FAQ | User Ratings | External Reviews | Metacritic Reviews

• User Ratings
• External Reviews
• Metacritic Reviews
• Full Cast and Crew
• Release Dates
• Official Sites
• Company Credits
• Filming & Production
• Technical Specs
• Plot Summary
• Plot Keywords
• Parents Guide

Did You Know?

• Crazy Credits
• Alternate Versions
• Connections
• Soundtracks

Photo & Video

• Photo Gallery
• Trailers and Videos

Related Items

• External Sites

Related lists from IMDb users

Recently Viewed

How James Cameron's Innovative New 3D Tech Created Avatar

The 280,000-square-foot studio in Playa Vista, Calif., has a curious history as a launching pad for big, risky ideas. In the 1940s, Howard Hughes used the huge wooden airplane hangar to construct the massive plywood H-4 Hercules seaplane—famously known as the Spruce Goose. Two years ago, movie director James Cameron was in the Playa Vista studio at a crucial stage in his own big, risky project. He was viewing early footage from Avatar , the sci-fi epic he had been dreaming about since his early 20s. Cameron's studio partner, Twentieth Century Fox, had already committed to a budget of $200 million (the final cost is reportedly closer to $300 million) on what promised to be the most technologically advanced work of cinema ever undertaken. But as Cameron looked into his computer monitor, he knew something had gone terribly wrong.

The film—although "film" seems to be an anachronistic term for such a digitally intense production—takes place on a moon called Pandora, which circles a distant planet. Jake Sully, a former Marine paralyzed from the waist down during battle on Earth, has traveled to this lush, green world teeming with exotic, bioluminescent life to take part in the military's Avatar program. The human settlers are interested in mining Pandora's resources but can't breathe its toxic atmosphere, so to help explore the moon and meet with the native Na'vi who live there, Sully has his consciousness linked with a genetically engineered 9-foot-tall human–alien hybrid.

Cameron wrote his first treatment for the movie in 1995 with the intention of pushing the boundaries of what was possible with cinematic digital effects. In his view, making Avatar would require blending live-action sequences and digitally captured performances in a three-dimensional, computer-generated world. Part action–adventure, part interstellar love story, the project was so ambitious that it took 10 more years before Cameron felt cinema technology had advanced to the point where Avatar was even possible.

The scene on Cameron's screen at Playa Vista—an important turning point in the movie's plot—showed Na'vi princess Neytiri, played by Zoë Saldana, as she first encounters Sully's Avatar in the jungles of Pandora. Everything in the forest is luminous. Glowing sprites float through Pandora's atmosphere, landing on Sully as Neytiri determines if he can be trusted. Playing Sully is Sam Worthington, an Australian actor whom Cameron had plucked from obscurity to play the movie's hero. Cameron was staring directly into Worthington's face—or, rather, he was looking into the face of a digitally rendered Worthington as a creature with blue skin and large yellow eyes—but he might as well have been staring into a Kabuki mask.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/v/Aao0YSITuxc&hl=en_US&fs=1&[/youtube]

The onscreen rendering of Worthington was supposed to be a sort of digital sleight of hand—a human character inhabiting an alien body so that he could blend into an alien world, played by a human actor inhabiting a digital body in a digital world. To make the whole thing work, Worthington's performance, those subtle expressions that sell a character to the audience, had to come through the face of his Avatar . But after millions of dollars of research and development, the Avatar 's face was not only lifeless, it was downright creepy. It "scared the crap out of me," Cameron recalls. "Horrible! It was dead, it was awful, it wasn't Sam. God, I thought. We've done everything right and this is what it looks like?"

The reaction Cameron was feeling has a name. It's called the uncanny valley, and it's a problem for roboticists and animators alike. Audiences are especially sensitive to renderings of the human face, and the closer a digital creation gets to a photorealistic human, the higher expectations get. If you map human movements and expression to cute furry creatures that dance and sing like people, then audiences willingly suspend disbelief and go along with it. (Think of the penguins in Happy Feet .) But if you try to give a digital character a humanoid face, anything short of perfection can be uncanny—thus the term. Sometimes audience unease is to a character's advantage; in The Lord of the Rings the creature Gollum was supposed to be unsettling. But Cameron was looking for empathy, and in the first footage, that's not what he got.

Why is the computer-generated face of a blue, cat-eyed human–alien hybrid so important? Well, for one thing, lots of money is riding on it. But so, to an extent, is James Cameron's stature as an unstoppable force in Hollywood. Cameron has built up enormous fame and power based on his reputation as a technical innovator—pushing the science and technology of modelmaking, digital animation and camera engineering. But Cameron is perhaps even more famous as the industry's biggest risk-taker, which might have made him a lot of enemies if his risks hadn't been so spectacularly rewarded in the past. In 1997, the film Titanic taught Hollywood a powerful lesson in Cameronomics: The director's unquenchable thirst for authenticity and technological perfection required deep-sea exploratory filming, expensive scale models and pioneering computer graphics that ballooned the film's budget to $200 million. This upped the ante for everyone involved and frightened the heck out of the studio bean counters, but the bet paid off— Titanic went on to make $1.8 billion and win 11 Academy Awards.

