History Film / AvatarTheWayOfWater

* WaitHere: When Jake and Neytiri move out to rescue their children captured by the Recoms in the forest, his older son Neteyam wants to join but Jake tells him to stay behind. Naturally Neteyam follows them and eventually gets to [[ConvenientlyTimedAttackFromBehind rescue his mother]].

While the Sullies learn the way of life of the Metkayina (also known as "the Way of Water"), one of Jake's children, Lo'ak, develops a companionship with a whale-like creature known as a tulkun, and Kiri, the mysteriousy conceived Na'vi mixed child of the late Dr. Grace Augustine, an adoptive child of the Sullys', discovers she has a very strong and extraordinary bond with Eywa, the sentient force of Pandora.

** First time, he captures Lo'ak, Tuk and Tsireya and holds them captive on his ship, threatening Jake that he'll kill them if he doesn't come on board. Thankfully Payakan intervenes, allowing the Na'vi fight back.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/avatar_the_way_of_water_poster_7.jpg]]

-->--'''Tsireya'''

** The reflection of Neytiri's eyelashes in her eyes are visible, and hair follicles and skin can be seen on her face.
** Jake's Avatar skin is far less glossy then it was in the prior film in mid-distance shots.

** When Ronal uses the Na'vi equivalent of acupuncture to bring Kiri out of her coma, there is fine peach fuzz visible on Kiri's abdomen.

* AssholeVictim: The RDA's whalers. [[spoiler: They mercilessly hunt the ''sapient'' tulkun, specifically go after mothers and [[WouldHurtAChild babies]] because they're slower and more defenseless, use depth charges to deafen them, shoot them with harpoons that carry inflatable sacs to slow them down and force them near the surface, shoot them with explosive harpoons, all while chasing them until they drop from exhaustion, if the aforementioned harpoons don't kill them first. Several whalers take ''glee'' in watching the mother tulkun frantically and futilely try to shield her baby with her own body, and they ''laugh'' about how [[ActualPacifist the tulkun never fight back due to their cultural taboo about killing and violence]]. They then don't even use all of the corpses, only taking the age-halting brain fluid and then leaving the body to rot. Did we mention that the tulkun ''are just as intelligent as humans and Na'Vi,'' and that the RDA knows this? Seeing Payakan take his revenge against the whalers is nothing short of cathartic. He drowns several, crushes more, breaches atop the whaling flagship, clotheslines the dinghies with their own harpoon cords, tricks the whalers into shooting at their own boats, and rips an arm off Captain Scoresby during the aforementioned clotheslining.]]

* BloodierAndGorier: Those new fluid animations aren't just used for water. While the first movie wasn't particularly shy about gore, this film tends to show blood actually spill from wounds rather than just staining clothes or skin.

*** Creator/TakayukiSugo (Quaritch) plays with this ''thrice'': He had previously voiced characters who had [[Manga/{{Naruto}} previously returned back from the dead, in this case Hashirama Senju]], and [[Manga/{{Bleach}} another villanous one (Yhwach)]] who, on top of that, death comes very cheap for him, [[spoiler:and still is, somewhat, at the very end, at least in Yhwach's case]]. Likewise, and in a rather retroactive way, as the show in question debuted in 2012, Sugo previously voiced [[Anime/SpaceBattleshipYamato2199 Capt. Juzo Okita]], a heroic military officer having to fight a war against another race of [[AmazingTechnicolorPopulation blue-skinned aliens]], except this time, the roles are ''inverted'' here.

* DistaffCounterpart: General Frances Ardmore is pretty much just a gender-flipped copy of Quaritch from the first film. Her personality and mannerisms are almost identical. The film itself leans into it with a scene of her casually and callously drinking from a mug of coffee while plotting the heroes' demise, in a very clear throw-back to when Quaritch did the same thing in the previous movie.

* GaiasVengeance: Downplayed compared to the previous film. The Ikran in the Hallelujah Mountains swarm any human craft that spend more than ten minutes in their airspace, which is described as an immune response by Ardmore. The fact that their fortress is surrounded by a completely barren perimeter and defended by heavy gun emplacements further demonstrates that they've learned from the native wildlife overrunning their troops the last time.

