Now that Black Panther: Wakanda Forever has landed in multiplexes (and is crushing at the box office), the next mega blockbuster set to drop and close out the year is James Cameron’s highly anticipated sequel Avatar: The Way of Water. It has been more than a decade since Cameron took audiences to Pandora, and most of us are skeptically hoping that the director’s obsession with his original world pays off in a rousing adventure that also pushes the envelope for 3D storytelling (like the original did). The cast apparently was blown away by what they have seen from the finished movie. And now fellow directors are weighing in.
The Shape of Water Oscar winner Guillermo Del Toro has his own movie in theaters this holiday season with Pinocchio, a retelling that’s heading to Netflix but also stopping in theaters for a limited time. But that didn’t prevent him from praising James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water, Tweeting:
A staggering achievement- AVATAR TWOW is chokefull of majestic Vistas and emotions at an epic, epic scale. A master at thepeak of his powers… https://t.co/tG6I16JlhMNovember 24, 2022
When a filmmaker of Guillermo Del Toro’s caliber refers to the latest James Cameron movie as “a staggering achievement,” we tend to sit up and take notice. This, after all, is the director behind the two best Terminator films, and the wizard who sunk the Titanic – winning 11 Oscars in the process. He’s a master storyteller, and a visual master, and even if you didn’t love the original story of Avatar, you had to be impressed by what Cameron accomplished with CGI and 3D technology. The movie was immersive, and unlike anything audiences had seen before at that time.
It’s the back half of that Tweet that really catches my attention, though. Guillermo Del Toro, when commenting on Avatar: The Way of Water, refers to it as “a master at the peak of his powers.” And hot damn, if that’s not a ringing endorsement, I don’t know what else you need to hear to secure yourself a ticket. Sure, the movie reportedly is long, though Cameron says there’s good reason for that. And as Cameron expands out on the world we met in Avatar, he already has teased plenty of things we need to know before we head into Avatar: The Way of Water in December. So brush up, and prepare for another journey through the alien environments of Pandora.
At the moment, James Cameron plans on releasing multiple Avatar sequels, though even heh as hedged his bets on the reality of them coming to fruition if this next one doesn’t connect with a larger audience. But the good thing about Avatar: The Way of Water, at least from a box office perspective, is that the competition for blockbuster dollars will be scarce through December. Most everyone who wanted to see Black Panther: Wakanda Forever will have seen that film, and the rest of the offerings in multiplexes will be Oscar contenders playing on one or two screens.
You can track all of the upcoming 2022 movies by checking our calendar. And we will have a review of Avatar: The Way of Water the moment the embargo lifts.
