Plug your pony­tail into the first trail­er for Avatar: The Way of Water

Over the decade-plus that has elapsed since the release of Avatar in 2009, many have grown under­stand­ably doubt­ful about the like­li­hood of James Cameron ever com­plet­ing the long-in-devel­op­ment sequel. Behind-the-scenes pho­tos of Kate Winslet in a ball pit and the reveal of a title pro­vid­ed some encour­age­ment, but it wasn’t until today’s unveil­ing of a prop­er teas­er that non-believ­ers start­ed to con­sid­er that this motion pic­ture may exist after all.

The peo­ple of Earth feast­ed their eyes on the first pre­view of Avatar: The Way of Water this morn­ing, trav­el­ing back to the far-off plan­et of Pan­do­ra and explor­ing new ecosys­tems with­in that gleam­ing CGI world. And in true Cameron­ian fash­ion, this adven­ture will take us back to the ocean he returns to like a womb, hav­ing last com­bined his life­long pas­sion for scu­ba with cin­e­ma in Titan­ic, The Abyss, and his doc­u­men­tary Ghosts of the Abyss.

The azure-skinned feline humanoids known as Na’vi bring us along on a guid­ed tour through a lat­tice of arch­i­pel­a­goes where gigan­tic whales glide by shark­like crea­tures the locals can ride as mounts. Cameron has dou­bled down on his predilec­tion for sus­pend­ing hunks of land in the sky, the most splashy shot depict­ing a semi­cir­cu­lar rock for­ma­tion wreathed by float­ing islands. Else­where, unseen to us, Winslet and Michelle Yeoh and Edie Fal­co join the cast of the series.

As of late, teasers have been turn­ing into mini-trail­ers, but this one wears its incom­plete­ness con­fi­dent­ly — no plot, one line of dia­logue, most­ly just awe-struck wide shots of the won­drous dig­i­tal play­land Cameron has con­struct­ed. The main thing we’re meant to absorb is the sense of sheer colos­sal scale, the feel­ing of being dwarfed that can only come from see­ing a large movie on a large screen.

But this being Cameron, and with the pre­vi­ous film’s exam­ple to go off of, we may safe­ly count on a few things: some entry-lev­el com­men­tary on the evils of impe­ri­al­ism threat­en­ing this peace­able nature tribe, anoth­er cyborg-ish per­for­mance from a motion-capped Sam Wor­thing­ton in the lead, and most cer­tain of all, anoth­er mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar gross for the surest thing in the enter­tain­ment indus­try. To bet against James Cameron is to bet against the house.

Avatar: The Way of Water comes to cin­e­mas in the UK and US on 16 December.