Skip to main content

Avatar: The Way of Water teaser takes us back to Pandora

Just a few weeks ago, the first glimpse at Avatar: The Way of Water was the talk of CinemaCon. Director James Cameron spent years working on the new sequel to Avatar, and it was always going to be an uphill battle to follow the most successful movie of all time. But if the early visuals are any indication, Cameron may have successfully done it. The first teaser trailer made its public debut in theaters with last Friday’s debut of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. But now, the trailer is online for everyone to see.

If you’re looking for story details and spoilers, you won’t find any here. This teaser trailer is designed to shock and awe cinema lovers with things both new and familiar. Jake Sully and his wife, Neytiri, are back in a story set 10 years after the original film. We only get a glimpse of their children here as the family explores the oceans of Pandora and the magnificent creatures that live there.

Avatar: The Way of Water | Official Teaser Trailer

The official description for the sequel is frustratingly vague. But it does hint that some dark times are ahead for the family.

“Set more than a decade after the events of the first film, Avatar: The Way of Water begins to tell the story of the Sully family (Jake, Neytiri, and their kids), the trouble that follows them, the lengths they go to keep each other safe, the battles they fight to stay alive, and the tragedies they endure.”

A striking visual from Avatar: The Way of Water.

Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña are reprising their respective roles as Jake Sully and Neytiri. The oldest son of the family is named Neteyam (Jamie Flatters), while his younger Na’vi siblings are Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) and Tuktirey (Trinity Bliss). Jake and Neytiri have also adopted a human child, Javier “Spider” Socorro (Jack Champion).

The sequel’s expanded cast includes Giovanni Ribisi, CCH Pounder, Cliff Curtis, Kate Winslet, Edie Falco, Michelle Yeoh, Jemaine Clement, and Vin Diesel. Sigourney Weaver and Stephen Lang will also return as Dr. Grace Augustine and Colonel Miles Quaritch, respectively. Both characters died in the first film, so the way they come back remains to be seen.

Avatar: The Way of Water will come crashing down into theaters on December 16.

Editors' Recommendations

Blair Marnell
Blair Marnell has been an entertainment journalist for over 15 years. His bylines have appeared in Wizard Magazine, Geek…
James Cameron’s sci-fi epic Avatar returns to theaters, but has its magic faded?
Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana fall in love on Pandora.

There were plenty of reasons to wonder, in the autumn of 2009, if James Cameron had finally flown too close to the sun, burning a big budget on a boondoggle. Nearly a dozen years after emerging from a troubled production with the biggest movie of all time, the disaster-weepie phenomenon Titanic, the blockbuster maestro had once more secured enormous investment in pursuit of a bank-busting special-effects spectacle to rule them all. Except this time, the movie in question looked, from a distance, like the height of overreaching silliness: A sci-fi fantasy about a species of lithe, ocean-blue, vaguely feline aliens, prancing through a tropical paradise. The first trailer prompted chortles. Cameron, however, would have the last laugh.

Avatar, like Titanic before it, did more than silence the skeptics. It vindicated all the grand, hubristic ambition of its creator, at least from a commercial standpoint. Somehow, Cameron had done it again, and unbelievably surpassed the box-office success of his last conquest of the record books. Avatar, a hodgepodge of science fiction tropes in a cutting-edge package, was the big-screen event that everyone had to attend. Globally speaking, it quickly became the biggest movie of all time — a title it lost a decade later to Avengers: Endgame, then won again thanks to a rerelease in Chinaduring the pandemic. Even adjusted for inflation, the movie sits toward the top of the all-time charts.

Read more
James Cameron on pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in Avatar and Super/Natural
Neytiri and Jake in Avatar.

James Cameron is on a mission to push beyond what's possible. The Academy Award-winning filmmaker quickly became a visionary for his early work in The Terminator franchise and Aliens. Titanic went from a film plagued with production problems to 11 Oscar wins and the first film to reach the $1 billion mark. Cameron's Avatar dazzled the world with its use of 3D technology on its way to becoming the highest-grossing film of all time, a title it still holds today.

Despite becoming one of the most important filmmakers of the last 40 years, Cameron is an explorer at heart, and his fascination with the Earth is on display in the new National Geographic series, Super/Natural. Executive produced by Cameron, Super/Natural takes viewers into the minds of the world's extraordinary creatures. Thanks to scientific and technological advancements, the series displays some of the most fascinating imagery ever recorded.

Read more
Discover the terror below in the new teaser for Barbarian
Georgina Campbell in Barbarian.

Earlier this week, the trailer for Gone in the Night opened the door for a new genre of horror films: bad Airbnb double-bookings. Now there's a horror story that speaks to today's audience! The first teaser trailer for 20th Century Studios' Barbarian continues this new tradition by introducing us to Tess, a young woman whose rental is already taken by a man named Keith. Fortunately, Keith seems generous enough to let Tess stay with him for the night. The bad news is that Tess has seriously underestimated just how much trouble she's about to find herself in.

BARBARIAN | Official Trailer | In Theaters August 31

Read more