Avatar: The Way of Water

⭐ 7.0/10

(Originally written by Joseph)

This movie, I think, is very simple to review. Visually, this is perhaps the most stunning and impressive movie that has ever been made. But it is also over three hours, and once the novelty of the effects wears off, you are left with a totally unoriginal and poorly written action movie.

Now, this movie knows that looking good is it's entire purpose. It feels more like a nature documentary with long, extended scenes existing just to show you something cool. I feel like so many of these twenty minute scenes would have been cut in post, but they costed a kajillion dollars each and so you can't justify cutting anything. I loved the visual marvel, and even towards the end I still loved them in a way. But I was getting so antsy by the end I just wanted it to stop. We were in the theater till 2:30am so yeah, I was definitely getting ahead on a little sleep.

Otherwise this movie kinda sucks. The plot is completely uninspired. This is the exact fear you have when you're watching a sequel. They clearly had no new story they wanted to tell, but just wanted an excuse to come back to this world and make a cool billion. You know exactly every story beat that is about to happen in the first twenty minutes.

I also found the writing to be awful and a complete mess. Lots of the little things weren't adding up. Why do the Na'vi teenagers talk like gen z humans? Why does everyone speak English? How can they speak whale like Dori? They use every cliche known to mankind, and James Cameron goes back to the four jokes he knows. "Son, you shouldn't fight the other kids... but did you win?"

So anyways, like I said at the top, incredible nature documentary, terrible actual movie. But also 10/10 make sure you watch IMAX 3D bad get an EXTRA big bag of popcorn and pee before you go in.