James Cameron, a filmmaker who earns so much money he needs a new word—blockbustingest—to describe him, is once again set to rake in cash by the wheelbarrow with his upcoming release of the hotly anticipated sequel to 2009’s Avatar, the highest grossing film of all time. Titled Avatar: The Way of Water, the second in the series (with the third already coming) will let fans reenter the magical world of Pandora to experience all the sights and sounds of a planet that they haven’t experienced in over a decade.
20th Century Studios has released a new trailer to YouTube for the December 16th, 2022 movie showing audiences one final glimpse at the world of Pandora and the all-new story featuring Jake Sully and Ney’tiri before they can experience it at the theater for themselves. It's a pre-Thanksgiving treat for a movie that will open shortly before Christmas.
The film, set more than a decade after the events of the first Avatar—which means Cameron is taking its own real-world time gap into account—will deal with the oceanic side of Pandora. To emphasize this, the trailer opens with shots of Jake and company flying forest banshees over a Pandoran lagoon where other coastal Na’vi—whose skin are more distinctly aqua-colored compared to the forest Na’vis’ deeper blue--are swimming and fishing and living the lives of an oceanside tribe before setting down. They meet the chieftain who asks them why they have come. A shot cuts to an army of Amplified Mobility Suits, guns ready, on the march. Jake answers the chieftain that he’s just trying to keep his family safe.
As the tribes eye each other—the young forest Na’vi unable to look away from their aquatic Na’vi sisters—the chieftain welcomes Jakes and his kind, telling the others to teach them their ways, which are presumably the titular Way(s) of Water. Na’vi are shown diving and swimming and joshing each other as people who are newly met will do. Then comes the sticking point: those who live there must learn to ride the creatures, like the new skimwings, the oceanic version of the banshees from the first movie, so they can be symbiotic partners. It’s the growing pains of two related but different cultures coming together—until the humans show up.
The last part of the trailer, its third act, is a montage of the tribes teaming up to take on the invading humans together. Jake and the other warriors stand up against the mechs and gunships and tanks, each ending in a fiery explosion as the fight to save Pandora and its inhabitants from being wiped out begins once more. The Na’vi, old and new, use the Way of Water—and their skills with the creatures of the oceans of Pandora—to fight back and defend their homes and make sure their own families have a planet, and a future, that’s safe.
Avatar: The Shape of Water is set to release on December 16th, 2022.