[movie] Avatar: The Way of Water

[Jeff V]

Everything we know about exobiology says DNA is the same throughout the Milky Way -- with the catch that we don't know anything about exobiology.

That doesn't mean we could mate. We have a high degree of DNA compatibility with chimpanzees, but AFAIK, there's no human/chimp hybrids.

[hepcat]

How have you never seen a Mark Wahlberg movie?

[Isgrimnur]

We killed off all the other species with which we were genetically compatible.

[hepcat]

We killed off all the other species with which we were genetically compatible.

We had to. They had all the Unobtanium.

[Isgrimnur]

[Skinypupy]

We saw this tonight. Mrs Skinypupy leaned over about midway through and said “This is all incredibly silly, but very pretty.” I think that pretty much sums it up.

I was entertained but that could have easily been a 2-hour movie (instead of the butt-numbing 3 hours) without losing anything of substance at all. There’s a ton of groanworthy plot holes and devices, but it’s decently good fun if you can just shut your brain off for a few hours and enjoy the spectacle.

[Sudy]

This felt like five hours of indistinguishable blue hippies talking to whales.

I don't think it's bad. I was lukewarm on the original too. I certainly couldn't comprehend the news stories about superfans returning to theatres dozens of times and becoming suicidal when it hit them Pandora would never be real. They're gorgeous films visually, but I'm so used to oversaturated fantasy vistas at this point that it seems kinda samey.

The CGI is fantastic, but the stream of consciousness in the back of my mind constantly says, "almost none of what you're seeing is real!" and it kind of ruins the experience for me. At least the original had Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver in their human forms to anchor the experience. I know that was Spider's role here, but I couldn't stand the character. All I could see was the feral child from Mad Max 2. It felt like Cameron reinvented Weaver's and Stephen Lang's characters just to have an excuse to work with them again. That said, I enjoyed the characters of Weaver's "daughter" as well as the leader of the sea tribe. While Stephen Lang nails his somewhat hackneyed role, I wish they'd developed a new villain. I'm so damn tired of bland white imperialist military antagonists. I don't remember a single human character played by a minority, though I'm sure there where some. On the other hand, there were barely any human humans at all.

What happened to the "unobtainium" (geez, did George Lucas consult on the script?) plot of the original? All of a sudden "the Earth is dying", and they're on the planet to extract lone litres of piss-looking age elixir from four-eyed whales. (They failed to establish its value sufficiently; they said "80 million", but for all I know in this future that's the cost of a Coke.) I kept flashing back to Jurassic Park 2 (the original one). I don't remember whether Lang's/Weaver's relationships were mentioned/hinted at in the original, but these developments felt extremely contrived.

I was completely unable to tell the Na'vi characters apart beyond the ones who had extremely distinct features. I sometimes wasn't even sure when I was looking at Worthington's and Saldana's characters.

Spoiler:

As their son lay dying (190% predictable by the way), all I could think was "don't worry, you have seven other sons who look just like him."

I love long movies when they have a reason to be long, but this one was just exhausting. I get that the writers wanted to showcase more than the main conflict, but the mid-film "trying to integrate into sea tribe culture" plot seemed like it could have been half an hour shorter. It was also a rehash of the first film's cultural integration plot. It's like if there were a Dances with Wolves 2 in which Kevin Costner's adopted Lakota family spent half the film trying to integrate into a different Sioux tribe.

I'm kind of disappointed Cameron's spending many of his remaining years on this series. I'll probably see the others, but this is a series that really doesn't need three more sequels over the next five years. And it's all going to be the same, isn't it? It's not going to be something interesting, like the Na'vi visiting Earth.

[hepcat]

I'm kind of disappointed Cameron's spending many of his remaining years on this series. I'll probably see the others, but this is a series that really doesn't need three more sequels over the next five years. And it's all going to be the same, isn't it? It's not going to be something interesting, like the Na'vi visiting Earth or something.

This is my biggest problem with the movies, I think. I just don’t want Cameron to continue this vanity project. I feel like he took it as far as he could in the first film. The second one brought very little that was new to the table, and I fear the remaining films are just going to be even more of the same.

[Jeff V]

I'm kind of disappointed Cameron's spending many of his remaining years on this series. I'll probably see the others, but this is a series that really doesn't need three more sequels over the next five years. And it's all going to be the same, isn't it? It's not going to be something interesting, like the Na'vi visiting Earth or something.

This is my biggest problem with the movies, I think. I just don’t want Cameron to continue this vanity project. I feel like he took it as far as he could in the first film. The second one brought very little that was new to the table, and I fear the remaining films are just going to be even more of the same.

I disagree to a point. The sequel introduced it to another generation. Now, a bunch of movies in the next 5 years...maybe it jumps the shark, but who knows, maybe he does hit a good plot line or two across them. I could happen. Not all of the Jurassic Park sequels were duds. Same with Indiana Jones. The visual wizardry cannot be understated -- the coolest thing I saw at Disney World last summer was the Avatar VR experience -- it really was incredibly well done.

[Zaxxon]

I think there's the potential for the series to be worth it. I enjoyed the 2nd movie more than most of you, it seems. Fully agree that re-using the Very Bad White Man™ as the villain wasn't great, that it could easily have been 30 min shorter, and that the writing in general isn't the best. But as with the first movie, the immersion (for those of us without the stream of consciousness thing interfering) was fantastic. This really does feel to me like a different world, and Cameron has nailed the effects and removed (for me) the uncanny valley.

We'll see where the future movies go, but IMO this 2nd one served a purpose, in setting up some of the wider Pandora culture and the knowledge that the Very Bad White Men™ aren't going to stop coming. Now let's see where they take it.

Would I love to see Cameron do something entirely new and potentially bring us a new franchise on the level of Terminator or The Abyss, or an amazing one-off like Titanic? Sure. But despite the fact that not everyone loves Avatar, it is another brand-new franchise on the level of Terminator or The Abyss, and it's one that Cameron loves (and views as a kind of life mission for him in conveying the tree-hugging/environmentalist aspects as he's reiterated in interviews many times).

In short, it is what it is, and what it is is what Cameron's going to do for the rest of this decade.

[Jeff V]

It was what, 10 years between Avatar movies? It's not like he's milking the golden goose for all she's worth.

I agree though resurrecting the UBG was more of a crutch and he could have done better there. The only problem I had with the length was the nasty look I got from my wife when I ordered my 3rd beer. We took our friend's 3 kids to see it...they never saw the first but loved it. My kids saw the first when they re-released it a month earlier.

[AWS260]

I finally caught this on Disney+ during my week off. I have to say, I'm kind of surprised that they took more than a decade to make a sequel that covers so much of the same ground as the original. That's been discussed at length in this thread, so I won't dwell on it. Instead I'll comment on the handful of new elements thrown into the mix this time around:

• Swimming/underwater stuff - This was cool.

• Smart whales - Cheesy, but I liked the outcast.

• Whaling is Bad, People - Could not roll my eyes hard enough at the mean whalers. "Save the whales" was already a cliche 40 years ago.

• Teenagers who can't stop saying "bro" - Mildly annoying, but I actually like depictions of teenagers that are annoying. Because teenagers are annoying in real life.

• Kid Tarzan - I like the idea of this character, but I don't think the actor did a very good job.

• Oh no we're trapped in a drowning ship - I've already seen Titanic, thanks.

• "A father protects. It's what gives him meaning." - Ugh, dumb.

• "A son for a son." - [barf emoji goes here]

[Jeff V]

[video='t Kill the Whale[/video]

[dbt1949]

I liked this one but it didn't catch me like the first. Maybe because it was so predictable.