‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ is set to hit theaters starting on December 16th, with early showings on December 15th. Ahead of the release we have a look at the critical score for the film on Rotten Tomatoes as well as the box office projects for the film’s opening weekend.
Currently the film is said to be tracking at a $525 million opening world-wide, with the majority of estimated money coming from the overseas markets. ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ is getting a theatrical release in China, when many films are not. Right now estimates have the film tracking at $175 million domestic and $350 million over seas. Just China was seeing projections of about $200 million.
With these estimates we have the first critical reviews coming out and at the time of writing this article, the Critical Score for Rotten Tomatoes is sitting at 83% with 109 reviews.
A lot of comments seem to say that it looks beautiful but the plot is lacking.
“Plot-wise, this movie is treading water. But that’s fine, because the water’s lovely.“- Charlotte O’Sullivan ‘London Evening Standard’
“An assault on your senses. Visually dazzling and action-packed, but overproduced, exhausting and vapid. It’s more of a long and loud video game than an actual movie.” – Avi Offer ‘NYC Movie Guru’
“Though the graphics are still astounding, it’s difficult this time around not to realize the repetition of the story and the limited character arcs.” -Mike Massie ‘Gone With the Twins’
“Like the original, it’s “Dances with Wolves” in outer space. Only dumber.“- Soren Andersen ‘Seattle Times’
“The Way of Water has a way of pulling you in, surrounding you with gorgeous, violent chaos and finishing with a quick rinse to get the remnants of its teeny-tiny plot out of your eyes by the final credits.“- Michael Phillips ‘Chicago Tribune’
“Cameron loses track of his characters, snarls his story, squanders his star power, and then dizzies 3D audiences with so much whiz-bang that they might feel attacked in lieu of awed.“- Kristi Puchko ‘Mashable’
“It’s still more of a spectacle than a movie. But as spectacles go, it’s a big one.” – Billy Goodykoontz ‘Arizona Republic’
“Watching the film [feels] like being waterboarded with turquoise cement.” – Robbie Collin ‘Daily Telegraph UK’
Others saw the story matches up with the visuals overall:
“James Cameron has done it again with Avatar: The Way of Water, a state-of-the-art exercise that rekindles that sense of wonder and demands to be seen by anyone with lingering interest in watching movies in theaters.“-Brian Lowry CNN
“It demands the biggest screen you can find so that its most potent elements — from its impossible scale and skillful spectacle, to its more complete range of emotions and thematic romanticism — can be completely absorbed.” – Eric Francisco Inverse
“The 3-D special effects remain exceptional, but the screenplay is better this time, with a storyline more emotionally engaging than in the original. When people and critters die, we feel it this time.” – Randy Myers ‘San Jose Mercury News’
It’s going to be interesting to see how audiences rate and respond to the film. The impressive visuals will likely be enough for the film to pull big financials, but will it be enough to beat the first film or give demand for the upcoming sequels?
Time will tell.
What do you think? Comment and let us know!
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