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The all-new cast of mostly younger characters worked out really well. Cailee Spaeny is no clone of Sigourney Weaver, but she set just the right tone as a new protagonist. With Spaeny in the lead, everything snapped together very neatly. Every minute was enjoyable, such as brooding and multi-faceted alien terror can possibly be. Suspending disbelief was easy. The special effects were top drawer. A well-crafted new probe into the haunted alien universe.

Other reviewers have already pointed out that this new film ties together the (many) loose ends that accumulated since the first two masterpieces. Alien/Aliens is reborn!

Here we have a younger and earlier Jay Swan, played now by Mark Coles Smith, who, while still young, has formal acting training, and a career dating back to 2003. He is sufficiently talented, and quite strong in the role. Clearly, Aaron Pedersen will now be moving on to other opportunities (and out of success, he was excellent in his establishment of the Jay Swan character). My first take, not all the way through yet, is that this series with its new, younger star and supporting cast, could play out for many years to come. I so much prefer this kind of story to the slick shoot-em-ups that are so widespread (and overdone) in American movies and television. These are stories driven by characters and relationships. Action, being secondary, is actually more engaging and harder hitting. In fact, there's plenty of action as well, including some very original ideas, but it's not what engages you. The action supports the story, and doesn't drive it. This is a promising start to what I hope will be years more of the Mystery Road franchise. Easy 10 star rating in my opinion.

I've just finished watching Avatar: The Way of Water at the Harkins Cine Capri at the Scottsdale 101 Theaters in Arizona (the screen is on the scale of IMAX if not larger; the film shows at 8K & 48 fps; and the sound system is the best that Dolby Atmos has to offer).

No one has ever done special effects and digital motion capture like this before, including facial expressions and body movements. It feels so real that suspending disbelief isn't hard (which is one of the major problems I had with Avatar I, I kept seeing it as a cartoon all the way through --- well, that problem is gone!).

The part I liked best was the first hour, where the film just illustrated how the inhabitants live happily within a balanced and intact ecosystem. Of course, the last hour (of the 3-hour show) descends into conflict, and that is much less enjoyable from my point of view. Why not just devote 3 hours to happy beings living fulfilling lives on a bounteous and nurturing moon? (Pandora is a planetary moon, not technically a planet. The floating islands in the sky go back to Philip Jose Farmer, a scifi writer whom I used to read extensively.)

All of this said, it's still very much a great movie --- I'm just the wrong person to drag through extended battle scenes, since I consistently find peace and harmony much more interesting and entertaining.

WIthout digging into every corner of the plot, I think Mr Cameron definitely has an agenda he wants to drive home about machines vs. Nature. Despite the fact that he uses very fancy machines to make his films, he clearly sees nature as generally good, and machines as prone to be bad, so the idea that the natural world could overcome machines (in a battle-like way) seems to be attractive to him. However, I don't really follow along with him on that line of thinking!

My view is quite different. I believe that machines and nature can coexist in harmony. I'll agree we're not very good at it yet, but I quite like machines and nature both --- in fact, I believe that well-designed machines can protect nature and make it more secure, integrated and beautiful.

Despite my criticisms, Avatar: The Way of Water is quite a success as a film overall. I rated it 8/10, with the 2 points off for its overemphasis on violence and conflict.