Did the family survive because of the father’s commands, or because of what the children learned? My answer is the latter. What I love about the ocean in Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) has less to do with its color than with the lessons learned there.
Jake Sully, the hero of the first film, is now a father trying to protect his family. He takes them to a coastal clan to escape the human military’s pursuit, but here even Jake is a beginner. His experience surviving in the forest does not teach him how to control his breathing underwater; that is something he must learn from scratch.
While their father issues instructions, the children each find their own way to adapt to the sea. I was more interested in watching them grow comfortable in the water than in watching the family flee its pursuers. There was something refreshing about seeing children know things before their father.
Just because a father brought his family somewhere does not mean he knows how to survive there. The film makes that obvious through its extended swimming lessons. I like that it does more than show us the ocean: it makes a father learn from his children.
The Father Is the One Who Has to Learn Again in the Ocean
For Jake to protect his family, he first has to learn that his own commands are not enough. I admire the film for putting its hero back in the position of a student. Escaping danger with your family and learning to live in a new home are two different things.
Jake has a reason for fleeing. He wants to keep the enemy pursuing him from putting other people in danger. His determination to take responsibility for his family’s safety is genuine.
The problem is that this sense of responsibility turns into a habit of ordering his children around. Soldiers are used to giving and following commands. But in an unfamiliar ocean, the movements learned from the people who live there matter more than the father’s instructions.
Just because Dad is behind the wheel does not mean he knows the roads in a new neighborhood.
Once the family reaches the coastal clan, everyone has to start learning again. Breathing and moving underwater are different from anything they knew in the forest. Here, neither the authority of being a father nor past experience in combat can substitute for swimming ability.
I like this starting point. The film does not make Jake an incompetent parent simply to make the children look good. It acknowledges his desire to protect his family while putting in front of him a problem that good intentions alone cannot solve.
As a result, the children adapting before their father does not come across as mere disobedience. They have time to learn things their father has not yet mastered. The film suggests that experiences outside a parent’s watch are not necessarily pointless mistakes.
His son Lo’ak, in particular, can seem like a constant troublemaker if we judge him only by his father’s standards. But if we follow whom he grows close to and what he learns in the ocean, our judgment changes. The ability to follow instructions is not the same as the ability to find your way through an unfamiliar environment.
That also changes what it means to protect a family. It is not simply a matter of parents identifying every danger and placing their children somewhere safe. When parents accept what their children have discovered, the family has more ways to survive together.
What the film needs is not the satisfying spectacle of a father’s authority being humbled. It needs time to ask who knows what within a family. Respecting an adult’s experience and trusting a child’s experience are not mutually exclusive.
So are the children’s long hours in the ocean merely a sightseeing detour, or are they preparation for protecting the family?
The Swimming Lessons Keep the Story Moving
I see the children’s adjustment to the water as the heart of the film. The breathing and movement they learn there eventually determine whether the family survives.
Underwater, you cannot last simply by moving with all your strength. The children learn unfamiliar ways of using their bodies, beginning with how to control their breathing. As the audience spends that time with them, we also learn what the ocean demands.
These scenes do not put the story on hold simply to show off beautiful scenery. They show us, in advance, how the family will survive. The danger has not arrived yet, but the preparation is already underway.
There is a reason for my preference, too. In a chase, it is clear who is pursuing and who is running away. In a learning process, no one is guaranteed to stay ahead. Every time a child becomes comfortable before the father does, the family becomes more interesting to watch.
This period is particularly important for Lo’ak, who is constantly compared with his older brother. The ocean allows abilities to emerge that cannot be measured by how well he follows his father’s commands. The film later puts that experience to practical use.
This is where I discuss a key rescue scene from the ending. If you would rather avoid spoilers, feel free to skip to the next heading.
Lo’ak is the one who saves Jake from the sinking ship. He guides his father using the breathing technique he learned earlier. That was when I fully understood why the film needed those long swimming lessons.
Jake may have issued plenty of commands, but underwater, what was needed was the son’s training.
The scene works because Lo’ak does not suddenly become capable. He has already learned these skills, and the audience has watched him learn them. Jake’s task is not to issue another command but to follow the method his son knows.
That does not make Jake’s experience useless. He only has to accept that, in this particular danger, his son knows more about how to survive. The film is not asking who is always right; it is asking whom we need to learn from now.
If the scenes of underwater adaptation had been cut, the rescue would have felt far less satisfying. We would be left with the fact that a son saved his father, but not a convincing explanation of how he was able to do it. Because we have seen the time Lo’ak spent learning, the shift in who helps whom feels earned.
