YMMV / Avatar: The Way of Water

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Neytiri clearly doesn't consider Spider part of the family the way Jake and their children do, saying he belongs with his own kind but tolerating his presence, like that annoying family friend you have but can't get rid of. It's not fully explored why, so it can be interpreted in different ways. She could have leftover prejudice against humans because of her highly negative experiences, although she was willing to accept Jake even in his human form. Then again, it may be easier for her to put that aside because Jake (and their children) all look more like Na'vi. It may be a case of harsh pragmatism; while a human in an Avatar body can feasibly live just like a Na'vi, a regular human like Spider can't as easily due to the physiological differences, so she may view Spider as wasting his time trying to integrate with them. It could also be that it's less that he's human Neytiri has an issue with (she's fine with the heroic humans like Norm and Max) and more that he's the son of Quaritch, a man she thoroughly despises and perhaps fears he will end up like.
    • In the final act, was she actually going to kill Spider? The scene bears some parallel to the symbolic death of Jake when he passes his leadership onto his successor. In a similar vein, the knife is held aloft as if to plunge into the heart, but instead slashes across the chest. It could have been her symbolically killing Spider, cutting off his connection from his birth father and claiming him as her own. This seems to be the case when Jake later repeats: "A son for a son." Indicating that they have taken Spider from Quaritch in revenge for their own son's death.
  • Quaritch decides to tame a Mountain Banshee because he learns from Spider that Jake did it without the tranquilizer. Did Quaritch do it because he wanted to understand his enemy better? Or did he do because deep down he wanted to impress his son, Spider? Since Spider was putting over Jake’s taming of his Mountain Banshee as this legendary accomplishment, it’s very likely Quaritch got a bit jealous his own son looks up to his enemy and wanted to show he could tame the banshee better than Jake could. Not to mention, Quaritch was trying to bond with Spider in his own way. Or did his ego and pride demand he match Jake's accomplishment for himself, giving no thought to how it might affect Spider or the mission?
  • The initial landing of the human forces is treated like a horrible, tragic example of not caring about the environment they are setting down upon, burning hundreds (if not thousands) of acres of forest and killing countless animals...but the last film ended with the wholesale slaughter of most humans on Pandora when it turned out that the local wildlife is actively hostile to them in ways that natural animals absolutely would not be. An 'ungraceful' landing is rather understandable when it means clearing the area of hostile megafauna that can be spontaneously slaved by a planetary hive mind to kill them. Overly-blunt aesop, or an understandable decision based on prior experience?
  • Is Ardmore's claim that Earth is dying, thus necessitating the RDA returning to Pandora in force in order to establish a new home for humanity true? Or is it RDA propaganda and embellishment in order to gain support and resources for their expedition as well as bolster the morale of their troops? Given that the audience only has her word on it and the scenes depicting the Earth's deplorable conditions in the first film only being present in the Extended Edition cut.
• And You Thought It Would Fail: Considering how long it took to make a sequel to Avatar, and how hard the movie fell into Obscure Popularity (with frequent thinkpieces on how the highest-grossing movie ever left barely any cultural footprint, only allegedly starting to regain popularity with a Disney World area and some revisiting upon the close of The New '10s), The Way of Water was frequently dismissed as something that wouldn't be that much of a success in a mostly changed movie landscape (also possibly due to the usual online discourse brought by the massive success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its "formula" in the meantime, considering how James Cameron has been critical of it in those years). Yet it cleared a billion dollars in less than two weeks and two billion in one month, managing to become lucrative in spite of a budget ranked at the $350–460 million scale. It even received a good number of positive reception from critics and general audiences alike.
• Anvilicious: Dr. Ian Garvin takes the anti-whaling message to another level when he directly states that the tulkun (the whale-like creatures) are more intelligent, more emotional, more philosophical, and more musical than even humans, and are peaceful, docile beings who follow a code of Pacifism. Mick Scoresby, on the other hand, takes the Evil Poacher trope to similar extremes, laughing with glee while hunting a fleeing tulkun mother and her calf, which cries piteously by the mother's body after the whalers kill her with explosive harpoons, who then drill into her brain to extract a single substance before just dumping the rest of the body, just to really drive the point home that Humans Are Bastards.
