Cameron's 'Avatar' sequel filled with pure, distilled, 3-D cinematic rapture

“Avatar: The Way of Water” - ★ ★ ★ ★

In terms of sheer spectacle, raw action and eye-popping visual impact, James Cameron's long-awaited sequel to his 2009 science-fiction blockbuster “Avatar” delivers an experience of pure, distilled, 3-D cinematic rapture.

Armed with an estimated budget of more than $350 million - an amount most movies would kill to earn at the box office - the three-hour, 12-minute “Way of Water” improves on its 13-year-old predecessor with better-drawn characters, stronger relationships and breathless cinematic athletics impossible for regular cameras to replicate live.

Nonetheless, the CGI/live-action/performance-capture hybrid “Avatar: The Way of Water” won't be knocking “Citizen Kane,” “Vertigo” or “Jeanne Dielman” off Sight and Sound's Top 10 Greatest Films of All Time list anytime soon.

Fluid, memorable dialogue has never been a Cameron strong suit. (Cameron's “Titanic” earned 14 Oscar nominations. “Avatar” earned nine. Tellingly, neither movie netted a Best Screenplay nomination.)

Cameron, working with four writers, provides his characters with basic utilitarian exchanges dominated by monosyllabic imperatives such as “Go, go, go, go, go!”

Then, we still have that pesky, thematically problematic issue of the original “Avatar” being the most egregious example of a White Savior movie, next to George Tillman Jr.'s 2000 release “Men of Honor.”

That white savior, former U.S. Marine Jake Sully (reprised by Sam Worthington), has since abandoned his paraplegic human form and taken up permanent residence in his avatar, who now heads the Omatikaya clan, part of the blue-colored humanoids called the Na'vi on the fantastic moon Pandora.

Sully has married the tribal chief's ferally attractive daughter, Neytiri (reprised by Zoe Saldana), and they have sired a Brady Bunch for Pandora.

They include three Na'vi children, Neteyam, Lo'ak and Tuk (all birthed by Neytiri and fathered by Jake) plus two adopted kids, one a human orphan named Javier and the other a Na'vi teen named Kiri, the biological daughter of the late Dr. Grace Augustine (played by Sigourney Weaver, who supplies Kiri's voice).

“The Way of Water” opens with Sully's family and the Na'vi living an idyllic existence a decade after the powerful Resources Development Administration (RDA) attempted to wipe out Pandora's Indigenous population and seize the moon's vast reservoirs of an energy source called Unobtainium.

The peace gets rudely broken by another invasion led by Colonel Miles Quaritch (reprised by Stephen Lang).

Yep, the same Miles Quaritch killed by Neytiri 13 years ago. Like Sully, Quaritch has been resurrected as an avatar, but embedded with the memories of his former mortal coil.

Now an RDA “Recombinant,” the meaner, leaner, stronger and bluer Quaritch seeks to find and kill Sully for betraying his company and thwarting its hostile takeover of Pandora.

With the full support of RDA's ruthless General Francis Ardmore (Edie Falco), Quaritch shows no mercy in his quest to hunt down Sully.

So, Sully reluctantly relocates his family from their rainforest home to the oceanfront territory of the Metkayina clan, led by Ronal (“Titanic” star Kate Winslet) and Tonowari (Cliff Curtis).

There, Sully discovers that prejudice exists even on Pandora when Ronal and Tonowari's children - Tsireya (Bailey Bass) and Aonung (Filip Geljo) - treat the newcomers with contempt and derision because of their cultural and physical differences.

But the emphasis is on retina-exploding visuals and furious, elaborately detailed action sequences that trump familiarity and occasional ridiculousness. (One of Sully's sons communicates telepathically with a giant whale-like creature called the tulkan, so why does he also need to simultaneously use sign language and oral speech?)

Cameron's state-of-the-art cameras (including a revolutionary Virtual Camera that shoots actors, but plays back with them as their virtual on-screen characters) luxuriates in the beauty and mystery of the Indigenous plant and animal life forms computer-rendered in Pandora's exotic locations. A lot of luxuriating.

“Maybe we'll remind people what going to the theater is all about,” Cameron mused in a recent ScreenRant interview. “This film definitely does that. The question is: How many people give a (poop) now?”

We shall see.

Three more sequels are scheduled to arrive in 2024, 2026 and 2028.

Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Kate Winslet, Cliff Curtis

Directed by: James Cameron

Other: A 20th Century Studios release. Rated PG-13 for language, partial nudity and violence. 192 minutes