A unique hybrid of scientist, explorer, inventor and artist, Cameron has made testing the limits of what is possible part of his standard operating procedure. He dreams almost impossibly big, and then invents ways to bring those dreams into reality. The technology of moviemaking is a personal mission to him, inextricably linked with the art. Each new film is an opportunity to advance the science of cinema, and if Avatar succeeds, it will change the way movies are captured, edited and even acted.

Filmmakers, especially those with a technical bent, admire Cameron for "his willingness to incorporate new technologies in his films without waiting for them to be perfected," says Bruce Davis, the executive director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It adds to the risky nature of Cameron's projects, but his storytelling has reaped enormous benefits. There's a term in Hollywood for Cameron's style of directing, Davis says: "They call this 'building the parachute on the way down.'"

But repeatedly pulling off these feats of derring-do requires both the drive of an ambitious egomaniac and an engineer's plodding patience. "You have to eat pressure for breakfast if you are going to do this job," Cameron says. "On the one hand, pressure is a good thing. It makes you think about what you're doing, your audience. You're not making a personal statement, like a novel. But you can't make a movie for everybody—that's the kiss of death. You have to make it for yourself."

Gonzo Effects

Cameron's dual-sided personality has roots in his upbringing—the brainy sci-fi geek from Chippewa, Ontario, was raised by a painter mother and an engineer father. "It was always a parallel push between art and technology," he says. "My approach to filmmaking was always very technical. I started off imagining not that I would be a director, but a special-effects practitioner."

Unable to afford to go to film school in Los Angeles, Cameron supported himself as a truck driver and studied visual effects on weekends at the University of Southern California library, photocopying dissertations on optical printing and the sensitometry of film stocks. "This is not bull," he says. "I gave myself a great course on film FX for the cost of the copying."

Cameron eventually landed a job on the effects crew of Roger Corman's low-budget 1980 film Battle Beyond the Stars , but he didn't tell anyone that he was an autodidact with no practical experience. When he was exposed to the reality of film production, it was very different from what he had imagined, he recalls: "It was totally gonzo problem solving. What do you do when Plans A, B and C have all crashed and burned by 9 am? That was my start. It wasn't as a creative filmmaker—it was as a tech dude."

Over the years, Cameron's budgets have increased to become the biggest in the business, and digital technology has changed the realm of the possible in Hollywood, but Cameron is still very much the gonzo engineer. He helped found the special-effects company Digital Domain in the early 1990s, and he surrounds himself with Hollywood inventors such as Vince Pace, who developed special underwater lighting for Cameron's 1989 undersea sci-fi thriller, The Abyss . Pace also worked with Cameron on Ghosts of the Abyss , a 2003 undersea 3D documentary that explored the wreck of the Titanic . For that movie, Pace and Cameron designed a unique hi-def 3D camera system that fused two Sony HDC-F950 HD cameras 2½ inches apart to mimic the stereoscopic separation of human eyes. The Fusion Camera System has since been used for 3D movies such as Journey to the Center of the Earth and the upcoming Tron Legacy , and at sporting events such as the 2007 NBA finals.

The 3D experience is at the heart of Avatar . (In fact, some suspect that Cameron cannily delayed the movie's release to wait for more theaters to install 3D screens—there will be more than 3000 for the launch.) Stereoscopic moviemaking has historically been the novelty act of cinema. But Cameron sees 3D as a subtler experience. To film the live-action sequences of Avatar , he used a modified version of the Fusion camera. The new 3D camera creates an augmented-reality view for Cameron as he shoots, sensing its position on a motion-capture stage, then integrating the live actors into CG environments on the viewfinder. "It's a unique way of shooting stereo movies," says visual-effects supervisor Stephen Rosenbaum. "Cameron uses it to look into the environment; it's not about beating people over the head with visual spectacle." This immersive 3D brings a heightened believability to Avatar 's live-action sequences—gradually bringing viewers deeper into the exotic world of Pandora. In an early scene, Sully looks out the window as he flies over the giant trees and waterfalls of the jungle moon, and the depth afforded by the 3D perspective gives the planet mass and scale, making it as dizzyingly real for viewers as it is for him.

Shooting the Virtual World

Yet live-action 3D was hardly the biggest technical challenge. Only about 25 percent of the movie was created using traditional live performances on sets. The rest takes place in an entirely computer-generated world—combining performance capture with virtual environments that have never before been realized on film. Conjuring up this exotic world allowed Cameron to engage in "big-time design," he says, with six-legged hammerhead thanators, armored direhorses, pterodactyl-like banshees, hundreds of trees and plants, floating mountains and incredible landscapes, all created from scratch. He drew upon his experience with deep-sea biology and plant life for inspiration. Sigourney Weaver, who plays botanist Grace Augustine, calls it "the most ambitious movie I've ever been in. Every single plant and creature has come out of this crazy person's head. This is what Cameron's inner 14-year-old wanted to see."