• Ass Pull: There was no indication in the first movie that RDA troopers could record their memories in order to be brought Back from the Dead.
• Award Snub: While debated whether or not the movie earned its Best Picture nomination—though not intensely, a shockwave was still felt when James Cameron didn't receive a Best Director nomination along with it, not only because he got nominated for the first one, but because this movie has been seen by many as an even more impressive technical achievement on its own as well.
• Awesome Music:
  • The music present in the first teaser is a simple piece with some soft percussion and a gentle orchestra, but over the entire piece is a soft vocal choir. The gentle singing as it combines with the orchestral crescendo, especially in a movie theater, is all-encompassing, and it's like a siren song drawing in the viewer. It was a perfect musical piece to announce to the world that Avatar has returned!
  • In addition to that, Canadian singer The Weeknd revealed that he recorded a song with Swedish House Mafia for the movie, “Nothing is Lost (You Give Me Strength)”, and it sounds great!
  • Zoe Saldaña gets to show off her singing voice in the beautiful, melancholy The Songcord. For good measure, the song is also entirely in the Na'vi Conlang.
• Captain Obvious Aesop: Whaling is bad! That's why all but three countries (Norway, Iceland, and Japan) banned commercial whaling, as well as treading close to the complicated minefield that is cultural and indigenous whaling. The aesop was less tired in the 90s when Cameron wrote the original script for the first Avatar film — presumably, the second film's message also finds its origins from Cameron's brainstorming at this time, hence how outdated it feels.
• Cliché Storm: The subplot about Jake and Neytiri's teenage children struggling to fit among their Metkayina counterparts was criticized for playing too many genre cliches straight, including the troubled girl who feels different from the rest (Kiri), the dork with insufficient social skills (Lo'ak), the improbably beautiful and sensitive local girl who gives him a chance (Tsireya), the buff, well-connected bullies who torment him (Aonung and his friends), the stupidly dangerous rites of passage, and the troubles extending to their respective parents. This by extension seems to repeat an issue that was famously present in the original film’s story albeit in a different context.
• Common Knowledge: There are a surprising number of people who believe Rotxo (the Metkayina teen with the "mushroom cut") took part in bullying Kiri alongside Aonung and his friends. This teen is in fact, not Rotxo, but another Metkayina teen with a very similar design and hairstyle.
• Complete Monster: Mick Scoresby is a sadistic hunter who, bored from not being able to hunt sea creatures on Earth, signs on to the RDA to lead their whaling division in hunting Tulkun. Despite knowing that the Tulkun are fully sapient, Mick hunts them like animals, knowing their pacifistic nature means they'll never fight back; he even specifically targets females with calves because they're easier targets. Mick's specific method of hunting is beyond cruel, featuring multiple brutal harpoon shots and underwater strikes before he harvests a tiny amount of amrita and wastes the rest of the corpse. Mick is also not afraid to force them into submission; when a Tulkun named Payakan sought revenge for his murdered mother, Mick's forces massacred all the Tulkun and Na'vi he brought, leaving him the only survivor.
• Contested Sequel: As the (sort of) long-awaited sequel to a popular but divisive movie, The Way of Water splits viewers on its quality. The film is either better than the first film, on the same level as the first film, or worse than the first film.
  • The viewers who consider this an Even Better Sequel praise the film expanding upon the Worldbuilding and giving much need Character Development to the main characters. There are those who find the first film So Okay, It's Average and applaud this film for fixing the problems of the first. There's also those who like or love the first film already and consider The Way of Water to simply be improving what was already great.
  • The camp that considers this to be on par with the first is also split. There are those who dislike the first film or find it mediocre and forgettable and that this movie, while having a slight improvements, is still fairly mediocre. Then there are those who like the first film and consider this film to be as good, just not better.
