Back in December, when everyone was getting ready for the holidays, the long-anticipated film Avatar: The Way of Water was finally released on December 16, 2022, thirteen years after Avatar (2009). The story is set around ten years after Avatar 1 and Jake Sully has started a family on Pandora. However, due to an ancient threat, they must leave their home and explore the regions of Pandora and find a safe home.

James Cameron, the director of the motion picture, expressed that Avatar: The Way of Water needed around 2 billion to turn a profit. Early reports stated that the production budget alone was around the $250 million range. Taking these numbers into perspective, Avatar 2 needed to become the fourth or fifth highest-grossing film of all time in order to reach the break-even point. Despite its slow start at the box office, Avatar: The Way of Water has currently grossed over 1.749 billion worldwide, passing Top Gun: Maverick at 1.488 billion, and becoming the highest-grossing film of 2022 and seventh-highest-grossing film of all time.

In order to produce jaw-dropping underwater cinematic effects, new technology was needed to capture the underwater scenes in the movie so production was set back a few times. Surprisingly, most of the water in the film was computer generated. However, in order to achieve the movement of truly being underwater, instead of actors hanging on wires and making indistinct swimming motions, the actors were submerged in water and went through the actions while motion capture gathered data. The special effects crew had to make the CGI water interact with the characters, and the environment all physically accurate, watching hundreds of hours of reference footage on how water moved.

Most of the critics’ reviews were positive. The narrative is standard, but visually speaking, it is a “stunningly immersive experience”. Some, however, mentioned the film being too long and the story was not in-depth enough to account for the length, the only thing great was the special effects and CGI. Earning 77% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 7.9 out of 10 on IMDb, Avatar: The Way of Water has continuously maintained its top spot at the Box Office for five weeks in a row. The long-awaited film has proved that movies are coming back post-pandemic with a “resurgence”.