To bring his actors into this world, Cameron collaborated with Weta Digital, an effects house founded by The Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson. Weta has created some of the most groundbreaking characters in recent years, using human performances to animate digital creatures such as Gollum in the Rings series and the great ape in Jackson's 2005 version of King Kong . By now, the process of basic motion capture is well-established. Actors are dressed in "mocap" suits studded with reflective reference markers and stripes, then cameras capture the basic movements of a performance, which are later mapped to digital characters in a computer.

For actors, the process of performing within an imaginary world, squeezed into a leotard while pretending to inhabit an alien body, is a challenge. Motion-capture technology is capable of recording a 360-degree view of performances, so actors must play scenes with no idea where the "camera" will eventually be. Weaver found the experience liberating. "It's simpler," she says. "You just act. There's no hair or makeup, nothing. It's just you and the material. You forget everything but the story you're telling." Directing within a virtual set is more difficult. Most directors choose their angles and shots on a computer screen in postproduction. But by then, most of the immediacy of the performance is lost. Cameron wanted to be able to see his actors moving within the virtual environments while still on the motion-capture stage (called the volume). So he challenged his virtual-production supervisor Glenn Derry to come up with a virtual camera that could show him a low-resolution view of Pandora as he shot the performances.

The resulting swing camera (so called because its screen could swing to any angle to give Cameron greater freedom of movement) is another of Avatar 's breakthrough technologies. The swing camera has no lens at all, only an LCD screen and markers that record its position and orientation within the volume relative to the actors. That position information is then run through an effects switcher, which feeds back low-resolution CG versions of both the actors and the environment of Pandora to the swing cam's screen in real time.

This virtual camera allowed Cameron to shoot a scene simply by moving through the volume. Cameron could pick up the camera and shoot his actors photographically, as the performance occurred, or he could reshoot any scene by walking through the empty soundstage with the device after the actors were gone, capturing different camera angles as the scene replayed.

But all of this technology can lead right back into the uncanny valley, because capturing an actor's movements is only a small step toward creating a believable digital character. Without the subtle expressions of the face, Cameron might as well be playing with marionettes. Getting this crucial element right required him to push Weta's technology far beyond anything the company had done before.

In fact, Cameron doesn't even like the term "motion capture" for the process used on Avatar . He prefers to call it "performance capture." This may seem like semantics, but to Cameron, the subtle facial expressions that define an actor's performance had been lost for many of the digital characters that have come before. In those films, the process of motion capture served only as a starting point for animators, who would finish the job with digital brush strokes. "Gollum's face was entirely animated by hand," says Weta Digital effects master Joe Letteri. "King Kong was a third or so straight performance capture. It was never automatic." This time, Cameron wanted to keep the embellishment by animators to a minimum and let the actors drive their own performances.

In order to pull more data from the actors' faces, Cameron reworked an old idea he had sketched on a napkin back in 1995: fasten a tiny camera to the front of a helmet to track every facial movement, from darting eyes and twitching noses to furrowing eyebrows and the tricky interaction of jaw, lips, teeth and tongue. "I knew I could not fail if I had a 100 percent closeup of the actor 100 percent of the time that traveled with them wherever they went," he says. "That really makes a closeup come alive."

The information from the cameras produced a digital framework, or rig, of an actor's face. The rig was then given a set of rules that applied the muscle movements of each actor's face to that of the Avatar or the Na'vi that he or she was playing. To make a CG character express the same emotion as a human actor, the rig had to translate every arch of a human eyebrow directly to the digital character's face.

But it turns out there is no magic formula that can supplant hard work and lots of trial and error. After Cameron complained about the uncanny-valley effect, Weta spent another year perfecting the rig on Worthington's Avatar by tweaking the algorithms that guided its movements and expressions until he came alive enough to meet Cameron's sky-high standards. "It was torturous," Letteri admits. But when Weta was finished, you could pour the motion-capture data into the rig and it would come out the other side right.

With all the attention focused on Avatar , anything short of perfection may not be good enough. Cameron is asking moviegoers to believe in a deep new universe of his own design and to buy the concept that 9-foot-tall blue aliens can communicate human emotions. If Cameron is wrong, then Avatar may be remembered as the moment when the battle for the uncanny valley was lost. If he is right, the technology will disappear behind the story line, and audiences will lose themselves in Avatar 's world.