  • Then is the camp who considers this worse than the first. Amongst the first film's detractors, they think this movie manages to have an even more generic story with far more annoying characters like Spider, in comparison to the more bland characters of the first; the first film's one redeeming factor of stunning 3D visual effects they feel doesn't feel as breathtaking as the first film due to the novelty running off. Those who like the first film's simple story and characters, dislike how even more drawn out and complicated this film's story was and argue the first film's plot, while generic, had a grander approach to it than this film's more scaled down approach.
• Do Not Do This Cool Thing: The anti-whaling message gets a bit undermined by giving the whalers an awesome ekranoplan equipped with crab mechs, minisubs, and attack helicopters, and conducting their terrible craft in a nonetheless flashy and exciting sequence.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Tsireya is the most prominent member of the Metkayina clan with 50 minutes of screentime (which is the tenth most in the film), but she's still a supporting character to the Sully family. Nonetheless, she's one of the most fondly remembered of the Metkayina clan, primarily for her Nice Girl nature among her slightly xenophobic tribe, incredibly beautiful character design ^note notable in that most of the Metkayina invoke some discomfort for their different arm shapes, and her adorable Ship Tease with Lo'ak. In a Google Image search or Instagram search of Metkayina fanart, she's probably the one that will show up the most number of times.
  • Dr. Ian Garvin is pretty well liked due to his Punch-Clock Villain attitude and Jemaine Clement's likable performance.
  • The Tulkun outcast, Payakan, became a fan favorite almost instantly. The movie does a fine job in getting you to root for an alien whale that seeks revenge against the whalers that brought him a lot of pain. His Big Damn Heroes moment that jumpstarted the Final Battle, and his revenge moment against Scoresby that resulted in the latter losing his arm (paralleling Payakan having lost one of his fins to the whalers) are some of the biggest crowd cheering moments of the film.
  • Rotxo is a very minor member of the Metkayina clan, yet some fans ship him with Kiri due to some very brief but sweet interactions between the two.
• Fan Nickname: Recombinant Quaritch’s ikran has no official name as of yet, but Quaritch referring to it as "Cupcake" has made some people use that nickname for the animal for the time being.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • A particularly bitter one brewing even before the first trailer was released, between Marvel Cinematic Universe fans and Avatar fans, with the rivalry blowing up after November 2022. It didn't help that many MCU fans remained antagonistic towards the franchise since Avengers: Endgame was able to overtake Avatar for the highest box office in history, only for the latter to retake the spot due to a rerelease two years later. Particular points of contention were CGI and visual effects, and story quality, with both sides criticizing the other's movies for their perceived lack of quality in either aspect. It doesn't help that The Way of the Water was released a month after Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which also features extensive underwater scenes, or that The Way of Water quickly overtook the box office gross of every MCU film released in 2022 within just over a week of its release.
  • Towards the end of 2022, there's been some growing rivalry between The Way of Water and Top Gun: Maverick fans as well, what with both movies being major blockbuster long-awaited sequels to modern classics featuring older heroes now having to pave the way for the younger generation, and both films were noted for their well-crafted choreography and innovative visual effects and cinematography. The rivalry started brewing when The Way of Water surpassed Maverick as the highest-grossing film of 2022 worldwide, which is in part thanks to The Way of Water gaining a lot of viewership in China, while Maverick wasn't released in the country.^note Even if The Way of Water's China gross was subtracted, it would still be comfortably ahead. Conversely, The Way of Water did not gain as much traction in North America as Maverick did, and Maverick claimed the domestic crown for 2022. Both films were nominated for numerous Academy Awards, including best picture, but both only won a single technical award (visual effects for The Way of Water and sound for Maverick). A more tongue-in-cheek rivalry was also present when it was revealed that Kate Winslet broke Tom Cruise's underwater breath-holding record during the filming of The Way of Water, which she proudly made note of.
