TLDR: Its a pretty, generic sci-fi movie. If you can't stand plot holes and things not quite making sense, it might not be for you because there is A LOT of it. Things I Loved: Payakan, the...
TLDR: Its a pretty, generic sci-fi movie. If you can't stand plot holes and things not quite making sense, it might not be for you because there is A LOT of it.
Things I Loved:
Payakan, the outcast sentient whale
I don't know how they did it, but they made these whaley characters seem very cute and "human".
Honestly, the only character I really liked in the movie.
The aesthetic of the humans
I love the heavy industrial, cyberpunk look.
Things I Hated:
Jake Sully, i.e. the original main character
I hate dads who make their kids call them Sir; I hate how much of a shitty dad and husband he is. At no point does he actually listen to anyone in his family, even his wife. He constantly acts like he knows better then everyone else, even though he is as dumb as a pile of rocks. The White Savior trope is gross, but especially gross when the supposed savior is a complete, bumbling idiot. This movie is a lot less focused on him then the original movie, which was an excellent choice.
Reusing the old villain
He was boring in the first movie, he is boring in this one. Given how generic the story is in these movies, I'd bet everything I have that by the end of the series he is going to repent from his evil ways and join the Na'vi.
Things that haunt me:
Why does Jake Sully hate Spider so much?
At the very beginning of the movie in narration, right after he talks about adopting a virgin birth Na'vi, that 1000% wasn't conceived by the Gaia planet, he rips into the orphaned child of the villain, Spider. He refers to him like the kid is a stray animal. He talks about trying to keep his kids away from this lonely orphaned child who LITERALLY HAS NO ONE ELSE. Spider is the only human child on this planet. There is even this shot of both Jake and Neytiri looking with disgust as Spider plays with their kids. He also seems to hate Spider because he is human, but like Jake was human? To be clear, Spider never betrayed the Na'vi or anyone in this movie; he was tortured protecting them and risked his life on multiple occasions to save their children's lives. And at the finale, Neytiri holds Spider at knife point and seems completely okay killing an innocent child. Its so targeted and never really explained, I just makes me go "why include this subplot in an over 3 hour movie?"
Hmm, I know it was in the opening narration that it stood out to me, which was definitely Jake Sully. I do distinctly remember a line about "wanting to keep him away from our children". Maybe it...
Hmm, I know it was in the opening narration that it stood out to me, which was definitely Jake Sully. I do distinctly remember a line about "wanting to keep him away from our children". Maybe it was just the juxtaposition of the way they treated their adopted daughter and Spider. Like both of the parents are directly responsible for this baby being stuck on this planet, they can't treat him at all like family? Their kids clearly do. Its not at all central to the plot; it was just something that felt like an odd choice.
I hope that this is the angle they'll take and that similarly the antagonist will take a backseat in the same way the protagonist has. The fact that they rehashed literally the same plot as the...
Spoiler for the rest of the series I guess but the fact that this fucker is supposed to be in literally all the movies is a goddamn tragedy. It would have been so cool to have the next antagonist be an actual native Na'vi from some antagonistic tribe that sides with the humans or whatever. I think that would have been a great angle to explore in the world.
I hope that this is the angle they'll take and that similarly the antagonist will take a backseat in the same way the protagonist has.
The fact that they rehashed literally the same plot as the first movie but with a Hawaiian flair didn't add. I could deal with it because visually the movies is still fantastic and it was coherent enough to string me along while I got lost in the visuals, except for the ending which didn't resolve things because of sequels.
The only reason I can think of that they dared to repeat the plot like this (except for a general lack of creativity) is that they figured the first movie was over a decade ago and they could rehash it to bring it back into people's minds. But it's still not great that our protagonist had to go through the same arc a second time.
... was pretty dumb, but I guess it's the best Cameron-and-crew could come up with to justify their neat underwater story.
It doesn't help that as a sequel, the stakes were generally lowered. Avatar 1 made the stakes all of Pandora, while Avatar 2 has getting rid of a singular whaling ship as the final confrontation. I don't know why the couldn't think of anything else, or why indeed the humans were not expelled as quickly as in the first one; on a meta level, the answer is sequels, but the in-character explanation was just not present.
Pandora has taken action against the humans in the past, expelled them like a virus. Why was this not possible again? Again, sequels.
TLDR: Its a pretty, generic sci-fi movie. If you can't stand plot holes and things not quite making sense, it might not be for you because there is A LOT of it.
Things I Loved:
I don't know how they did it, but they made these whaley characters seem very cute and "human".
Honestly, the only character I really liked in the movie.
I love the heavy industrial, cyberpunk look.
Things I Hated:
I hate dads who make their kids call them Sir; I hate how much of a shitty dad and husband he is. At no point does he actually listen to anyone in his family, even his wife. He constantly acts like he knows better then everyone else, even though he is as dumb as a pile of rocks. The White Savior trope is gross, but especially gross when the supposed savior is a complete, bumbling idiot. This movie is a lot less focused on him then the original movie, which was an excellent choice.
He was boring in the first movie, he is boring in this one. Given how generic the story is in these movies, I'd bet everything I have that by the end of the series he is going to repent from his evil ways and join the Na'vi.
Things that haunt me:
At the very beginning of the movie in narration, right after he talks about adopting a virgin birth Na'vi, that 1000% wasn't conceived by the Gaia planet, he rips into the orphaned child of the villain, Spider. He refers to him like the kid is a stray animal. He talks about trying to keep his kids away from this lonely orphaned child who LITERALLY HAS NO ONE ELSE. Spider is the only human child on this planet. There is even this shot of both Jake and Neytiri looking with disgust as Spider plays with their kids. He also seems to hate Spider because he is human, but like Jake was human? To be clear, Spider never betrayed the Na'vi or anyone in this movie; he was tortured protecting them and risked his life on multiple occasions to save their children's lives. And at the finale, Neytiri holds Spider at knife point and seems completely okay killing an innocent child. Its so targeted and never really explained, I just makes me go "why include this subplot in an over 3 hour movie?"
Hmm, I know it was in the opening narration that it stood out to me, which was definitely Jake Sully. I do distinctly remember a line about "wanting to keep him away from our children". Maybe it was just the juxtaposition of the way they treated their adopted daughter and Spider. Like both of the parents are directly responsible for this baby being stuck on this planet, they can't treat him at all like family? Their kids clearly do. Its not at all central to the plot; it was just something that felt like an odd choice.
I hope that this is the angle they'll take and that similarly the antagonist will take a backseat in the same way the protagonist has.
The fact that they rehashed literally the same plot as the first movie but with a Hawaiian flair didn't add. I could deal with it because visually the movies is still fantastic and it was coherent enough to string me along while I got lost in the visuals, except for the ending which didn't resolve things because of sequels.
The only reason I can think of that they dared to repeat the plot like this (except for a general lack of creativity) is that they figured the first movie was over a decade ago and they could rehash it to bring it back into people's minds. But it's still not great that our protagonist had to go through the same arc a second time.
It doesn't help that as a sequel, the stakes were generally lowered. Avatar 1 made the stakes all of Pandora, while Avatar 2 has getting rid of a singular whaling ship as the final confrontation. I don't know why the couldn't think of anything else, or why indeed the humans were not expelled as quickly as in the first one; on a meta level, the answer is sequels, but the in-character explanation was just not present.
Pandora has taken action against the humans in the past, expelled them like a virus. Why was this not possible again? Again, sequels.