.css-cuqpxl:before{padding-right:0.3125rem;content:'//';display:inline;} Movies .css-xtujxj:before{padding-left:0.3125rem;content:'//';display:inline;}

The Best Action Movies Ever Made

Gift Star Wars Fans Lego’s Mandalorian Helmet Set

Watch Tom Cruise's Dangerous Speedflying Stunt

Why the X-Wing Is Such a Badass Spaceplane

Staff Recs: Best ‘Star Wars’ Toys and Gadgets

26 of the Coolest Looking Vintage Sci-Fi Films

Cop This LEGO TIE Fighter Set For Less Than $40

The ‘Cocaine Bear’ Drug Smuggler Was a Real Person

Child Actors From Horror Movies, Then and Now

The 35 Best Time Travel Movies

The 45 Toughest Movie Characters

James Cameron on How Avatar's 4K HDR Remaster Improves the 3D Experience

Fifty shades of blue..

James Cameron isn’t known for half-assing things. In fact, quite the opposite. A straightforward theatrical re-release of the original Avatar would probably do fine at the box office and drum up some hype for the long-awaited sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water. But why stop there? Cameron has taken things a step further, overseeing a full 4K HDR remaster .

IGN had a chance to speak with the director about revisiting the 2009 film and how he went about retooling it to fully utilize the technology of modern movie theaters.

“I was a little nervous before we started the process that it wouldn't hold up, because there are so many big effects movies out there these days,” Cameron told IGN. “But I’m not nervous now… I was a bit shocked at how good it looks.”

Thanks to modern projectors that support high dynamic range, the Avatar remaster was able to address a common gripe about 3D movies: “It’s just brighter at the screen, which is always an issue with 3D because you’re putting on glasses that filter out half the light. So the brightness at the screen is absolutely critical for the enjoyment.

“High frame rate is available; we’re using it as an authoring tool to improve some of the 3D, but we’re not just broadly applying it as a format,” Cameron explained. “Atmos 9.1 sound wasn’t available at the time, so we remixed the film, remastered it with better sound format. It literally looks and sounds better than it has before.”

Many of the improvements made for the remaster were made easier thanks to the quality of Avatar’s visual effects when it was first released. “Weta had done such a good job at the time, doing their renders in high dynamic range anyway - even though projection couldn’t handle it at the time - we didn’t have to do that much,” he said. And while a higher frame rate is a divisive topic among cinephiles, Cameron and company are applying it sparingly. “We created new [48-frame-per-second] interframes to smooth out some of the strobing and some of the rapid camera moves - during the viperwolf chase, the thanator chase, things like that - to improve the stereoscopic experience.”

Avatar isn’t the only one of Cameron’s movies getting a remaster, as Titanic will be getting the same treatment for its 25th anniversary next year. While Avatar was always intended to be seen in 3D, Titanic had to undergo a full conversion. “Most conversions are kinda done cheapo and I think we spent 18 million dollars on the 3D conversion for Titanic, so it was handcrafted 3D,” said the filmmaker. “The goal was to make it indistinguishable from original 3D photography, and I had done so much 3D photography that I knew what to ask for.”

You don’t exactly need an MBA to figure out the reasoning behind putting two of the most profitable movies of all time back in theaters. Avatar’s return to theaters makes a lot of sense considering how long the wait has been for the sequel.

LEGO Titanic - Photos of the Build Process

“Obviously our goal isn’t just to put it out and make a bunch of money, the goal is to get it out there as… think of it like a ‘season of Avatar,’ rolling up to the release of a new Avatar film after a decade,” Cameron told us. “A lot of young fans haven’t gotten to see it in a theater at all! Whether they like the movie or are indifferent to it or only just know about it, they haven’t really seen it unless you see it in a movie theater. And that would be true even of people who saw it back then. The memory fades of the power of the experience in a theater.”

Cameron is aware it’s been a while since a lot of people last saw the first Avatar.

“I don’t think you have to treat it like a homework assignment,” he said. “Just go and enjoy it, and maybe if you know the film, remember, refresh your memory about what’s going on here… reacquaint yourself with Pandora, with Jake and Neytiri, and be prepared for where the new story takes you.”

Within the Avatar universe, The Way of Water takes place quite a while after the events of the first film. “We follow [Jake and Neytiri] forward in time, 15 years to where they have a family of pre-teens and teenagers. More of a family dynamic. It’s not a Hallmark, Disney family dynamic. It’s a very dysfunctional family dynamic, but ultimately there’s a core there that they all draw their strength from. I think that’s the thing that’s fundamentally different from the first one.”

The last two sequels Cameron made were Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Aliens, two undeniable classics that set an impossibly high bar for their respective franchises. What should we expect from the follow-up to Avatar?

“I guarantee you, you won’t be able to predict it,” Cameron assured us. “What people hate the most is to go and see a movie and say ‘oh… predictable.’ This is not predictable, I don’t think. I defy anybody to predict where this story goes.”

The freshly remastered 4K HDR version of Avatar opens in theaters this week, followed by Avatar: The Way of Water on December 16th. And for more on Avatar, check out James Cameron’s thoughts on why 3D TVs died out , and Ubisoft’s upcoming video game, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.

