Avatar: Fire and Ash

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⭐ 7/10

It's only worth seeing these movies in theatres, but if you saw 2 you have seen this one as well. 2 was a rerun of 1 in almost every sense, but in this one they reused the entire second half of the last one, in many cases I thought I was getting dejavu with the exact same battle scene. It was a real disappointment.

This movie looks great, of course. Marvel dreams of a world where they could spend this long on their movies and make them not look like absolute garbage. Its impressive how transporting this is, it doesn't really feel like a fantasy world, it actually looks like a different planet. Everyone knows this, but its all I can think about while watching, since the story is certainly not going to blow you away. The dialogue is trash, the kids still all say "bro" and "cuz", and Jake is a bad dad.

I will say I thought the first half of this movie was excellent. There is a stunning battle in the first third that blew me away, which is then followed by an extended chase scene, and a hint of the bad guys and good guys having to work together to defeat a common enemy! We get some supernatural Jesus-y stuff, a little Abraham and Isaac, and I felt myself getting emotionally involved! The villain from all the movies is back, but he's doing different things. I liked the direction, especially given how redundant the second one was. But then at some point we start repeating the exact final battle and I was yawning. It's worth repeating how shocking it was to be seeing these beats being repeated with all the same characters. I think 2 and 3 were supposed to be one movie, so maybe that makes sense and a rerun of the battle, but I think the outcome is even the same! Crazy stuff, not sure how any of the writers signed off on this as a satisfying follow-up to the last one.

Some good ideas squandered in favour of the familiar. But just watch how the water reacts to all these animated characters and creatures, or how the humans interact with the Na'vi! How do they do it!?

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