'Avatar: The Way of Water' review: Fully engrossing, always eye-popping

Technological wizardry in the service of a ripping good story — that formula turned James Cameron’s “Avatar” into the must-see movie of 2009 and the top grosser of all time. It created a fantastic planet called Pandora, where blue-skinned Na’vi natives fought bravely against greedy human colonizers — yet for all its astonishing CGI effects, “Avatar” never captured our hearts like, say, “Star Wars” or “Harry Potter.”

Is anyone aching, then, to see Cameron’s four planned sequels? That depends on whether the director can up his own ante and keep us suitably dazzled with each new installment. With Movie No. 2, “Avatar: The Way of Water,” Cameron proves he’s fully capable of delivering the goods.

Let’s start with the story, which finds former Marine Jake Sully (the ever-earnest Sam Worthington) living as a Na’vi with his mate, Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), and their children: firstborn son Neteyam (James Flatters), younger brother Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) and little sister Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss). Augmenting the family are an adolescent adoptee, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver, returning in an entirely new role), and a frisky human orphan, Spider (Jack Champion). That’s a lot of characters to juggle, but thanks to Cameron’s skilled direction (he also co-wrote the screenplay), we come to know them intimately.

Their idyllic life is shattered by a ghost from Sully’s past, the vengeful Colonel Quaritch. Again played with gung-ho gusto by the great Stephen Lang, Quaritch echoes another Cameron invention, the unkillable Terminator. Of all the motion-capture actors here, Lang feels the most gleefully alive, though Weaver — a septuagenarian playing a teenager — runs a close second.

As for visual spectacle, this sequel doesn’t disappoint — except when it does. On the one hand, when the Sullys seek protection from the seafaring Metkayina clan (Cliff Curtis and Kate Winslet play the chief and his wife), the movie explodes into a digital color-palette of bioluminescent blues and oranges (captured, if that’s the right word, by cinematographer Russell Carpenter). The various fictional beasts, from the whale-like tulkun to the brightly winged ilu, leap off the screen thanks to near-perfect 3D effects.

On the other hand, the movie was created almost entirely in virtual space, and it shows. The CGI characters move with video game stiffness, the camera pivots robotically and the lighting rarely gives real warmth. The high frame-rate format makes everything look overly crisp and hard, more like an NFL broadcast than a movie.

Still, at three-plus hours, “Avatar: The Way of Water” is fully engrossing, always eye-popping and occasionally touching. Like its predecessor, it’s a movie to admire and enjoy, if not quite love.

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com@raferguzman