In This Article

IGN Recommends

'Avatar' returns to theaters this weekend in stunning 4K 3D

The 2009 sci-fi phenomenon returns to multiplexes this week in remastered 4K 3D format.

Don't miss your chance to return to the bioluminescent blue paradise of Pandora this weekend.

Director James Cameron's long-delayed and highly-anticipated " Avatar " sequel, " Avatar: The Way of Water ," will once again plunge audiences in the exotic world of Pandora when it splashes into theaters on Dec. 16, 2022. This is the first of four mega-budget sequels that are slated to be delivered every two years until 2028.

To refresh audiences' memories of the Na'vi's lush and exploited alien planet and the continuing tale of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), 20th Century Studios will re-release the original "Avatar" in theaters starting on Friday, Sept. 23, 2022.

Related: The spaceships and vehicles of Avatar

<a href="https://target.georiot.com/Proxy.ashx?tsid=72128&GR_URL=https%3A%2F%2Famazon.com%2FAvatar-Extended-Collectors-Edition-Blu-ray%2Fdp%2FB003UVAAPQ%3Ftag%3Dhawk-future-20%26ascsubtag%3Dhawk-custom-tracking-20" data-link-merchant="Amazon US"" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Avatar Extended Collector's Edition : $17.99 at Amazon

This extended collector's edition of James Cameron's science fiction epic includes more than eight hours of bonus features spread across three discs.

It's been 13 years since audiences were introduced to the wonders of Pandora and the fantastical blue-skinned natives of the remote planet. Cameron's upcoming $250 million sci-fi epic takes place more than a decade after the 2009 film that broke all box office records and still reigns supreme with a total take of $2.8 billion in global ticket sales. "Avatar: The Way of Water" expands the story of the Sully clan and new dangers that complicate their Eden-like lives as they deal with the return of greedy corporate interests.

This special "Avatar" re-release takes the wrapper off the classic film's remastered 3D restoration with High-Dynamic Range imagery and 9.1 surround sound that are sure to dazzle the eyes and seduce the ears. To shed light on this new remastered version of his fantastic sci-fi epic, Cameron spoke to Slash Film regarding the fresh remaster, the allure of 3D movies and how his film employed the very latest technology to reabsorb audiences in his ambitious vision. This spruced-up edition should not be missed!

"I would say that the 3D was generally embraced for a period of time," Cameron told Slash Film . ("Avatar" won the best cinematography with a 3D digital camera; no digital camera had ever won the best cinematography Oscar before.)

Get the Space.com Newsletter

Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!

—  Ubisoft unveils 1st trailer for 'Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora'

—  'Avatar' Director Talks Space Fact and Fiction with NASA Chief

—  Alien Plants Get New Twist in World of 'Avatar'

"3D appears to most people to sort of be over. But it's really not over. It's just been accepted. It's just now a part of your choices when you go to the theater to see a big blockbuster movie. I liken it to color. When color films first came out, it was a big deal. People would go to see movies because they were in color. I think around the time of 'Avatar,' people used to go to see movies because they were in 3D. I think it had an impact on how films were presented that's now just sort of accepted and part of the zeitgeist and how it's done."

Starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez and Sigourney Weaver, the multiple Academy Award-winning "Avatar" travels back to multiplexes for a special limited engagement beginning on Friday (Sept. 23). 

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or on Facebook .  

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Jeff Spry is an award-winning screenwriter and veteran freelance journalist covering TV, movies, video games, books, and comics. His work has appeared at SYFY Wire, Inverse, Collider, Bleeding Cool and elsewhere. Jeff lives in beautiful Bend, Oregon amid the ponderosa pines, classic muscle cars, a crypt of collector horror comics, and two loyal English Setters.

This Week In Space podcast: Episode 105 — Apoc-eclipse 2024!

'Star Trek: Discovery' season 5 episode 2 sows the seeds of seasonal plot threads (Under the Twin Moons recap)

I'm driving 6 hours through New York's Adirondacks to see the 2024 total solar eclipse from Potsdam. Here's why.

Most Popular

By Meredith Garofalo April 05, 2024

By Robert Lea April 05, 2024

By Elizabeth Howell April 05, 2024

By Stefanie Waldek April 05, 2024

By Mike Wall April 05, 2024

By Harry Baker April 05, 2024

By Jeff Spry April 05, 2024

By Robert Z. Pearlman April 05, 2024

By Alexander Cox April 05, 2024

• 2 Total solar eclipse 2024: Live updates
• 3 This Week In Space podcast: Episode 105 — Apoc-eclipse 2024!
• 4 Total solar eclipse 2024: Here's the national weather forecast for April 8
• 5 William Shatner is beaming in to see the 2024 total solar eclipse from Indiana (video)

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Avatar review – James Cameron’s laboriously silly blockbuster shows its age