* GrayRainOfDepression: When Jake, Neytiri, Ronal, and Tonowari come across the [[spoiler: murdered pod of Tulkuns,]] the pouring rain and gray sky complements the sad moment.

** Done again when he captured Kiri and later Tuk and uses them to taunt Jake and Neytiri to come aboard the ship to face him or he'll have them both killed.

* KarmicTransformation: [[spoiler:After his conflict with the Na'vi in the last film, Quaritch has been restored to life by the RDA and has became a Na'vi Recombinant Avatar. That said, he actually is appreciative as it grants him increased strength and durability in the hostile Pandora environment.]]

* LighterAndSofter: Zigzagged. On one hand, the renewed conflict between humans and Na'vi results in far less damages and loss of life for either when compared to the first film, with the climactic battle only involving [[spoiler:a single whaling ship and maybe a platoon of Na'vi, the latter of which barely take casualties.]] On the other hand, the Sully family is hit much harder than the last time since an interplanetary ship at the beginning vaporized a large portion of jungle (fauna included) with a WeaponizedExhaust and because, well, they're a family now instead of just two adult warriors going into battle. [[spoiler:Unfortunately for them, this involves the DeathOfAChild when their eldest is killed in battle.]]
* LionKingLift: While he doesn't hold his newborn son over a cliff, Jake still raises the newly born Neteyam into the air for his entire tribe to see in a manner very reminiscent of the iconic lift.

* MysticalPregnancy: Grace's Avatar somehow became pregnant despite being brain-dead and gave birth to Kiri. Nobody knows whose Kiri's father is (or if she even has one) and Kiri happens to have the most spiritual connection to Eywa out of any Na'vi, often spending most of her time embracing the wildlife around her.

* RecurringCameraShot: The eclipse shot shows up to when Jake's children are in great danger.

* SuicidalPacifist: The Tulkun refuse to fight even in self defense, even to save the lives of their mothers with young calves, even though later events demonstrate they could make whaling...uneconomic, if they chose to fight back, going so far as to ostracize any of their own people who do fight.

* SuperPersistentPredator: The predatory fish that pursues Lo'ak gives up on an already bleeding prey to go after Lo'ak, breaking through reef trying to get him and waiting for him to need to surface for breath.

* TraitorShot: In case it wasn't blatantly obvious Aonung and his friends are setting Lo'ak up for failure, the shot of them smirking after they send him into open ocean should do it.

* UncertainDoom: [[spoiler:Dr. Ian Garvin, the marine biologist that assists Captain Scoresby, was on the same boat as he was when Payakan attacked them, but his body doesn't appear to be visible with the rest of Scoresby's crew]].

* KnightTemplarBigBrother: Lo'ak, to Kiri. He starts a 2 vs 4 fight with the Metkayina teens because they called his sister a "freak".

* AsYouKnow: When Spider, Lo’ak, and Kiri enter the lab, Spider feels the need to bring up how unfair it is that the Na’vi teens can breathe oxygen for a few hours while a human like him can only breathe Pandora’s air for a few seconds. If he’s been living with the Na’vi for years, they would all already know this.

* BadPeopleAbuseAnimals: Zig-Zagged. [[spoiler: Quaritch and the other Recoms don’t seem to treat their ikrans noticeably worse than the Na’Vi do theirs (combat with the ikran is a standard part of the iknimaya ritual), but the RDA whaling division is merciless towards the tulkun, going out of their way to draw out the hunt. Notably, the scenes with the ikrans caused a minor uproar in the fandom upon the trailers’ release: Quaritch, Spider, and the other Recoms had been edited out of the scene, but their ikrans’ militaristic, utilitarian Kevlar saddles had not. The [[SpeculativeBiology speculative biologists]] within the fandom all immediately came up with increasingly horrifying theories for how the RDA might have been controlling the ikrans: beating them into submission, shock collars, drugs, controlled starvation, and mind-controlling devices were all thrown around. It was a mild surprise when the ikrans were tamed with a somewhat-accurate iknimaya process instead (barring Quaritch punching his ikran in the face during the combat portion).]]