It also matters how Jake’s once-firm voice and body change in that moment.
The Acting Gets Stronger When the Parents Are Vulnerable
Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña are most effective when they reveal fear rather than simply projecting strength. Still, the time spent moving beyond fear and learning anew belongs more fully to Jake.
As Jake, Sam Worthington holds his voice rigid whenever he gives orders to the family he has brought to the ocean. His tone belongs to a father who decides what his children should do before listening to them. The desire to take responsibility for his family and the habit of controlling it are difficult to separate.
But underwater, the body that has to rely on someone else’s guidance cannot maintain that same certainty. Worthington does not protect the hero’s dignity; he shows the vulnerability of someone who needs help. I found myself more moved by the Jake who has to follow someone else’s movements than by the Jake who is in command.
I like that the change is not exaggerated. Instead of suddenly becoming a tender father, Jake accepts the moments when he cannot solve everything alone. Learning from a child becomes something he experiences physically, not a lesson delivered in dialogue.
Zoe Saldaña, playing Neytiri, the mother who has to leave the forest, shows us a different kind of fear. Her reluctance to leave expresses her desire not to lose her homeland. The aggression that erupts when her family is threatened also comes from a desperate determination not to lose the people she loves.
Saldaña does not explain that love through gentle expressions alone. Her body fighting alongside the family conveys her feelings more clearly than a long conversation between husband and wife could. That is why I never lost sight of Neytiri’s love even when she became fierce.
The disappointment lies less in the acting than in the time given to the character. The film does not give Neytiri enough of a daily life in which to learn the ways of the ocean. If the central idea is that parents learn from their children, the mother should have been shown learning more as well.
Kiri, played by Sigourney Weaver, is a girl with a special connection to marine life. Her body seems awkward around people but at ease in nature. She knows things physically that her parents never taught her.
Quaritch, played by Stephen Lang, is the soldier pursuing Jake. Even he, a man accustomed to giving orders to his subordinates, hesitates when faced with his son Spider. Military commands do not work on a son.
Kiri senses forms of life her parents do not understand, while Quaritch cannot make his son move according to his will. The shift toward accepting children’s experiences is present in the actors’ bodies and voices, too. But if that change is so clear, why does the criticism that the story is predictable remain?
The Criticism of a Predictable Rescue Plot Is Only Half Right
I agree with the criticism that the film repeatedly has the children captured and the parents come to rescue them. But I do not agree that this makes the children’s learning empty spectacle.
The problem with the repetition is not simply that it makes the next event easy to predict. The children, who have been developing their abilities in the ocean, are repeatedly placed back in situations where they have to wait for their parents’ help. The danger returns before they have enough chances to use what they have learned for themselves.
The screenplay teaches the children to swim, then keeps calling them back to the role of hostages.
That choice clashes with the growth the film has taken such care to establish. Every time the children are captured, the fact that they have been taken matters more than what they have learned. When similar captures keep happening, parental anxiety once again takes center stage over the children’s experiences.
The family’s desperation has already come through clearly. Repeatedly proving it reduces the time available to test what the children have learned, and that is a loss. I do not want to defend every repetition as necessary simply because this is a family film.
The next two paragraphs discuss a key rescue scene from the ending. If you would rather avoid spoilers, please skip to the next heading.
But the nature of the danger changes aboard the sinking ship. When water rises and the space turns upside down, brute force alone cannot get anyone out. Someone who knows how to control their breathing and move underwater has to guide the others.
What matters here is not simply that Lo’ak saves his father, but how he saves him. He uses the breathing technique he learned in the middle of the film, and his father accepts his guidance. The lesson shown earlier becomes necessary at precisely this moment.
This is different from a rescue that puts a child in danger merely to prove a parent’s courage. For the parents to survive, they have to trust the child’s experience. The idea that a family’s strength does not come from one person’s commands alone is expressed through action.
So while I accept the criticism that the rescue plot is familiar, I reject the verdict that the story is empty. The repetition weakens the force of the learning in places, but it does not erase the moment when that learning is put to use.
If I could cut anything, it would not be the time spent learning in the ocean but the number of times the children are sent back into similar danger. Because we have watched them learn, we can believe the moment when their parents finally trust their abilities.
This shift in roles becomes even clearer when placed alongside Jake’s experience of learning about an unfamiliar world in the first film.
Turning the Hero of the First Film Back into a Student Was the Right Choice
Jake entered an unfamiliar community in the first film, and becoming a parent does not mean he has stopped needing to learn. I think the sequel was right to put him back in the position of a student.
