A new image from Avatar: The Way of the Water shows the film's incredible CGI detail through water on the face of a Na’vi character. The Way of the Water’s release comes over a decade after the original Avatar took the world by storm, becoming the highest-grossing film of all time at the time of its release. While the original film was lauded for its unprecedented and stunning use of CGI, director James Cameron has since spent years developing even more impressive technology, including underwater motion capture tools, in order to make the improved CGI featured in Avatar 2 possible.
However, the CGI in the first Avatar 2 trailer was met with some backlash following its release. After the trailer's debut, it was widely mocked online, as many viewers did not believe that there had been much improvement in the visual effects since the original 2009 Avatar. Others did not even believe that the water that occupies nearly every frame of The Way of Water trailer was CGI, rather than real water. These criticisms have since been debunked by professional VFX artists, who proved that the water bodies in Avatar 2 were in fact computer-generated, and that the sequel has already shown massive improvements from the original Avatar film in its trailer alone.
Further solidifying the impressive CGI effects of Avatar: The Way of the Water, a new image from Empire reveals the film's stunning water graphics in further detail. The image is a close-up of Kate Winslet as her Na’vi character, mouth agape as if screaming. The character's blue skin is slicked and slippery-looking. and her hair is specked with water droplets. Check out the full image below:
Winslet’s Na'vi character looks as if she could be riding into battle, given the intensity of her expression in this iamge. The most notable aspect of the new Avatar 2 image, however, is the stunning intricacy of water on the Na’vi's body. The hair water droplets are almost surreally woven through the character's dark black hair, misted onto her face as real water would be. Images like these make it difficult to comprehend the water in The Way of the Water is indeed computer-generated given its hyper-realistic and meticulously detailed quality.-Screen Rant
