Avatar: The Way of Water BD

I loved the film. I loved watching this family work through its challenges and that line, 'This Family is our Fortress' meant a lot to me personally. The run time did not seem as long as it was, in my opinion. I was blown away by the imagination that has gone into this film, the action and the stunning effects- It all looks so real. I remember back in the day, waiting to see a film you had loved at the cinema, to see the effects look.. not so great. how things have changed..I also have a little wish that this film may touch the next generation and help them to care more about our planet than we have.

Great film

I enjoyed the first Avatar film, so had to get this one. Very good and good value

A great movie, and even better collection. with tons of extras and different verisons of the movie, its a must have if your a fan of Avatat. I only wish that it had a steelbook in it

Like the first film, the world of Pandora is beautifully crafted and awe inspiring presented in 3D. I saw this in the cinema with variable refresh rate and in my opinion ramping up the frame rate during fast moving scenes makes 3D more comfortable.Unfortunately the existing bluray 3D format is still capped at 1080P 24fps, but 3D on a good home cinema set up (a 100” projector and 7.1 surround sound system in my case) is in my opinion the best format to really get immersed in this film. The visuals are at their best in the slower more relaxed scenes and can be a bit jarring during fast motions. If 3D ever makes a comeback in future TV’s, I can only hope it makes use of variable refresh rates making higher speed moments more comfortable to watch.I’ve seen other reviewers questioning the need for the film to be on 2 discs in its 3D form compared to its predecessor and there are several reasons for this. First, 3D films require a lot more space as they’re store the entire film for the left eye and the entire film again for the right eye. This film is much longer than the original film and where that only had a couple of soundtrack options, this has many more and offering 7.1 audio (avatar was 5.1) and includes a version of the entire soundtrack with no swearing. (Because shooting and killing creatures is fine, but a few naughty words are the worst apparently).As with Titanic 3D, it’s clear that while they could have compressed the video file size to fit on a single disc they opted to not compromise on the bitrate of the video and present as much detail as possible, hence an extremely large file size and the need to split it across 2x 50gb blurays. For the record, 4KUHD discs can store 100gb on a single disc but those discs aren’t compatible with regular 1080P/3D bluray players so the film has to be on HD Blu-ray Discs not UHD blurays.It’s a long film so having a brief intermission to swap discs half way is likely a welcome respite for some viewer’s bladders.As for the film, it’s a matter for personal tastes. As with the first film I find the characters and story remarkably one dimensional compared the stunning world building they’ve achieved, but therein lies my reason for adding these films to my collection and returning to them from time to time. They’re a rich and increasingly diverse world to escape to for a few hours, and in terms of visuals and soundscape, they’re my go-to showpieces for home cinema.There’s also a 2D disc (the whole film is on the single disc) and a bonus disc with some excellent mini documentaries on the making of the film, which I’m currently watching and is giving me a deeper love for the world crafting and final result Cameron and the filmmakers achieved. Still waiting on that Abyss Blu-Ray James!!(EDIT: I finally got my Abyss blu-ray, Cameron eventually released it but I had to import it as it didn’t pass the UK censors)

Better than the first film, absolutely brilliant. We need to bring back 3D capabilities back to new tvs.

My wife and I were rather looking forward to seeing the long awaited ‘Way of the Water’ at our local Showcase cinema. After all it’s been a very long time coming!As we have a 65” LG 3D OLED screen (a flat one, not a stupid curved one), we watched the original Avatar the day before. So, with our RealD 3D glasses on, we settled down to watch this sequel at Showcase and were immediately struck by the very poor 3D imaging, which had no comparison with the superb depth of field and detail in the original Avatar! This was completely unexpected and very disappointing, not what we would have expected from James Cameron.As I already knew that the RealD 3D glasses were the same as the LG TV 3D glasses, I thought it wise to confirm that the polarizing hadn’t deteriorated, but they worked perfectly with the original Avatar. So I queried Showcase about this: They told me that they use an ‘Xplus’ screen and “only receive the drive to install on our systems, and then play at the required specifications”. However, a few days later our daughter and partner went to the Vue cinema in Portsmouth and had exactly the same experience with the RealD 3D presentation there. They then came to us and saw extracts from the original to confirm what it should have looked like in 3D. We then saw other reports stating how good the Imax and Dolby versions were, which were not much help with nothing remotely local in the UK. Since then there have been other reports of people having a similar bad experience with RealD 3D at UK cinemas. So we all decided to wait for the Blue Ray 3D release and just hope that will provide some answers.This arrived last week and it was with some trepidation that I set it up to play!What an unbelievable difference, we were actually watching ‘Way of the Water’ in proper 3D with terrific depth and detail as well (I haven’t confirmed this, but probably better than the original Avatar disc).The underwater scenes were also brilliant, confirming that Cameron had solved the problems filming in such a difficult environment. All in all, he has done an excellent job with the Blue Ray 3D release, which is truly immersive. The only oddity comes when pausing playback: With other 3D discs the 3D image stays on the screen, but with this film it collapses and there is a delay of about 2 seconds before the 3D image is restored after playback is resumed.But this still doesn’t explain what went wrong with the RealD 3D cinema screening?