Cert - 12, Run-time - 3 hours 12 minutes,

Director - James Cameron

When Colonel Quartich (Stephen Lang) returns to Pandora Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his family seek refuge with a sea-dwelling Na’vi tribe to avoid being hunted down.

When recalling Avatar many think of the acclaimed visual effects which brought the world of Pandora to life. Such effects have been widely discussed in the build-up to the sequel, and are certainly on as fine a form as they were 13 years ago. However, co-writer (alongside Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver) and director James Cameron doesn’t allow the film to be bogged down in this, avoiding sequences of sitting in wonderment at the world. Instead you can see such elements attempted to be wound into the narrative which spans the 192 minute run-time.

Happily settled into Na’vi life Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) leads battles against the returning ‘sky people’ of Earth. However, his leadership is halted when Stephen Lang’s Colonel Quartich returns in Avatar form - his pre-death memories put into a stand-by body - intent on hunting Sully down and killing him, perhaps alongside his family. Abandoning their jungle home the family fly towards the sea; finding refuge with the Metkayina tribe - who teach them how to adapt to the ways of the water and the creatures within it.

It’s here that Jake and wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) - with a very diminished role - feel sidelined to allow for individual narratives for their children. Each (youngest aside) exploring the new environment and sometimes discovering the consequences of doing so. Occasionally this leads into familiar conventional territory for certain strands and situations but as a whole there’s enough to keep you engaged and interested in the unfolding elements.

You can feel Cameron’s want to prove this is more than just a big technical sandbox. While the visuals are great, helped by the cinematography, and equal effort’s put into the sound design, the narrative appears to have come first and been highly developed to not slip. Sometimes leading to a feeling of things almost being too tight as you feel the constriction of a constantly flowing plotline which has been closely doctored to move in the way that it does - particularly in slightly drawn-out sequences. However, perhaps the biggest dramatic weakness of the film, trying to cover a lot of bases, is that we never quite have the emotional connection it wants us to have with its characters.

Yet, everything builds up to an excellent third act. With battle sequences so grand in scale the higher frame rate (48fps instead of the traditional 24 - as Peter Jackson experimented with for his Hobbit trilogy) the film is shot in, initially looking like a videogame cutscene, is almost forgotten about as the action clutches you to a degree which could rival the phenomenal third act of this year’s Nope. Alongside Lang returning as a traditional. through-and-through bad guy it’s the highlight of the film. You may not connect with as much as the film hopes, but there’s still plenty to enjoy within this almost-too-focused, and visually excellent, return to Pandora.

Jamie Skinner - Four stars