  • Continuing from the first film is a small rivalry with fans of Avatar: The Last Airbender, which began to flare up again when James Cameron revealed that the sequels will explore other Na'vi tribes that are associated with different elements. With the first sequel titled The Way of Water, which deals with marine-based Na'vis that can be compared to the Water Tribe in ATLA, and the next sequel rumored to deal with the "Ash People", a Na'vi clan associated heavily with fire that will serve a more antagonistic role than the other Na'vi clans we've seen before - just like the Fire Nation, ATLA fans couldn't help but notice how James Cameron's Avatar series seems to have more and more similarities to the animated series aside from the shared title to the point many are now expecting Avatar 4 to feature “Earth” Navi.
    ... If part 3 is called "The Firebending masters" we riot
  • It started growing one with the sci-fi horror movie M3GAN due to it being one of the only major releases in January 2023. Many Avatar haters who aren't even that interested in the movie started paying money to see M3GAN in theaters purely out of spite. M3GAN having a higher critic score on Rotten Tomatoes certainly helped fuel the rivalry too.
• Friendly Fandoms: With Alita: Battle Angel fans, due to being two James Cameron pet projects and the belief that the more successful The Way of Water is the more likely the chance Alita could get a sequel. During the promotional campaign of The Way of Water, producer Jon Landau has talked about pushing for a Alita sequel in an interview, and Cameron and Robert Rodriguez have teased a "blood oath" on a Zoom meeting to make it happen.
• Genius Bonus: Although Amrita has replaced unobtainium as Pandora's MacGuffin and unobtainium isn't mentioned in this movie at all, its presence is felt in one way — when Jake's family pull off their Train Job, you can tell from the design of the tracks that it's a maglev line, requiring superconducting magnets made with unobtainium.
• I Knew It!: Due to his lack of presence in the marketing, many fans predicted Neteyam, the oldest child of Jake and Neytiri's family, would die. Surely enough, he was killed around the film's third act.
• Improved Second Attempt:
  • One of the main criticisms of the first movie was that some of the main characters felt underdeveloped and didn't get explored much beyond the archetypes they fit into (a common internet joke is that most people, even fans of the franchise, would struggle to name even a single main character from Avatar). The sequel fleshes out the main characters a lot more, spending more time developing them and giving several of them their own individual plotlines and conflicts to deal with; even returning antagonist Quaritch is given a bit more depth via his relationship with Spider, his long-lost son.
  • Following criticism from the first movie that the audience needs supplemental material to learn that unobtainium is a room-temperature superconductor, unless they figured it out for themselves, Cameron includes a scene here to explain how Amrita is harvested from the tulkuns' brains and why it's even more valuable than unobtainium.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Many complained that Jake and his family learning how to live in the sea from the Metkayina Clan was too similar to Jake learning from the Na'vi in the first movie.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • A large portion of critical and online reviews have stated that, similar to the first film (though certainly not to the same extent) the story is still nothing groundbreaking, but the effects and action sequences are also still incredible and, for most viewers, that more than makes up for the average at best story.
  • Some people only came to see the trailers for Barbie and Oppenheimer and left screenings as soon as previews ended.
  • Some just came to watch the return of the RDA and more specifically, Miles Quaritch.
  • Some viewers on a re-watch simply watch the film again for the jaw-dropping, action-packed, third act. Even plenty of the film's detractors love this portion of the movie.
• Love to Hate: Mick Scoresby, the cruel and greedy whaler who shows up to draw audience disdain. He's a despicable character with Brendan Cowell bringing in a lot of sleazy charm in his portrayal.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Spider, a human friend of Jake and Neytiri's children.^note Following this promotional tweet, it's become a minor meme to exclusively refer to the character this way.
  • Free Willy but with Smurfs/Free Na'vi/Free Willy Blue ^ExplanationSimilar to the “Dancing with Smurfs” meme of the previous film, the film has gained a lot of comparisons to Free Willy due to its focus on saving whale like creatures. Besides, in Free Willy 3: The Rescue the antagonists are whalers.
  • Imagine taking over a decade to make a sequel just to get beat by Puss in Boots.
