Avatar: The Way of Water has had its world premiere ahead of its December 16th, 2022 release, with the early reactions to the film continuing a James Cameron trend with sequels. The Way of Water is the sequel to 2009's Avatar, once again written and directed by James Cameron. With the film being released 13 years after its predecessor, many were curious about how the film's quality would be affected after such a hiatus.
With the London premiere of the film came reactions from critics that addressed these curiosities and how the movie fared both as a standalone film and a sequel to 2009's Avatar. From the expected praise to the film's technical marvels and groundbreaking CGI achievements to comments on the story and characters, Avatar: The Way of Water is being widely praised after early showings. This early praise only highlights a long-running trend regarding the film's creator, James Cameron, and his relationship with cinematic sequels.
Avatar: The Way Of Water Proves James Cameron's Sequels Are Always Better
The trend in question is that James Cameron always tends to create better sequels than their preceding films. As evident by the early reactions, Avatar: The Way of Water continues this, with the film being described as the greatest technological achievement in film history while also improving on lacking elements of the original. This harkens back to Cameron's other directorial efforts with sequels. Cameron's first experience with a sequel, outside his own disowned Piranha II: The Spawning, was Aliens, the sequel to Ridley Scott's Alien. Aliens is often considered the best in the franchise, and like the Avatar sequel, regarded by many as an improvement over the already fantastic Alien.
This only continued when Cameron directed the sequel to Terminator, with the release of Terminator 2: Judgment Day in 1991. As with Aliens, T2 was considered an improvement on its predecessor and is still regarded as the gold standard in of the Terminator franchise. Both films took what were self-contained, more horror/thriller-based films and expanded them into high-octane action films, largely regarded as two of the best sequels ever made. This is now continued with Avatar: The Way of Water, with the sequel receiving rave early reactions.
How Avatar: The Way Of Water Is Better Than 2009's Movie
The most obvious way that Avatar: The Way of Water's early reactions say the film improves on its predecessor is arguably also the most expected way: its technological achievements. According to early reactions, the movie only improves upon what was already groundbreaking with Avatar, by creating a technical marvel that blows competitors out of the water - as was expected by the improvements made to Cameron's technology in the 13-year hiatus since 2009. On top of this, Avatar: The Way of Water supposedly improves on its predecessor's weakest aspects by having a more emotional, high-stakes story for the sequel, and improving on character development that was lacking in 2009's Avatar.
