Avatar 2 reviews: What people on Twitter are saying about James Cameron's movie

Thirteen years since blue-skinned Pandorans dominated billboards across the world, Avatar is back.

The sequel to James Cameron’s 2009 epic – Avatar: The Way of Water – will hit the big screen on 16 December, promising viewers even more dazzling visual effects and another lengthy stint in cinema stalls and on sofas (it’s three hours, 10 minutes long).

Naturally, the great and the good of the entertainment world have already enjoyed previews of the soon-to-be blockbuster, and the outpouring of adulation is pretty overwhelming.

For anyone who doesn’t have the time or the inclination to read lengthy reviews, we’ve put together a collection of seven of the top bitesize critiques, courtesy of Twitter.

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The Oscar-winning, filmmaking legend Guillermo del Toro gushed: “I say it again: Avatar 2 - seeing it you realize how long it has been since you saw a MOVIE-MOVIE (like that, in caps).”

Erik Davis, of Rotten Tomatoes announced: "Happy to say #AvatarTheWayOfWater is phenomenal! Bigger, better & more emotional than #Avatar, the film is visually breathtaking, visceral & incredibly engrossing. The story, the spectacle, the spirituality, the beauty - this is moviemaking & storytelling at its absolute finest."

Indie Wire's chief film critic David Ehrlich described the sequel as "light years better than the first," adding that t was "easily one of the best theatrical experiences in ages" and left streaming "dead in a ditch".

Bilge Ebiri, of Vulture, tweeted: "THE WAY OF WATER might be James Cameron’s sweetest, gentlest, most personal film. Possibly even his most emotional. It revisits all his greatest hits, but it’s always totally sincere. He is never leaving Pandora. He loves this family. By the end, I did, too."

And David Sims, of The Atlantic said that the movie "absolutely owns bones".

"I was slapping my seat, hooting, screaming for the Na’vi to take out every last one of those dang sky people," he wrote.

Indeed, it's pretty tricky to find any negative assessments, and the (minor) criticisms that we did find tended to be bookended by flattery.

Uproxx writer suggested the CGI feast was maybe a little "too overwhelming", writing: "Trying to spare hyperbole, but I’ve never seen anything like this from a technical, visual standpoint. It’s overwhelming. Maybe too overwhelming. Sometimes I’d miss plot points because I’m staring at a Pandora fish."

And Emmy-nominated producer and film critic Scott Mantz would have liked it to be a bit shorter. He wrote that the movie "is breathtakingly beautiful with the most incredible VFX I have ever seen (I saw it in 3D)" but added: "The story itself is weaker than the first and feels drawn out at 3 hours & 10 minutes, but it’s always great to look at & the last hour is amazing."

The original sci-fi epic became the highest-grossing film of all time and went on to win three Oscars for its visual effects, cinematography and art direction.

It was set in 2154 and followed paraplegic marine Jake Sully dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission which becomes challenged when he falls for Zoe Saldana’s other-worldly blue princess Neytiri.

The sequel is set more than a decade after the events of the first film and sees Jake settle down with Neytiri and their three children in the Na’vi’s rainforest home.

Once a familiar threat returns, Jake must work with Neytiri and the army of the Na’vi race to protect their planet.

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