  • "Long ago, the Na'vi lived together in harmony, but everything changed when the Fire Na'vi attacked." ^ExplanationJames Cameron's statement that the sequel would include an antagonistic Na'vi clan associated with fire led to many a comparison to the Fire Nation from Avatar: The Last Airbender, which has a small but long-held rivalry with Avatar due to the shared title. In particular, this line, a riff on ATLA's famous and much-memed "everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked" line was tossed around a lot.
  • "Sigourney Weaver: How do you do fellow kids?" ^ExplanationMany jokes started popping up about 73-year-old Sigourney Weaver playing the teenager Kiri. Some resulting in the aforementioned meme originating from 30 Rock.
  • Chud Avatar/Chud Na'vi^ExplanationA minor soldier character recombinant (called Mansk in the credits) wearing tactical gear, sporting a buzz cut and Oakley-type sunglasses. Due to the character's design matching a stereotypical appearance of a supporter of right-wing politics in the U.S., he became subject of memes reimagining him as such.
    • "And they said Avatar had no cultural impact." ^ExplanationMany Avatar fans say this when replying to a Chud Na'vi meme. Boasting about how they finally have a meme from the movie that's not talking about the franchise's Popularity Polynomial.
  • The shot of Lo'ak double-flipping the bird Recombinant Quaritch when the latter captures him is becoming quite popular as a reaction image.
  • Avatar: The Way of Water is a Christmas movie.^ExplanationKiri is built up as a Messianic Archetype, and the movie was released around Christmas time.
  • Staring Avatar Guy ^Explanation The image of Lyle staring into Quaritch's eyes while he wakes up Quaritch in the hospital bed has been turned into something similar to the advice animal memes of the early 2010s, usually captioned with some kind of pun-based joke, i.e. "Bird flu? Yeah, they do that", or "Road work ahead? Yeah, I sure hope it does."
  • Titstew ^Explanation On July 10, 2023, the official Avatar Twitter account tweeted that the Na'vi word for "courage" is tìtstew along with the sentence "Jake and Neytiri's tìtstew is inspirational". The internet naturally found this hilarious. The original tweet has since been deleted, causing many fans to mock the social media team's lack of tìtstew.
• Moe: Tuk is Jake and Neytiri's youngest and therefore smallest child, and she is a precious little thing. Kiri also gives off a similar effect while being older.
• Narm:
  • While Lo’ak removing the harpoon from Payakan’s fin is a sweet moment, Payakan offering Lo’ak the chance to swim with him by gesturing one of his fins like a hand looks a little silly coming from a whale.
  • Jake's blatant favouritism of Neteyam and repeated condemnation of Lo'ak stops being sad to the point of being silly. Like, dude, we get it, your son's a knucklehead but if you keep treating him like shit, he's not gonna get any better. And for someone who keeps saying it's a father's job to protect his children, he has a bad habit of leaving them to run off. Seriously, Jake might be a soldier, but his sons and daughters spent nearly fifteen years living in peace and harmony before the humans returned to Pandora.
  • Neytiri threatening Spider's life is genuinely chilling... so it makes very awkward that Spider willing to return to her and the family, and they all pretend like it never happened. Makes the reunion seem a bit weird given how she never liked him to begin with.
• Narm Charm:
  • Despite how cartoonishly evil the whalers are, some viewers still find them to be pretty awesome and entertaining. With Brendan Cowell in particular giving one hell of a fun performance as Mick Scoresby. Not to mention, with them being so despicable it is an absolute delight to see Payakan turn the tables on them.
  • While the Sully kids using terms like "bro" and "cuz" a is pretty eye-rolling attempt to convey they are teenagers, for some it works nonetheless because of how adorable the Sully kids are and how the teen actors really do make it feel like they're siblings.
  • The entire visual language of the Recom marines: gigantic lanky blue aliens fully kitted out in tac gear, military fatigues, modern firearms and some with Oakley sunglasses. It's as equal parts ridiculous as it is awesome.