Ahead of the release of new chapter, the first in the franchise yields little – even the much-vaunted tech is old hat

A s a curtain-raiser to the forthcoming sequel, unpromisingly subtitled The Way of Water – downwards? – James Cameron’s original Avatar from 2009 is being re-released. This was his folie de grandeur and vast, mystifying epic sci-fi fantasy that at the time was solemnly praised for its introduction of a new, improved immersive 3D technology. And for a while after Avatar was released, 3D ruled for all big-budget action movies. But then 3D was quietly dropped without anyone saying a word. Will the Avatar 2 be presented in 3D? Perhaps so, and perhaps that will make it the box office blockbuster that the exhibition sector is saying cinema badly needs. The advance word on its use of High Frame Rate is good.

Well, it has to be said that Avatar 1 has aged uneasily in the years since 2009. This is the strange, contorted story of Planet Earth a hundred years into the future attempting to solve its energy security issues (as we have learned to say in 2022) by mining a vital new mineral called “unobtanium” from a distant planet, to be found in the centre of a lush tropical forest whose indigenous blue-faced inhabitants are called Na’vi – but look like Smurfs. Humanity has a plan to create remote-controlled Na’vi bodies, or “avatars”, which can be piloted into the jungle to entreat with the Na’vi peoples and ask what it might take to get them to withdraw voluntarily. Disabled, wheelchair-using war veteran Jake Sully, played by Sam Worthington, is thrilled to be given the existentially liberating chance to inhabit one of these avatars: and winds up going native and falling in love with one of the Na’vi: Neytiri, played by Zoe Saldana .

The sheer laborious silliness of Avatar feels like harder work the second time around and its essential problem is more prominent. This film came out in 2009, on a political cusp: it couldn’t quite make its mind up about whether it was a gung-ho shock’n’awe action movie or not: a Dubya film that had entered the more caring world of Obama. Technical innovation in movies can quickly look not obsolete exactly, but less like an overwhelming reason to feel excited. Cameron’s Titanic and Terminators are still favourites because of the great storytelling. It remains to be seen whether the grandiose-yet-twee Na’vi are going to command the same attention.

• James Cameron
• Science fiction and fantasy films
• Zoe Saldana
• Action and adventure films

Most viewed

Avatar - 3D: Special Edition

The reason we all bought and cherish our 3-D televisions in the first place; James Cameron's  Avatar returns to 3-D Blu-ray from Disney/20th Century Studios. This three-disc set, the newly remastered 3D version of the film offers up a notable improvement in clarity and depth capped off with a solid bonus features package. If you’re still rolling your 3-D TV or Projector setup, discs like this are the reason we keep wearing those glasses! Recommended

Written and directed by Academy Award® winner James Cameron*, Avatar is set on the lush alien world of Pandora, home of the Na'vi—beings who appear primitive but are highly evolved. Because the planet's environment is poisonous, human/Na'vi hybrids called Avatars must link to human minds to allow for free movement on Pandora. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paralyzed former Marine, becomes mobile again through one such Avatar and falls in love with a Na'vi woman (Zoe Saldaña). As a bond with her grows, he is drawn into a battle for the survival of her world.

Storyline: Our Reviewer's Take

From our previous 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Review 

How does a director follow the highest-grossing movie of all time? They do it by directing the highest-grossing movie of all time topping said highest-grossing movie of all time. In an age where there weren’t DCEUs or MCUs sucking up every theater screen, James Cameron’s  Avatar  ignited a box office storm. Everyone had to see Cameron’s long-gestating passion project. As those ticket sales kept rolling in, the film also reinvigorated the long-ago castoff experience of seeing major motion pictures in three dimensions while pioneering new techniques in motion-capture filmmaking. Soon, every major motion picture had to be in 3-D, either shot that way or with an after-the-fact post-conversion (with often mixed results). While 3-D may not be as strong an attraction today - it hasn't disappeared. There are still some great post-conversions -  Guardians of the Galaxy vol 3   being one of the best recent releases in that arena. 

Over ten years between sequels - how does the original  Avatar  hold up? Depending on who you ask, your results will vary, but for this reviewer, I’d say pretty well. I’ve never thought  Avatar  was a particularly amazing film. Visually yes, it’s a gorgeous-looking film, but the story is simplistic with equally simple dialog to match. On that spectrum, Cameron has always been on the nose, as much as I love  T2: Judgement Day , Sarah Conner's narrations aren’t exactly Shakespeare. That follows here with Sam Worthington’s Jake Sulley filling in the narrative gaps with voice-over. Sometimes it works and feels organic, other times it’s just damn clumsy. The conceit is we’re supposed to be hearing his log files, but it never really sells. The two extended versions help fill some narrative gaps and do play better overall, but they don’t help the fact  Avatar  feels more like a proof-of-concept that Cameron’s crazy ideas could work rather than serve as a fully-realized feature film. Faults aside, I easily get wrapped up in the drama and conflict and again Cameron accomplished some next-level universe-building for his little opus. 

