Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) Review: four trips to the cinema in Ukraine
I Watched Avatar: The Way of Water Four Times Because Ukraine Kept Losing Power
Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) — my review, and the strange story of finally managing to watch it from beginning to end in Ukraine during the winter of 2022.
Most movie reviews follow a familiar pattern: you go to the cinema once, watch the film, go home, think about it for a few hours, and write down your thoughts. My experience with Avatar: The Way of Water was nothing like that. I ended up seeing it four times—not because I loved it so much that I couldn’t stop watching, but because the electricity kept disappearing. I finally managed to watch the entire movie on December 20, 2022. That date matters to me because, under ordinary circumstances, watching a Hollywood blockbuster is one of the simplest things in the world. You buy a ticket, sit in the dark for three hours, and leave. In Ukraine at the end of 2022, almost nothing felt ordinary.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, life changed dramatically across the country. In western Ukraine, where I was, the situation was generally safer than in many other regions. People still went to restaurants, shops, work, and cinemas; life continued, even if it never felt completely normal. By the end of the year, however, another problem had become part of daily life: electricity. Repeated attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure turned scheduled and emergency power outages into a regular feature of winter. Entire neighborhoods could lose power for hours without warning. The cinema I visited was actually quite good and inexpensive—my ticket cost roughly $2—but it didn’t have enough backup power to keep the screening going when the lights went out. You can probably guess where this is going.
I arrived, sat down, and started watching. Then the electricity disappeared and the movie stopped. I came back another day, watched part of the film again, and lost power once more. The third attempt ended the same way. By the fourth try I had developed a slightly ridiculous relationship with the first half of the movie. Most people see it once; I had become an accidental expert on the opening portion. That repeated exposure changed how I experienced the film. Normally, on a first viewing, you’re busy following the story and don’t necessarily notice every camera movement, facial expression, gesture, or small visual detail. After seeing the beginning several times, I started noticing just how carefully constructed it was.
What struck me most was the extraordinary attention to detail. Avatar: The Way of Water is obviously a visual-effects spectacle, but the repeated viewings revealed something beyond the spectacle itself. Everything seemed deliberate: a character turning their head, a glance, a tiny shift in expression, a slight camera move, a gesture and the reaction that follows. It felt almost like watching a highly detailed video game in which every animation had been carefully scripted—except this was a movie, and the characters never felt like animated puppets. Their expressions and movements remained remarkably natural. That level of care in the smallest emotional reactions is one of the strongest impressions the film left on me.
The visual effects are the most obvious highlight and fully deserve the praise. This is a movie that should be experienced on a big screen, preferably in 3D. James Cameron clearly understands why the format exists; rather than treating depth as a gimmick, the film uses it to make Pandora feel like a place you could almost step into. The underwater sequences are especially impressive, filled with an enormous amount of visual information—plants, creatures, water, light, reflections, movement, and countless tiny environmental details. Even though I knew I was looking at computer-generated imagery, the world still felt beautiful and coherent. There are films where CGI is something you notice, and films where the CGI becomes the world itself. The Way of Water belongs firmly in the second category.
Ironically, because of the power outages, the section I know best is the first hour. I’ve seen that part roughly four times and I don’t regret it. It is where I felt the strongest sense of discovery: Pandora looks incredible, the characters are introduced with enormous visual care, and the movie takes its time establishing its world. The emotional beats worked surprisingly well for me. Small facial expressions from Neytiri, Jake, Kiri and the others often communicate a great deal. The Ukrainian dub deserves special mention—it is excellent. Neytiri’s voice in particular was so well done that the dub simply disappeared into the character, which is exactly what you want.
I would roughly divide the film into three sections. The first hour on Pandora is my favorite: beautiful, carefully constructed, and packed with details I was still noticing on the fourth viewing. The second hour slows considerably as the story moves toward the ocean and introduces the aquatic culture. I appreciated the world-building and there are many lovely moments, but the pacing occasionally felt sleepy compared with the opening and the finale. Then the third hour arrives and the movie decides it has waited long enough. What follows is essentially a tsunami of action. After spending so much time exploring the world and its characters, the film finally unleashes the spectacle it promised, and on a big screen it works.
Among the performances, Neytiri remains one of the most emotionally expressive characters, and the Ukrainian voice work added a lot to her presence. Kiri was another favorite. Jake functions well as the central figure, the antagonist supplies a clear source of conflict, and several of the younger characters—especially one of the young sea-dwelling figures—felt well cast and integrated. Not everything landed for me. The character I jokingly think of as the “Mowgli kid” was one of my least favorite elements; the performance sometimes tipped into overacting, and I wasn’t always convinced the character was necessary. That is subjective, of course, but it pulled me out of the movie more than once.
The film is not perfect. Some of the hostage-related twists during the ship battle felt overly convenient, and certain character decisions seemed designed mainly to move the plot from one action sequence to the next rather than arising from believable choices. The ending also left me slightly underwhelmed. I understand it is part of a larger story and that some threads are deliberately left open for future films, yet as a standalone experience I wanted a stronger final impression. These reservations, however, did not outweigh what the movie does well.
What makes Avatar: The Way of Water worth seeing is the experience itself. Plenty of films have better dialogue, more intricate plots, or greater intellectual ambition. Very few can do what this one does at this scale: show you a world you have never seen and make you feel as if you have spent several hours inside it. The scenery is spectacular. Almost all of it is digital, but that does not make the achievement less impressive; the digital world feels coherent and alive. You do not get a movie like this every year. Given the long gaps between Avatar films, you may wait a very long time before seeing another that offers this particular kind of spectacle.
After three failed attempts I finally watched the entire film on my fourth trip to the cinema. Most people remember a movie for its plot, characters, music, or a particular scene. I will probably always remember this one because I watched the beginning four times while Ukraine was dealing with winter power outages. There is something strangely funny about it now. At the time it wasn’t funny at all—you would go to the cinema hoping to escape reality for a few hours, only for reality to switch the cinema off. Still, I eventually got my three hours of Pandora, and it was worth coming back.
Final verdict
Avatar: The Way of Water is an enormous cinematic experience that deserves to be seen on the biggest screen available, preferably in 3D. Its story isn’t flawless, some characters and plot turns didn’t work for me, and the middle section slows down considerably. Yet the visual effects, world-building, performances, facial animation, motion capture, and sheer attention to detail are extraordinary. Because I accidentally watched the first hour four times, I probably paid closer attention to those details than I otherwise would have.
Rating: 8.5/10