• Padding: Again Cameron goes for full-on Shoot the Money, with long takes of the impressively realistic alien landscape. But given the runtime is half an hour longer than the first movie, reaching the three hour mark, the media was soon giving alerts for moments in which those without a Bladder of Steel can get some relief (on the matter, Cameron said he hoped people would pay another ticket to see what they missed while in the bathroom).
• Rooting for the Empire: Again, like the first film, some people watched the film solely for the return of the RDA and Miles Quaritch. Heck, even in the beginning where the RDA vapourised Jake and Neytiri's old home, there were some cheers among some viewers who viewed it as a Catharsis Factor for the RDA's defeat in the first film. The fact that the RDA is also establishing a base of operations because it is explicitly stated Earth is dying in this movie added some sympathy points for them, even if they are colonizing a world they have been kicked off of.
• She Really Can Act: Sigourney Weaver has always been known for being an amazing actress, but her casting as Kiri, the 14-year-old daughter of Jake and Neytiri, understandably confused audiences in the lead up to the movie since Weaver is in her seventies, even causing a Questionable Casting level reaction. However, upon release, Weaver's performance received praise (and the context behind why she's playing such a young character made sense) with the only criticism being her voice sounding a bit mature for such a young character.
• Signature Scene: This shot of Jake riding his Skimwing into battle was frequently shown in trailers, teasers, online articles, and advertisements, and has now become emblematic of the movie, probably due to how awesome it looks.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • This is likely the closest we will get to an adaptation of Subnautica. Both feature breathtaking bioluminescent underwater visuals, both explore the contrast between a cyberpunk human civilization and the natural beauty and symbiosis of an alien world, and the plots of both heavily involve Sapient Cetaceans that have been preyed upon due to a valuable substance their bodies produce. Any Subnautica player who's had to hide from a Reaper Leviathan while Almost Out of Oxygen will sympathize with Lo'ak's encounter with the Akula in this film.
  • The idea of an ocean-based culture resisting a spacefaring civilisation which comes every few years can really bring to mind the "Remembering Siri" segment of Hyperion.
  • Exploring a maritime alien culture's relationship with friendly and invading humans alongside conservationist themes brings to mind the French comic series Aquablue, complete with blue-skinned aliens and a human going native.
  • The premise of an anti-aging substance extracted from giant, ecological creatures in a planet where tribal cultures resist against space-faring colonists, complete with natural hive minds, wise shamanesses, enhanced clones and Messianic characters, basically screams Dune.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Spider is unique among the cast for being a human raised alongside the Na'vi and taking after their culture, along with having Quaritch as a father. He spends more than half of the movie held captive by Quaritch and gets minimal screentime while the movie focuses on Jake's family getting used to living with the Metkayina, and there's barely any scenes of him contemplating his relationship with Quaritch, more of which could have added more emotional depth to his underwater rescue of Quaritch.
  • The Metkayina clan is oddly absent during the Final Battle against Quaritch and his men despite Chief Tonowari's war party charging in alongside Sully and Neytiri. This resulted in a lot of viewers being bewildered as to what the Metkayina were doing the whole time that Sully and his family were fighting aboard Scoresby's whaling vessel.
  • Besides the third act, where Zoe Saldana is able to kick ass and give a truly emotional performance as a grieving mother out for revenge, some felt Neytiri was quite underutilized in the film and that she should have gotten just as much if not more screentime as Jake and the kids.
  • Mo'at only appears briefly in a few scenes in the first act and doesn't have much impact on the plot. While it's understandable she would remain with the Omaticaya as their spiritual leader and so wouldn't have as much presence in the second half of the movie, it could've been interesting to see her relationship with her grandchildren in more depth (especially Kiri given her connection to Eywa and hints of her being mentored by Mo'at) and her reaction to her entire remaining family being forced to leave the Omaticaya.
