The 10 Most Visually Beautiful Scenes In Avatar: The Way Of Water
This post contains spoilers for "Avatar: The Way of Water."
Even the biggest detractors of the "Avatar" franchise acknowledge that it looks damn good. Both the first film when it came out, and the new one, "Avatar: The Way of Water," represent the absolute pinnacle of special effects at the time of each project's completion. You don't have to care about human-turned-alien hybrid Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) or the Na'vi princess Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) to appreciate how mind-blowing it is that they look like real outer space creatures, down to every near-microscopic pore in their faces.
Not content with merely generating photo-realistic aliens, however, writer-director James Cameron has created an entire photo-real ecosystem and staged massive battles within it. All of these are eye-catching — but which of them truly takes our breaths away the most?
For those on the fence about seeing "The Way of Water," this list of the most visually stunning moments may help you decide to see it. Just be forewarned: descriptions of scenes that take place throughout the entire running time will inevitably spoil some details. Also note that in order to preserve surprises, 20th Century Studios has not made images of every scene described herein available, so some of the pictures are simply as close as we could get.
Date night on Banshees
The Banshees, or Ikran as the Na'vi say, are such an integral part of the appeal of the first "Avatar" that you can't very well have a movie without them. Even though the sequel's Na'vi rely far more on flying fish called Skimwings, by necessity, the Banshees star in their own Disney theme park ride, for Eywa's sake! Fans would miss them, and Disney would miss the tie-in dollars.
So before Jake and Neytiri relocate to the reefs, where swimming matters more than flying, they give us one spectacular ride on their current steeds. We've never before seen the Ikran at night, and like everything else on Pandora, they glow in the dark. Briefly getting away from their children, the Sullys recreate the swoops and dives together that first led them to fall for each other. It's probably the second most fun thing a Pandoran couple can do in the dark when alone.
Train robbery
"Star Wars" has recently leaned into the space western angle, with train robberies playing a key part in both "Solo: A Star Wars Story" and "The Book of Boba Fett." In both those cases, there were twists: the train Han Solo raided could flip around the track, and Boba's was anti-gravity through the desert. Fett and Solo both encountered nasty surprises, but Jake Sully knows what he's doing. Attacking an RDA train from the air with Banshees, and a combination of the Na'vi's toxin-dipped arrows and Marines' guns, he very quickly makes the train explode and go head over heels. This, of course, looks great in 3D.
The action's not without a purpose, though. When he suspects his sons might be injured or killed, Sully, like the audience, suddenly takes a moment to realize that maybe war kinda sucks after all and that no matter how reckless a man might be, he can't be too gung-ho to protect his kids.
Arrival at Metkayina reef
In 2010, some fans were noted to experience "post-'Avatar' depression syndrome." After seeing Jake Sully enjoy the world of Pandora so much more than Earth, they felt sad they couldn't go too. Now, at least, Disney's Animal Kingdom has the World of Pandora, where a person can make believe for a little while. But "The Way of Water," opening up the Metkayina reefs, may start the whole thing over again since the theme park version is based primarily around the Omatikaya rain forest.
When Jake and family first arrive on the beach ruled by Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and Ronal (Kate Winslet), it's a tropical paradise of sun, sand, perfectly sized pools, pretty seashells, tribal tattoos, bouncy floors, and cute, rideable Ilu. One half expects the newcomers to bust out the "Annie" song, "I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here." Until Ronal shows up and is totally rude, killing the vibe, man.
Avatar Quaritch looks out the spaceship window
"Marines don't die," Quaritch (Stephen Lang) tells his team. "We regroup in Hell." Hell, in this case, looks mighty pretty. Even though in the previous film he described Hell as a relaxing getaway compared to Pandora, Quaritch will find the planet considerably more appealing in a body that's properly adjusted to it. First, though, he awakens as Recom, recombining his downloaded memories into an avatar body that's now permanently his.
He awakens in it in space, initially madder than, well, Hell. Once he gets his bearings, though, and briefs his team — which also consists of resurrected dead — he looks out the spaceship window at Pandora below. Spinning relative to his position, it appears through his window reflection. It's a taste of the way Eywa may make him face himself and his true nature, as well as a peaceful sight from a distance that he's about to turn really ugly up close.
First dive
Like the first flight in "Avatar," the first dive in "The Way of Water" is an instantly immersive ride into wonderland as a whole new biome opens up. Fans of James Cameron's 3D IMAX documentaries may notice some familiar patterns: these alien sea creatures swim and school like the real-life versions he encountered in "Aliens of the Deep." This time, with a high frame rate and 4K 3D, it feels like there's naught but an invisible force field holding back the oceanscape that spreads out ahead. It's hard to comprehend that neither the water nor most of its inhabitants were ever real.