Fourteen years after that first (of several) theatrical viewing, I still get a kick out of  Avatar . It plays like a wild pulpy Edgar Rice Burroughs novel and that’s what I enjoy about it. Akin to the Princess of Mars stories, we have a human hero traveling to a far-off planet to lead a rebellion while integrating with an alien culture. It’s not a new story, it’s just a creative (albeit mostly visually) spin on sci-fi’s greatest hits. I also appreciate that Cameron and his team spent so much time creating a new language, culture, and a jungle full of exciting creatures to observe. He may have quite literally gotten lost in the woods with it, but it proved there’s enough meat on the bones of this universe that’s worth exploring for future adventures. And by the future, that’s quite literal as Disney has readjusted their release calendar pushing Avatar 5 all the way back to 2031… I just hope I’m still alive then because I’m looking forward to the sequels.

For some less-than-positive alternate views on the film, read our past coverage:

• 2009 2D Blu-ray Review
• 2010 Extended Edition Blu-ray Review
• 2012 3-D Blu-ray Review  

Vital Disc Stats: The 3D Blu-ray Avatar ,   the film that started the 3D revolution on Blu-ray returns for a new and improved three-disc Blu-ray 3-D release. A BD-50 offers up the 1080p 3D, another BD-50 is reserved for the film’s 2D edition, and another BD-50 is reserved for the initial set of bonus features from the first 4K UHD edition. The disc loads to a static image main menu, if your setup is 3-D ready, the 3-D experience automatically kicks in.

Video Review

It’s a grand thing to enjoy Avatar the way it was meant to be seen in 3-D at home. This is the film that initially made 3-D television sets such a hot commodity, but it was stupidly made a competing format exclusive when it was the title that literally everyone would have bought in the first place in 2010. It wasn’t until 2012 that this film would get a wide non-exclusive release, but by then, the format was already starting to fade. Now it’s back on disc and looking better than ever. Thanks to the new remaster work we saw on IMAX screens for a limited run, this first film in James Cameron’s intergalactic odyssey looks cleaner and clearer, and I dare say they greatly improved the sense of space and dimension. Big WOW shots hit harder like when Jake first rolls off the transport ship or when his army of flying warriors hovers over the invading armada, that sense of depth looked deeper and more dimensionalized than before. Doing the glasses test, a number of sequences that would be flat on the older disc are now actively in 3-D. Parallax effects of objects protruding from the screen also look clearer and engage more cleanly without any ghosting or eye strain. My wish is they had given this the two-disc BD-3D treatment like The Way of Water and really maxed out the visuals. As is, this is a welcome upgrade for those still rocking the glasses at home.

Audio Review

Given all the workload is going into those 3-D visuals, the film rolls with a very good and effective DTS-HD MA 5.1 mix. Of course, I would have loved Atmos but I can’t really complain about this mix. Employing my receiver’s DTS Neural:X function helps open things up a bit and punch up the big action sequences nicely. Dialog is clear throughout without issue. The soundscape is still very large feeling giving those surround channels plenty of work - especially for the flight scenes and the big action setpieces. Perhaps not the perfect audio experience, but still a strong and immersive one.

Special Features

The first run of  Avatar   on 3-D Blu-ray didn't offer up anything more than the basic film experience without any bonus features. This time Disney/20th Century are throwing in the initial bonus features disc we got with the first 4K UHD Blu-ray run. While not everything of the big  Collector's Edition   set, it's still a hefty package. 

• Memories from Avatar  (HD 21:20) 
• Avatar: A Look Back  (HD 10:03)
• Capturing Avatar  (HD 1:38:25)
• Featurettes -  (HD 1:31:51 Total)
• Sculpting Avatar
• Creating the Banshee
• Creating the Thanator
• The Amp Suit
• Flying Vehicles
• Na’vi Costumes
• Speaking Na’vi
• Pandora Flora
• Performance Capture
• Virtual Camera
• The 3-D Fusion Camera
• The Simul-Cam
• Editing Avatar
• Scoring Avatar
• Sound Design
• The Haka: The Spirit of New Zealand

As I’ve said a few times now through different reviews, I enjoy the hell out of Avatar but I don’t think it’s a perfect movie. Cameron’s longer cuts are certainly the better versions, but this theatrical cut in 3-D is what spurred the world’s fascination with Pandora. One of the first and earliest essential pickups during the brief 3-D TV revolution, Avatar  recently enjoyed a successful theatrical rerelease with a newly remastered transfer. It was amazing on IMAX and I dare say it’s impressive at home on Blu-ray 3D. The image looks sharper and cleaner than before, but it appears they also slightly reworked some of the depth and dimension work so some of those big beautiful glory shots are even more impactful. Audio is still pretty solid with DTS-HD MA 5.1. My only real wish for this release was the film had been spread over two 3-D discs like the sequel for maximum impact. As is, it’s great and if you’re still rocking your 3-D TV or projector, it’s a worthwhile pickup. Recommended for the 3-D junkies out there.