  • A few people are disappointed at how the recombinant soldiers are used in the film. While the movie builds up how they are RDA military soldiers in new stronger, faster, bodies, most of them drop like flies just as easily as the human RDA soldiers when getting killed by Jake and Neytiri. By the end of the movie, all of them are dead except for Quaritch and possibly Wainfleet.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Neytiri throughout the movie doesn't appear to have learned any of the skills Jake and their children learned from the Metkayina, and she's the only one in the final battle riding an Ikran, a forest flyer, while the rest ride Tsuraks, which are sea creatures. There's also very little screentime of her interacting with the Metkayina, more of which could better clarify her feelings on Metkayina culture.
  • The plot of the first Avatar surrounded the RDA needing to mine special rocks of Pandora that they dubbed "Unobtainium," yet it's never brought up even one time in Way of Water; having instead been replaced with a new MacGuffin in the form of a Tulkun body liquid that was discovered to help people live longer. Along with viewers finding it odd that the Unobtainium rocks are just completely glossed over and forgotten about, it's also viewed as a waste to those who wanted to know more about why the rock MacGuffin was so important.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Many fans have noted that by taking refuge with the Metkayina Clan, Jake is also putting them in the crosshairs in his war against the RDA as well, especially when he knows that there's a very dangerous personal enemy who would stop at nothing to kill him and everyone he loves. As much as Ronal is being a jerk toward her guests, she has a very good point when she says that Jake and his family's presence in her clan would bring the Sky People's wrath onto them, which is exactly what ends up happening in the third act.
  • A portion of viewers, particularly parents, generally found Jake and Neytiri’s parenting skills inattentive at best and utterly reprehensible at worst. While it’s at least somewhat understandable at the beginning that they can’t always be there for their children while dealing with the pressure of guerrilla fighting RDA, even if their lack of attention leads to Neteyam, Lo'ak, Tuk, Kiri and Spider getting captured by Quaritch, it’s after they leave the rainforest and go the Metkayina Clan that Jake and Neytiri have far less of an excuse for not looking after their kids to the best of their abilities as Neteyam, Lo'ak, Kiri and Tuk get captured again by Quaritch multiple times with the only reason for them not being killed on spot being Quaritch‘s Noble Demon tendencies as he only wants Jake. While the film treats it as bad luck on the part of the kids with a good dose of Rule of Drama, a good amount of viewers still felt Jake and Neytiri were woefully neglectful of their children and could have avoided a lot of heartache such as Neteyam getting killed if they were just more attentive to their kids’ whereabouts particularly given how often they willingly let the teenagers wander off to explore, taking the youngest Tuk with them.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley:
  • An audio-based one. While Sigourney Weaver’s performance as Kiri is praised by most, some found it distracting to hear a grown woman’s voice coming out of what’s supposed to be a teenager’s mouth. Some felt the film should have either digitally altered/modulated Weaver’s voice to sound younger, gotten a voice actress who sounds like a young Sigourney Weaver to dub over Weaver’s performance, or just cast a different actress entirely. While it's worth noting that teenagers do have a wide variety of voices, some actually sounding surprisingly mature, it can still sound pretty off-putting to people who are very much used to teenagers sounding quite youthful.
  • The Metkayina are Na’vi with bodies more adapted to a lifestyle near the ocean, so they have the traits necessary for easier movement underwater. That being said, their arms look kind of deformed on a mostly humanoid body due to being thicker and having more of a flipper shape as they transition into their hands. This film's choice to focus more on its characters' hands, as a plot point, puts more focus on their strangeness.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • Actors for Na'vi and Avatars were filmed with underwater performance capture — which has never been done before this movie — and just from the first teaser alone, they look nearly indistinguishable from real human/humanoid creatures in genuine underwater environments. The hair is animated in an extraordinarily detailed manner, and the creatures that live within the water move and swim and billow like real creatures influenced by moving water. It's a whole new world that was never seen, and yet here it is, and it looks real, even more so than in 2009.
