Are we reading it differently? I see that there is some additional space on the top before the "R", but I think that when I am reading it I might be looking mainly at the bottom 75% of the logo, and it looks fine there so maybe that's why it still looks fine to me?

Alternatively, having seen the first movie a couple of times and having seen the original logo a couple of times, maybe I am so used to the word "Avatar" from the original logo that even if I try to read the new logo as "AVATA R" I still read it as "AVATAR"?

On the other hand, there is a company in Norway (and I think they are in several other countries also), called "BDO" and even though I know about their company from having heard about it several times and having even attended a couple of business presentations that they have held, I consistently misread their logo as "LBDO". You can see their logo on the Norwegian website, it has the letters "BDO" on it in blue, with an L-looking shape in red surrounding the front and underside of the letters; https://www.bdo.no/nb-no/home-no . So it seems that familiarity is not always enough to read a logo the way that it was intended to be read.