Bringing you the best reviews of 4k and high definition entertainment

Blu-ray news.

The latest Blu-ray News

Blu-ray In Stores This Week

New Releases on Blu-ray

Blu-ray Coming Soon to Stores

Upcoming Releases on Blu-ray

‘I Need Help’: Zoe Saldaña Humorously Recalls Avatar 3 Stunt That Hurt So Bad To Film After Being Away From Set For A While

Blockbuster filmmaking can be painful work.

Next Christmas, the highly anticipated Avatar 3 will return audiences to the aquatic world of Pandora. While the next installment continuing the story of James Cameron ’s contribution to the best 2000s movies has wrapped principal photography, there are still some finishing touches required. And that leads to a humorous story star Zoe Saldaña recalled about some recent reshoots, which led to a stunt that hurt pretty bad since she was away from the set for so long.

It was during a late night appearance shared on The Tonight Show’s YouTube that the A-list actress dropped this particular anecdote. As she explained, the situation arose due to some stunt work that took place not too long ago. And, as you’ll read below, the story begins simple enough, with the star encountering the following expectations set for the experience: 

They called me back in January out of nowhere. And they’re like, ‘We just have some pick-up shots. Can you please come in?’ I was like, ‘OK.’ He’s like, ‘It’s super no-hassle, it’s just little close-ups.’ And all of a sudden, they’re like, ‘Hey, so now, this shot is you on your ikran.’ The ikran is my dragon that I ride, and I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me? Like I haven’t gone to the gym in like…’ And they’re like, ‘Oh, it’s gonna be fine! It’s super easy!’

James Cameron Teases Avatar 3’s New Na’vi, Including The Desert People

That sort of confidence doesn’t seem too far off. As a veteran of the Star Trek reboots and the MCU, some probably think that Zoe Saldaña is almost always in her typical action hero shape. Not to mention, since this Avatar 3 shot involved her character, Neytiri, riding on an ikran, it almost sounds like this scene is akin to a lot of the action fans can already see in previous films (which can be accessed with a Disney+ subscription ).  

Unfortunately, Ms. Saldaña found herself in a bit of an unfortunate position once this round of filming started. Revealing the painful reality to this new Avatar 3 stunt, Zoe finished her story with this humorous yet brutal moment of truth: 

I took a squat, and I couldn’t get up. I was literally like [gets in squat position]. And they’re like, ‘Cut, Zoe!’ I’m like, ‘I need help.’

To even share this story with the world is a pretty big deal, especially given that she's one of the faces of such a huge franchise. Then again, with her joking about her age when Avatar 5 releases , the action veteran has already proven that she’s got candor to spare. 

And, thankfully, when filming picks up on the rest of the saga, Zoe Saldaña will presumably have more time to prepare as much as she’d like, so as to prevent a moment such as this from happening again. Then again, with the time jumps in store for the rest of the series, one has to wonder how much more ikran riding Netyiri will have to do before reaching the presumed end of the line. 

Avatar 3 is currently set to hit the schedule of upcoming Disney movies on December 19th, 2025. So just as Zoe Saldaña has some time to get some squats in, you'll have time to work out your eye muscles for the 3D thrills coming down the line. 

CINEMABLEND NEWSLETTER

Your Daily Blend of Entertainment News

Mike Reyes is the Senior Movie Contributor at CinemaBlend, though that title’s more of a guideline really. Passionate about entertainment since grade school, the movies have always held a special place in his life, which explains his current occupation. Mike graduated from Drew University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science, but swore off of running for public office a long time ago. Mike's expertise ranges from James Bond to everything Alita, making for a brilliantly eclectic resume. He fights for the user.

’It Was A Strange Thing’: The Harry Potter Movies Were A Huge Success, But Tom Felton Admits He Had No Idea If They’d Make It To The Deathly Hallows

Best Mike Tyson Appearances In Movies And TV Shows

Deliver Me From Nowhere: Everything We Know About The Bruce Springsteen Biopic

Most Popular

By Heidi Venable April 07, 2024

By Nick Venable April 07, 2024

By Carly Levy April 07, 2024

By Megan Behnke April 07, 2024

By Erik Swann April 07, 2024

By Ryan LaBee April 07, 2024

• 2 I Knew WrestleMania 40’s Main Event Would Deliver, But I’m Shocked By The Rest Of The Card
• 3 The Rock, John Cena, The Undertaker And More Showed Up In The Craziest WrestleMania Main Event Of All-Time
• 4 Goosebumps Season 2: What We Know About The Disney+ Series
• 5 I Thought I Was The Only Jeopardy Fan Cringing Every Time Ken Jennings Says JIT. Then I Looked On Social Media