  • On the other hand, the High-Frame-Rate version is either this or full-on Special Effect Failure. Due to backlash against The Hobbit films being shot in 48 frames-per-second, The Way of Water employs a "variable frame-rate", with most shots shown in 48 FPS, others in 24 FPS (by doubling the frames). This shot-by-shot approach was taken to retain the best of both formats, but the result is the film very frequently switches frame rates, even multiple times in the same scene. Some viewers have reported discomfort, while others have reported the VFR makes the film look like a YouTube video that's struggling to buffer.
• The Woobie:
  • Poor, poor Neytiri. After all the suffering and loss she went through in the previous film, she's finally managed to build a new life for the Omaticaya and lives happily with the man she loves and their kids. Then the RDA return in force to Pandora, destroying Neytiri's home a second time and forcing her and her clan to hide in the mountains. And then Quaritch, the man responsible for much of Neytiri's grief and who almost killed her and Jake, returns from the dead to threaten her children. For her family's safety, Neytiri is forced to go far away from her clan and hide with unfamiliar people. Despite their best efforts, Neytiri's eldest son is still killed by the RDA and she has to watch him die. She's so distraught she nearly goes off the deep end, threatening to kill Spider to save her captive daughter (which briefly puts her in Jerkass Woobie territory) and accidentally destroys her late father's bow during her vengeful, murderous rage.
  • Although teenage Kiri has a loving adoptive family she is close to, she expresses some angst over not knowing who her biological father is, not being able to interact with her biological mother outside of connecting with spirit trees because she technically died before she was born, and not even understanding how she came to be. Kiri sometimes feels like a freak or a crazy person because of her mysterious connection to Eywa, which no one understands. Some younger members of the Metkayina bully her over it and while she tries not to let it bother her, there are points where she desperately asks both her adoptive father and her birth mother why she's different. And then when she seems to be about to get answers from Grace's spirit, she suffers a seizure underwater that nearly kills her, and might never be able to safely commune with a spirit tree again. On top of all that, she has to deal with her family being hunted by the RDA, being repeatedly taken captive or otherwise endangered, and her older brother dying.
  • Spider is an orphaned human boy who was abandoned on Pandora, as babies can't be put into cryosleep for the trip back to Earth. He doesn't really have a proper family; although he's close to the Sullys and is treated like a brother by Neteyam, Lo'ak, Kiri and Tuk, he's not truly accepted into the family, with Jake treating him kindly but not viewing him as a son until the end, while Neytiri merely tolerates him. Spider is very much caught in the middle of two worlds and doesn't really belong to either of them. He's also well aware that his biological father is Quaritch and of the atrocities Quaritch committed on Pandora, and feels a lot of repulsion and bitterness over this. Spider spends a lot of the movie as an RDA captive, where he gets tortured and helplessly watches the suffering the RDA inflict on the Na'vi. He also develops increasingly conflicted feelings regarding Quaritch; despite his hatred of the man and knowing the threat he poses to the Sullys, he ends up saving his life, possibly motivated by Neytiri threatening to kill him in exchange for her daughter's life. Spider ends the movie more confused about who he is and where he belongs than ever.
  • Lo'ak may have it better than the above three, but he still has to go through quite a wringer throughout the film. He's implied to be The Unfavorite compared to his golden child older brother Neteyam and always feels stuck in his shadow. When they have to live among the Metkayina Clan, Lo'ak quickly makes enemies with Aonung, the tribe chief's son, causing a violent rivalry that alienates him even further from his parents, particularly Jake, who at one point outright told him that he "brought shame to the family". His only true friend he has is Payakan, an outcast tulkun who's also shunned by his fellow pod and even the Metkayina Clan, which doesn't do any favor with his parents' approval of him. In the climax, feeling shunned by his own family and knowing that his only friend Payakan is in danger from the whalers, Lo'ak sets out to save him despite everyone's warnings, inadvertently leading his entire family into danger and resulting in a bloody conflict that causes Neteyam's death. Even if he finally earned his father's respect at the very end when Lo'ak saves him from drowning, he most likely will still continue to blame himself for being indirectly responsible for his brother's death.

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