A Review of Avatar, the Way of Water

The other day, I did something different and went to see a movie. I needed to ve out of the house for a bit, and the new Avatar movie gave me something to do for a few hours. Kinda felt like forever though. Anyway, I have some thoughts on the movie, so here is a basic review of the second Avatar film.

First off, I want to get over the visuals. The movie does look pretty damn stunning. While I care little for the mechs, ships and robots, the designs of the beasts and the oceanic shots are very reminiscent of The Blue Planet, a UK documentary on ocean life. Everything also seemed to have some form of bio-luminescence, which meant pretty much everything had a hint of sparkles and glitter on it. However, the night time shots felt pointless on their prettiness since you can’t see anything. I get it, it’s hard to see in the dark, but this movie involves large blue humanoids fighting humans and mechs with spears. you can have more lights at night, it won’t detract from how pretty the movie is.

Aside from looks though, I kinda don’t have much else to say. Sound design was pretty cool and fitting, and the water and  stuff was all very nice. I very much liked the large sea creatures, which would not have looked out of place on Walking with Dinosaurs or something similar.

But that is kinda where the praise ends. In order to have a great movie, you need to have some sort of decent plot to go with it. Unfortunately, there are only really two plots and they’re not great. You have the cloned bad guy from the first movie wanting to kill the protagonists, and you have the protagonists trying to fit in to a new home. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing, but we had the same little plot piece get used over and over. These guys just can’t control their kids.

Seriously, every other scene seems to be some kid going off and doing something dumb and then needing saving. And it just keeps on happening. Heck, the movie calls itself out on it, with the youngest family member claiming that it’s the second time she’s been tied up already. There’s at least three major times where the kids go somewhere, get lost or captured and then need to be saved.

But the peril doesn’t really seem to stop. Especially at the end of the movie, where we get peril after peril after peril. The fighting is messy and inconsistent and the end-movie battle is all over the fucking place. And while the battle starts off during the day, it swiftly turns to night time and suddenly you can hardly see anything any more. And even then, we yet again have kids in peril and people coming to save each other.

Another thing that bothers me is how inconsistent the breathing seems to be. The protagonists all learn to hold their breath for longer. But it felt a bit all over the place, with all characters staying underwater. Even the human kid with a face mask that lets him breathe underwater. And some people seem to drown and then magically get brought back up to the surface. It happens three times, as far as I can recall. They would have died, but someone miraculously manages to get to them.

My biggest complaint though is that the movie just drags on a bit too long. It really didn’t have to be three hours long, there was plenty that could have been trimmed down. Especially towards the end of the movie where the battle slowly concludes. I found myself getting frustrated at the end, as there always seemed to be one last peril. Once the peril was over, it was back to things looking pretty.

Overall, Avatar 2 is mostly a pretty high definition screen saver. The sort of thing you’d see on TV flat screens when you’re at the shop. The plot is basic as heck, but that doesn’t matter because everything is shiny and pretty.