Avatar: The Way of Water

Avatar: The Way of Water is a visual spectacle from start to finish. The scenery, cinematography, and CGI constantly had a smile on my face, but is it enough to carry the film? While the previous entry had its fair share of story-related problems, the sequel corrects most of my issues and delivers a heartfelt family story. The main improvement from the first entry is character development. I had a genuine emotional connection with the Sully family and was invested in their safety. These feelings created some genuine tension when any of the family members were in danger, I felt my body tense up as I waited to see what the conflict's conclusion would be, which is a gigantic improvement from the first film where I could not care less who died or survived. The return of Stephan Lang as Colonel Miles Quaritch brought the overly campy villain back to the screen in a bad way. Quaritch is a caricature of a "villain" where his actions and attitude are evil for the sake of being the bad guy. His anger toward Jake Sully does seem a little bit more believable hear as his previous self was murdered by him, but the over-the-top theatrics are just too much for me. Another aspect of the story that did not feel right to me was the children constantly disobeying their parents for the sake of plot progression. Countless times, Jake Sully's kids would do the opposite of what they were told, leaving them in a vulnerable state to be captured. This danger forced Jake Sully to constantly expose himself and help draw the threat ever closer to his family. The moments that result are great as we get to see the dichotomy between Jake being a father and his militaristic background. This is at the heart of the story and worked for me. I was surprised to see how well-paced the film was despite its over three-hour runtime. There are some pretty slow parts, specifically the second act, but the visuals and the character journeys that happen during these parts are so interesting that they didn't impact me negatively; I was just happy to see new and beautiful aspects of Pandora. The performances were fantastic throughout. It is a testament to both the actors/actresses and also the technology that can display such complex emotions and visual nuances on entirely CGI creatures. Sigourney Weaver was a highlight with Kiri, who was at the forefront of the entire film. To be completely honest, I did not even know she was played by Weaver; the mix between her performance and voice modulation created a compelling 14-year-old girl that was a huge part of the story. Sam Worthington was incredible and Zoe Saldana was perfect. Saldana does so much acting with her facial expressions as Ney'tirl, which is on display during many emotional scenes her character goes through. She was a bit sidelined during this film, but when she was on screen, she was impactful. Avatar has some incredibly heavy themes at play. One of the strongest and most relevant messages was anti-poaching. I mention this because there was such a hard scene in this movie that had me on the verge of tears. It was something I'd never seen in the film; it was both beautiful in the brutality it displayed and the emotional response of the Na'vi. Overall, this movie is deserving of the hype and needs to be seen on the biggest screen available. James Cameron delivered on the 13 years build-up to the sequel and has gotten me excited for the three sequels planned for the next decade. Score: 88% Verdict: Excellent

Like, how am I supposed to watch movies that take place on earth now?? Now that I’ve seen Avatar the way of water… it feels a bit… strange. I expected to be overwhelmed but the scale and scope of the film, I expected to have a good headache. But none of that happened. I have a very different feeling… I feel… Proud. Proud knowing that my faith in this film payed off. Proud that this film was indeed epic. Its not a perfect movie and I do have my flaws. But this film gave me about everything I could ask for when it comes to a movie going experience, this deserves to make serious money at the box. James Cameron said in his interviews that he is the ONLY person that could direct an avatar film, and the internets response was “James… Chill”, here’s the thing, he was right. I cannot imagine another director doing something like this. Everything you love from Cameron is here, Terminator 2, Titanic, etc. This was the best looking movie I’ve ever seen.. and no other film will match this in the future that isn’t an Avatar sequel. The VFX on the characters and creatures was perfect, no problems whatsoever. Sometimes some landscapes might have looked a little off, but the worst looking shot in this movie still looks better then almost every other CGI heavy action film. The underwater sequences was awe inspiring, I could’ve watched the underwater sequences in this film forever. the amount of work put into the underwater sequences definitely paid off. At first I wasn’t so sure about 48fps, during the first 20 or so minutes, I thought I would be detracted the whole time, but I wasn’t, I adjusted about half an hour in, and was completely emerged into a film like I never have before. The action in this movie was insane, the action was always at and 11 out of 10. You felt the scale, the weight, the stakes. Like I said, this wasn’t a perfect film. When the movie started, I was so sure about how I would feel about this movie. It starts voiceover heavy and with lots of quick cuts as if a lot has been cut from the film within the opening, Im sure there will be an extended cut to this, and I’m curious if it will add to it. The dialogue in the first film was the best, and this film does have stronger dialogue. But there are still a couple scenes where it did feel a little off, but it was mostly with the younger characters. As it wasn’t Constant, it was just like a line here to there every 20 minutes or so. While, I did say that the opening needed a little more to it, there are chucks in the middle that didn’t need to be there, and was just there to be eye candy, but it wasn’t really a big issue with me, Cause it was some of the best eye candy ever put on film. I’m tired of people complaining about the story to these avatar films, it feels like people put the plot to these movies on a unrealistic standard. The plot here is basic, and yeah, it might feel a little to basic at Times. But I don't really think it was something worth mentioning critically. Overall, this was a perfectly crafted film with a pretty good script, that provided a theater experience I’ll never forget. 9.3/10

Avatar 2 or Avatar: The Way of the Water came out on 4K Blu-ray a couple of weeks ago so me and the kids finally got around to watch it last weekend. I rarely go to the cinemas nowadays. It’s just too much hassle and way to expensive for four people. But there’s also no way I watch a big movie like Avatar on streaming with their over-compressed images and mediocre sound. Yeah, yeah, I know they claim Dolby Atmos and all that but they use almost one tenth the bit-rate for the video compared to 4K Blu-ray and push the Atmos over a lossy Dolby Digital stream. Anyway, enough rambling. Avatar: The Way of the Water was better than I feared it would be. I was really worried that it would turn out to be a preachy woke turd. Especially with some of the comments Cameron has made lately. Sure, it was pretty much a repeat of the first one with the companies bad, humans bad an all that kind of story but at least that was about it. There was not really any of the usual preaching, finger pointing and general woke force feeding that has been way too common from Hollywood lately. The main enjoyment of this movie is really the imagery, the scenery, the fantastic creatures and all that. It is a visually very beautiful movie. The second part of the enjoyment comes from some quite enjoyable action sequences, especially towards the end of the movie. The story is not much to write home about though. It is pretty standard, unimaginative story fairly full of the usual Hollywood lazy-ass unplausible shit. The idea that humanity in the future would go to another planet and start to hunt down the wildlife, behave like some conquistadors and literally strip the planet is fairly ludicrous from the start of course. The story is not so much about the main characters, or at least what I expected to be the main characters, but more about the kids. I was expecting it to be about the Na’vi kicking the invaders’ asses…again, but unfortunately the movie takes a different track rather early on. After that it is more of a coming of age story about their kids who, also unfortunately, behaves like the usual Hollywood teenagers in not listening to their parents and generally behaving recklessly. This part of the movie would have been really, really, boring if it was not for the beautiful scenery. Then there was this idea of an intelligent species, supposedly more intelligent than humans, being not only pacifists but refuses to defend themselves in any way while literally being exterminated. That kind of stupid shit only exists in the mind of a Hollywood writer. They also conveniently looked like whales so the script writer could push some bad-humans-catching-whales stereotypes. And why did they have to drag back the main the main asshole from the first movie? It just felt lazy and did not add to my enjoyment of the movie. Still, the bottom line is that I did enjoy the movie, even though it was over three hours long which felt a little bit dragged out. It is in no way this super blockbuster that some people seem to think though. At least not as far as I am concerned.