In Avatar (2009), Jake is someone who gains a new body and a new sense of belonging. To survive in an unfamiliar world, he has to learn from the people who understand its way of life. Holding on to his previous experience is not enough to make him part of that community.
In The Way of Water, the Jake who has found his place becomes an outsider again, this time alongside his family. He has people to protect, but that does not mean he already knows how to live in an unfamiliar ocean. If learning was necessary for him in the first film, it remains necessary now that he is a parent.
I prefer this connection to a simple change of setting. By replacing the forest with the ocean, the film also unsettles the status its hero has already earned. Being responsible for a family is not proof that you understand a new environment.
This time, even his own children join the people from whom he must learn. In the first film, he learned from members of an unfamiliar community; now he also has to accept the experience of his own children. Becoming a parent does not mean a person can stop learning from others.
That is why the long period spent learning the ocean is necessary. The audience has to understand what the children know before it can properly judge Jake’s attitude. We need to see the moments when he dismisses their experience simply because they have not followed his instructions.
That does not mean I am prepared to defend all 192 minutes. The early sections that recap the first film could be shorter. The repeated hostage crises could be reduced as well.
Cutting that material would not weaken the children’s learning. It would probably allow us to focus more closely on what they have mastered. Not every scene in a long film is necessary for the same reason.
That is why I disagree with the impulse to cut the underwater sequences simply because the film is slow. Reducing the time in which parents and children come to see one another differently would damage the sequel’s best decision. There are other places to trim.
The time I want to preserve is the process of the children learning and the parents recognizing what they have learned. Even when the chase pauses, the family’s relationships are still moving. That time should not be treated as though the story has stopped simply because little is happening plot-wise.
That also makes the standard for recommending the film clearer. It is worth asking whether you enjoy a slow immersion in life at sea, but it is a separate question whether the repeated rescues give you enough reason to endure them.
Final Verdict: A Father Who Can Learn from His Children Is Stronger
I recommend Avatar: The Way of Water. What I value is not the scale of the ocean but the change that occurs when a father accepts his children’s experience. The desire to protect a family is only the starting point; learning from one another turns that desire into practical strength.
The reason for my positive verdict is clear. The breathing and movement learned in the middle of the film return as tools for survival in the final act, turning the children’s lessons into abilities the family needs. The repeated captures and rescues, by contrast, keep the children who were beginning to grow in a passive waiting position, and that costs the film points.
If you enjoy adventures that take their time exploring how people learn to live in an unfamiliar world, the 192 minutes are worthwhile. I also recommend it to viewers moved by stories in which parents and children begin to see one another differently. What frustrated me was not the time when the chase paused, but the moments when the children’s learning was ignored.
On the other hand, viewers who want the action to move constantly may find the extended process of adapting to the water arduous. I would hesitate to recommend it to anyone who quickly tires of repeated hostage-and-rescue sequences. The film has clear strengths, but there is no reason to excuse its habit of returning to the same crisis.
When you watch it, try to remember what the children are learning. Do not focus only on the moments when they follow Jake’s instructions; watch for the moments when they move according to their own understanding. Then the actions in the final act will feel less like sudden heroics and more like the result of experience built over time.
The next film to watch is Avatar (2009). It is interesting to compare the Jake who once learned from others with the Jake who now has to learn from his children. A father who can learn from his children is stronger than one who merely knows how to protect them.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Can I understand the film without seeing the first one?
The film recaps the essential backstory early on, so you can follow the main plot. Still, watching Avatar (2009) first makes the change from Jake as a student to Jake as a commanding father more apparent.
Isn’t the runtime too long?
The runtime is 192 minutes. A substantial portion of the film is devoted to slowly learning how to live in the ocean. That may feel demanding if you are expecting a fast-moving chase, but following the children’s learning makes it clear why the time matters later.
Is it all spectacle with a predictable story?
I agree with the criticism that the film repeats its capture-and-rescue pattern. But because the children’s learned skills are used to help the family survive, the ocean sequences are more than visual spectacle. My verdict is that the film’s strength in turning learning into action outweighs the weakness of the repetition.
Is it based on a novel or a true story?
It is not based on a separate literary work or a true story. It is the sequel to Avatar (2009), following Jake, now a father, as he has to learn all over again in an unfamiliar ocean.
What should I keep in mind to enjoy it more?
It helps to remember the breathing techniques and underwater movements the children learn. Instead of focusing only on what Jake commands, follow what the children discover for themselves. That makes the changing pattern of help within the family much clearer.