This is also where the actors' free-diving skills come in. Jake and Neytiri's natural-born kids have to go up for air fairly quickly, but Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) evinces a strange ability to breathe just fine underwater — or at least hold her breath indefinitely. Through her eyes, we get to linger much longer, thanks to Weaver's actual learned-for-the-movie ability to hold her own breath for the duration of long takes.
Underwater bioluminescence - fairy wing rays
Of course, a reef underwater looks great by day, but when everything deep down there glows, it can be twice as impressive, or more, by night. Unlike with the Ikran, James Cameron's not waiting for the next sequel to show you his new creatures glowing.
In particular, this sequence reveals a sea jelly-ish creature that can transfer oxygen into the body through the skin, and conveniently clips onto a swimmer's back, where it looks like iridescent fairy wings. Aside from endearing the movie to all the fans of fairy art out there, this seems to serve a similar function as the Babel fish in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." It's an organism so improbably useful that it proves the existence of God.
On Pandora, of course, God, in the form of collective planetary consciousness Eywa, is already proven. So that's hardly necessary, really. The way Na'vi ponytails universally plug into every animal on the planet is already a more divinely efficient system than any Earth-based manufacturer of computers has managed to figure out.
Shark attack
"There's always a bigger fish," says Qui-Gon Jinn in "Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace," as a large, hungry sea monster gets eaten by a bigger one. Pedantic children the world over likely objected that #NotAllSeaCreatures are fish — notably, whales are mammals. The line's ultimately a metaphor anyway, referring to Darth Sidious puppeteering a crisis. It could also, now, refer to James Cameron out-Lucasing George Lucas with a very similar yet vastly more eye-catching sequence in "The Way of Water."
Lured out to what he thinks is a prime hunting ground, Sully middle child Lo'ak (Britain Dalton) finds himself alone and menaced by a sharklike creature called an Akula. Fleeing through small spaces in the reef, he manages to stay a step ahead, but with the creature powerful enough to break apart the tight spaces, his outcome starts looking grim.
Before he can become dinner, though, the Akula does instead. A whale-like Tulkun, over twice its size, makes the save by biting the thing in half. That seems quite uncharacteristic — at least by Earth's standards for sea mammals. As we will come to learn, though, this particular Tulkun has quite the backstory and motivation.
The Cove of the Ancestors
"Oh, sure, the underwater stuff is cool," a hypothetical audience strawman might say. "But where are the floating mountains? Does stuff only levitate in one small part of the planet? That makes no sense." Have no fear. Nobody says the word "unobtainium" again, probably because people have yelled it at James Cameron for a dozen years. Its anti-gravity powers exist everywhere on Pandora, though, and in Metkayina territory, that happens most in the Cove of the Ancestors. It's their most sacred place, and where they bury their dead underwater, which somehow comes off as a lot more hygienic and less creepy than humans doing it on Earth would be.
When the kids first see it, though, they're like us, oohing at the rib-like rock formations and the floating mountains, now all with an added seaside location. If the Metkayina believed in money and class struggle and individual property, it's where the rich ones would build their mansions. Instead, they leave it as a place of nature worship. That's a better call.
Coral reef chase with crab mechs
Quaritch needs Jake's kids in order to have any leverage over him. Unfortunately for the colonel's hostage needs, the kids can now swim really well, and all the bad guys have are the full contents of a massive whaling ship. This, however, includes crab mechs that can dive like submarines, but also crawl and grasp like crabs.
Chasing the kids beneath the waves and through seaweed stalks, these custom seacrafts are dogged by marine critters sympathetic to the Na'vi, but they come well-equipped. It's no stretch to imagine these being the kinds of vehicles James Cameron wished he had for his real deep dives. They also make cool toys, although McFarlane Toys forgot to make pilot action figures to go inside them.
By the end of the chase, Quaritch does get some of what he wants. However, he might consider being careful about what he wishes for. As Jake already knows, the kids are a handful.
Escape from sinking ship
Because this is James Cameron, it's no surprise when the story culminates in a massive boat turning sideways — literally and figuratively — and sinking. Or that it involves a husband and wife contemplating drowning, as in "The Abyss." What is a surprise is how it resolves this time.
It's foreshadowed in an earlier, almost-as-beautiful scene that didn't make this list. Young Kiri, astonished and afraid of her connection to nature, dips her feet in the water, and luminous fish flock to her, lighting up the now-coolest wading pool ever. She's worried at this stage, but when both her adoptive parents' lives are at stake, she marshals a massive horde of glowing octopi, stretching behind her like magical breadcrumbs in Hansel and Gretel's forest. The jellies that look like fairy wings come into play now too, as Kiri brings them to where her parents are, offering both a trail lighting the way out and a lung enhancer for adults who haven't taken to the diving as readily as their progeny.