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:The Sully family and the Metkayina succeed in repelling the RDA, saving the ocean clans and the Tulkun whales from further violence and oppression (at least for now). The Sullies also fully earn the acceptance and respect of the Metkayina. However, Jake and Neytiri [[OutlivingOnesOffspring have lost their eldest son Neteyam]]. The RDA also maintains a strong, destructive presence on Pandora, with no form of peace or diplomacy between them and the Na’vi in sight, [[TheWarHasJustBegun thus a new war has just begun.]] Lastly, their greatest asset, Quaritch, lives to fight another day and is still out for Jake and Neytiri’s blood]].

* BodyBackupDrive: [[spoiler:How Quaritch and the various Marines from the first movie come back. Before the final battle, they had their memories scanned and taken back to Earth, where they were imprinted into new Avatar bodies. They aren’t quite the same people as before, being clones rather than true resurrections, but the differences are so minimal they can be counted as more or less the same people.]]

** After being resurrected, Quaritch begins making the same "not in Kansas" speech that he made in the first film.

** A darker allusion to the first film occurs with [[spoiler: Neteyam’s death because he dies in a similar manner to Grace. Both of them are shot at, escape from the danger, but notice they are bleeding out from a bullet wound. Neteyam however, dies quicker than Grace, who at least survives long enough to be connected to the Tree of Souls.]]

* CreativeClosingCredits: The first half of the movie’s end credits feature several shots of underwater Pandora wildlife akin to a nature documentary.

** Neytiri’s mother Mo’at and the rest of the Omatikaya clan have less screen time than they did in the first movie and do not show up again after the Sully family take their journey past the ocean.

* EasilyForgiven: [[spoiler:Neytiri threatens Spider’s life and even cuts him across the chest in the film’s climax to make Quaritch release Kiri. No one reprimands her for it afterwards. Even Spider doesn’t seem to hold it against her.]]

** One of the RDA’s submarines features NoseArt of a female Na’vi making a provocative pose.

* IWantThemAlive: When Quaritch and Scoresby find Jake’s kids, Quaritch has to remind Scoresby that Jake’s kids are no good to him if they are killed after he fires a depth charge into the water.

* LionKingLift: While he doesn’t hold his newborn son over a cliff, Jake still raises the newly born Neteyam into the air for his entire tribe to see in a manner very reminiscent of the iconic lift.

* RecurringCameraShot: The eclipse shot shows up to when Jake’s children are in great danger.

* TheReveal: [[spoiler: Spider, the orphaned human who has basically become a Na’vi, is the son of Miles Quaritch. A fact that the cloned Quaritch is rather surprised to learn, considering he believed that his son had been sent back to Earth. It's not a surprise to the other characters, including Spider himself, though; Spider is all too aware of who his biological father is.]]

* SinsOfOurFathers: Initially downplayed. Neytiri doesn’t like or trust Spider for being [[spoiler:Quaritch’s son, but at least tolerates him around her family. She comes dangerously close to playing the trope straight near the end of the film by threatening to kill him to make Quaritch release Kiri and as a form of retaliation for Neteyam’s death, going as far to say, "A son for a son."]]

* TailSlap: One of Aonung’s friends uses his thick paddle-like tail to hit Lo’ak in the face when a fight breaks out between the group of boys.

* TongueOutInsult: Happens twice. Tuk sticks her tongue out at Lo’ak after he mocks her voice. Later, Kiri sticks out her tongue at Aonung after her brothers come to stop Aonung and his friends from bullying her.

** [[spoiler:It’s never revealed who Kiri’s biological father is, assuming she even has one, nor how she has such a close connection to Pandora’s wildlife or can sense Eywa’s presence. The only time she even has a chance to find out via using a Tree of Souls equivalent to commune with Grace, her biological mother, sends her into a seizure before she can learn anything beyond the fact that Grace loves her.]].

** Aside from Neytiri's, Jake’s ikran Bob and the other ikrans more or less vanish after being taken in by the Metkayina.

