It’s finally time to return to Pandora. If you haven’t visited the Pandora-themed land in Disney’s Animal Kingdom, then you haven’t seen the moon since Avatar premiered in 2009. But the time for the long-planned sequel, the first of several, has arrived. The first trailer for Avatar: The Way of Water is here. And this footage doesn’t offer any kind of recap. So if you don’t recall much about the movie from 10 years ago, you have to jump right in.
Most of the trailer passes without dialogue. The footage brings back the unquestionable beauty of Pandora—something, to be honest, the themed area at Animal Kingdom has made me appreciate more than Avatar. That film saw a human, Jake Sully, fully inhabit his avatar to build a family with Neytiri. Avatar: The Way of Water picks up a decade after the events of the first movie. The story will follow the Sully family. The synopsis says:
Set more than a decade after the events of the first film, “Avatar: The Way of Water” begins to tell the story of the Sully family (Jake, Neytiri, and their kids), the trouble that follows them, the lengths they go to keep each other safe, the battles they fight to stay alive, and the tragedies they endure. Directed by James Cameron and produced by Cameron and Jon Landau, the film stars Zoe Saldana, Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Edie Falco, Jemaine Clement and Kate Winslet.
The final moments of the Avatar: The Way of Water trailer feature Jake Sully’s voiceover over an array of threatening and jarring imagery. It very much looks like the Na’vi are still battling a human presence on the moon of Pandora. And it looks like the humans threaten their peaceful existence.
Avatar: The Way of Water premieres on December 16, 2022.
Amy Ratcliffe is the Managing Editor for Nerdist and the author of A Kid’s Guide to Fandom, available now. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.