Jake (Sam Worthington) rides a skimwing into combat.
FOR ALL THE genres James Cameron’s Avatar traversed — sci-fi epic, war flick, Western parable, cross-culture romance, eco-cautionary tale — perhaps the most surprising and delightful was cosmic nature documentary. The natural world of Pandora, from bioluminescent flora to imaginatively but plausibly designed wildlife with cool AF names (banshees, thanators and viperwolves), was enough to fill 17 David Attenborough specials. Happily, in Avatar: The Way Of Water, the menagerie is expanding.