* AsYouKnow: When Spider, Lo’ak, and Kiri enter the lab, Spider feels the need to bring up how unfair it is that the Na’vi teens can breathe oxygen for a few hours while a human like him can only breathe Pandora’s air for a few seconds. If he’s been living with the Na’vi for years, they would all already know this.

* CallingTheOldManOut: [[spoiler:Spider delivers this to Quaritch after saving the latter from drowning, denouncing him for his cruelty before returning to the Sullies.]]

* CombatCompliment: For all his nastiness, [[spoiler: even Scoresby is not beyond expressing a remark of admiration for the incredible toughness demonstrated by the Tuklun he and his team so viciously murdered]].

* DesecratingTheDead: Downplayed. As part of the plan to lure Jake out, the whalers leave a killed Tulkun alpha cow and her calf to rot in the water. The Metkayina, who are close friends with her pod, are utterly furious and Neteyam only barely manages to talk them down from attacking ''immediately''. [[spoiler:While they agree to stand down so that the other Tulkun can escape, the capture of the Sully children and their own puts an end to that plan and they attack the RDA en masse in the subsequent confrontation.]]

* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: [[spoiler:Double subverted with Quaritch. He does have a soft spot for his son, Spider, but he claims he doesn't have any real emotional attachment for him (due to being a copy of Quaritch rather than the real deal) uses the boy to both master the ways of the Na'vi and find Jake Sully. However, when Neytiri shows she's not bluffing on killing Spider after Quaritch holds Kiri hostage, Quaritch immediately falters and gives in to her demands. By the end of the film, Quaritch is saddened by Spider's rejection of him, as if he's now realizing what his vengeance is costing him.]]

* MookHorrorShow: Where nearly all humans killed by Na'vi in the first film were shot with arrows, here we are shown much more hand-to-hand combat. We get to see in intimate detail how terrifying it would be to be hunted by nine-foot humanoids with an expert grasp of guerilla warfare, as Jake and Neytiri carve through human marines to reach their children.

* TraitorShot: In case it wasn't blatantly obvious Aonung and his friends are setting Lo'ak up for failure, the shot of them smirking after they send him into open ocean should do it.

** When Jake deduces the RDA is attacking Tulkuns in order to draw him out he tells the Metkayina to warn the Tulkuns of the situation. Because Paakan, being outcast, is not going to be included in this warning message the kids go out on their own to warn him, which leads directly to their kidnapping and the final battle.

* BewareTheNiceOnes: Pakayan and the tulkuns more generally. The [[GenreBlindness genre blind]] villains even lampshade their understanding that the tulkuns are so nice that they don't have to worry about retribution from them despite their physical prowess.

* IWorkAlone: briefly, during his transition back from RefusingTheCall to military leadership of the Na'vi, Jake (upon deducing the RDA is attacking the Tulkuns in order to draw him out) tells the Metkayina not to fight, but to inform him if any Tulkuns are tagged with tracer harpoons, and he will deal with them himself. Almost immediately the children are kidnapped and the Metkayina [[spoiler: and Pakayan]] [[SoloMissionBecomesGroupMission join him in battle.]]

** When Jake deduces the RDA is attacking Tulkuns in order to draw him out he tells the Metkayina to warn the Tulkuns of the situation. Because Pakayan, being outcast, is not going to be included in this warning message the kids go out on their own to warn him, which leads directly to their kidnapping and the final battle.

* HumansAreCthulhu: Even more than the first film. Imagine aliens coming to your world in colossal indescribable metallic rods that shine like artificial stars; that once these objects land, their engines proved so hot it vapourise kilometers upon kilometers of land in ways incomprehensible to your kind. That once they have settled up, they immediately began hunting down your whale-friends, drilling holes in their skulls for reasons you do not know and leaving their corpse to rot.

* WeaponizedExhaust: A brutal example. In the first film, the ISV ''Venture Star'' dared not to approach the Pandoran atmosphere due to the Roche limit. Their new ships seem to have been upgraded their ships to fly in-atmo now, allowing them to use their anti-matter engines as ''makeshift planetary blowtorches'', completely vapourising what's left of the Omatikaya Clan and forcing the survivors to relocate into the Hallelujah Mountains while at the same time dropping a troop transport to establish a beachhead.

