Avatar: The Way of Water review – a mostly thrilling sequel that doesn’t quite make waves

James Cameron wants you to see Avatar: The Way of Water more than once. In fact, he's banking on it. The movie, one of the most expensive ever produced, reportedly needs to generate more than $2 billion at the box office in order to break even, a business model that relies on audiences returning for a second or third time, just like they did with his Titanic and the 2009 original. The problem, though, is that his belated Avatar sequel, running at a whopping three hours and 12 minutes in length, is not really a movie that invites more than a single viewing.

Yes, The Way of Water is – as we might have expected from a technical pioneer like Cameron – a visual feast, drenched with exquisite details and some truly mind-blowing action set-pieces. But it's also narratively bland and repetitive, its paper-thin story bearing the moral complexity of a throwaway kids' cartoon. Those hoping the director might have heard his critics and carved out a more unique tale the second time round will be surprised to find he's merely doubled-down on the simple, saccharine spirit of the original. This is a film rendered in broad, digital strokes that thrills in moments but leaves no real lasting impression.

The story catches up with former marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), who permanently shifted his consciousness into the body of a Na'vi alien at the end of the original film and is now residing on the lush moon of Pandora. With wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and bundles of kids in tow, he's pursed by the Earth military faction he betrayed – Cameron finds a clever way to bring back the villain of the first movie, played again by Stephen Lang – and is forced to abandon his idyllic forest home and embed his family with a neighbouring Na'vi tribe, the Metkayina, who are at one with the ocean.

As tribes clash and we get to learn about the ways of these water dwellers, Cameron sidelines his original hero to focus on his young instead; but they're an even less compelling bunch than Jake himself, whose personality was already something of a black hole to begin with. Outside of the soggy character work, though, the film's biggest problem is that Cameron, by nature, seems averse to taking narrative risks; any interesting opportunities to break free from the by-the-numbers plotting is almost always circumvented by cliché.

The story swerves nuance and surprise in favour of obvious beats and awkward lines of dialogue, especially in scenes shared between the mostly irritating slew of younger, badly acted characters. There's also an overload of the trite, New Age guff that made the first film so awkward outside of its stellar action sequences, and Fast and Furious-like speeches about the power of “family,” though without any of that franchise's self-awareness. If The Way of Water's challenge was to get us to finally “care” about the characters of this series, it falls flat. It seems no amount of money or runtime can make the Na'vi – most of whom are largely interchangeable – into an interesting or emotionally compelling bunch.

Though all very silly (every so often you are struck by the sheer ridiculousness of the whole enterprise), this – admirably epic – movie is still for the most part engaging, and genuinely thrilling in fits and starts. There are essentially two distinct pleasures to be found in The Way of Water, and they're in Cameron's unmatched handling of the action sequences (one set-piece is inspired by Jaws, another by his own Titanic), and in the various underwater scenes that throw the viewer into the vast, briny deep like a piece of wayward plankton, observing the glowing fauna and marvelling at Pandora's oddball variants of whales and dolphins.

But there's a real disappointment here that's hard to shake. While Avatar was no classic, its technological achievements felt truly unprecedented and gifted viewers with an experience that felt genuinely groundbreaking at the time – a glimpse into a “new future of film-going” that never really arrived. In the thirteen-year gap between this Avatar and the last, the pixel detail has certainly reached new heights, but Cameron's sequel doesn't hit with quite the same spark of game-changing invention and promise as its predecessor. The Way of Water is easily enjoyed if you simply let it wash over you, an exercise in pure blue vibes. All said and done, though, you sense it's Sam Worthington who will come away as the person most grateful for its existence.

Avatar: The Way of Water is released in UK cinemas on 19 December.