In the more than a decade since Avatar became the highest-grossing film of all time – raking in $2.9 billion at the box office – it fell into a sort of limbo. The cardboard-cutout story – indigenous people fighting off aggressive eco-exploiting colonists – was forgiven because of the pioneering visual effects that director James Cameron brought to the screen.
The long-awaited sequel Avatar: The Way of Water is set after the defeat and eviction of the “sky people” (ie humanity) from the forests of Pandora, a fictional moon of a distant gas giant. The hero of the first film – paralysed former marine turned indigenous leader Jake Sully – has settled down with his Na’vi wife Neytiri to start a family. Inevitably the sky people return to disrupt this idyll, with plans to completely colonise Pandora, as Earth is soon to be uninhabitable.