* BodyBackupDrive: [[spoiler:How Quaritch and the various Marines from the first movie apparently come back. Before the final battle, they had their memories scanned and taken back to Earth, where they were imprinted into new Avatar bodies. They aren’t quite the same people they were, but the differences are so minimal that they can be considered more or less the same.]]

* AsYouKnow: When Spider, Lo’ak, and Kiri enter the lab, Spider feels the need to bring up how unfair it is that the Na’vi teens can breathe oxygen for a few hours while a human like him can only breathe Pandora’s air for a few seconds.

Returning cast members include Creator/SamWorthington, Creator/ZoeSaldana, Creator/StephenLang, Creator/GiovanniRibisi, Creator/JoelDavidMoore, Dileep Rao, Creator/CCHPounder, Creator/MattGerald and Creator/SigourneyWeaver. Newcomers include Creator/KateWinslet, Creator/CliffCurtis, Creator/EdieFalco, Brendan Cowell, Jack Champion, Creator/JemaineClement, and Creator/CJJones. Simon Franglen, who was the co-composer of the first film's AwardBaitSong and did electronic arrangement on its score, now fully replaces the late Music/JamesHorner as the score's composer.

** A darker allusion to the first film occurs with [[spoiler: Neteyam’s death because he dies in a similar manner to Grace. Both of them are shot at, escape from the danger, but notice they are bleeding out from a bullet wound. Neteyam howver, dies quicker than Grace, who at least survives long enough to be connected to the Tree of Souls.]]

* AscendedToAHigherPlaneOfExistence: [[spoiler:It's revealed this is what happens to the deceased Na'vi (and even humans) whose bodies are connected to Eywa after they died, and their consciousnesses live on through Eywa itself. By linking to the Tree of Souls, Kiri is able to see Grace Augustine and Jake and Neytiri are able to see Neteyam again after their deaths.]]

* CreatorThumbprint: The climax involves the protagonists [[Film/Titanic1997 escaping from a sinking vessel as it floods]] and [[Film/TheAbyss swimming long distances while holding their breath]]. The arrival of the RDA on Pandora also involves innocents caught in a massive fireball and implacable war machines marching out to lay waste to whatever survives in an all but direct shout-out to [[Film/Terminator2JudgmentDay the last time he did this.]]

* GoingNative: Downplayed. The Recombinants begin learning the ways of Na'vi just to get the advantage over them, starting with their language. But none of them feel the urge to switch sides unlike Jake Sully. [[spoiler:With Spider as their teacher, they begin taming Ikrans with their bare hands rather than using tranquilizers as they intended, and soon [[DoesNotLikeShoes go fully barefoot rather than wearing oversized boots]] even at human HQ. Quaritch in particular manages to become the SoleSurvivor of his squad because he adapted to the Na'vi fighting style the best.]]

** Aside from Neytiri's, Bob and the other ikrans more or less vanish after being taken in by the Metkayina.

* CreatorThumbprint: The climax involves the protagonists [[Film/Titanic1997 escaping from a sinking vessel as it floods]] and [[Film/TheAbyss swimming long distances while holding their breath]].

* BrokenAesop: the film downplays it's predecessor's concerns about wholescale environmental destruction and colonialism in favor of an anti-hunting aesop. But the Na'vi are a hunting culture, Pandora operates on a social darwinist ethos in which everyone is fair game for predation, and even the hunting of the sapient Tulkuns is tolerated until [[ProtagonistCenteredMorality close friends of the protagonists are targeted]]. The distinction between hunting sapient and merely sentient beings is blurred by the film's reliance on the suffering of victims to convey its message. Near the end of the film we see a happy memory where Jake is teaching one of his children to fish - and the fish, impaled on an arrow, thrashes in agony much as though it were a Tulkun. Jake is unbothered.

* ProtagonistCenteredMorality: the inhabitants of Jake's new home are complacent about the slaughter of the Tulkuns, and nobody in the story has a problem with it - until a close friend of their tribe is killed, and then the tribe is furious and has to be talked down from engaging the humans [[spoiler:(temporarily)]].