Avatar: The Way of Water

SnarkAI Score: 45/100

tldr:

The review suggests that the movie has several problematic aspects, including ableism, racism, and an inconsistent narrative that fails to adequately address several key issues. Additionally, the review notes that the movie presents a simplistic and potentially harmful view of the relationship between humans and nature. These criticisms indicate that the movie has significant flaws that detract from its overall quality and entertainment value. While some aspects of the movie, such as the special effects, may be visually stunning, these elements are not enough to overcome the movie's substantial shortcomings.

Our Scores are generated by SnarkAI's analysis of our reviewer's writing. The tldr sumary is drafted by SnarkAI based on that review. All Images are AI generated based on the reviewers descriptions of scenes.

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AKA James Cameron loves the ocean and still has a worryingly paternalistic and 19th-century attitude towards indigenous people.

Disclaimer - I watched this at home on a regular TV, which given the only notable strength of the last film was the 3D tech, not the story which I (and everyone else) struggles to recall, this may be unfair as a review as it's going to force the story to stand on its own merits.

I'm unclear why did the military, when building the combat puppets, feel the need to ensure they had full reproductive organs and that they could breed with the locals. They made them visibly demi-human due to the additional fingers and human noses for some reason. (Once they bring that up it's really hard not to notice how rarely we see the actual Naavi's hands/fingers they're hidden off camera on in a fist or otherwise in a way they don't need to worry about the finger count.) Seems a lot of extra work for something that's kind of a crime of nature and can only have negative results for humans.

And it's low-key ableist that the main character would rather live in a swamp with working legs than be in a wheelchair in a hyper-modern setting. Am I remembering the last one wrong? Wasn't the whole thing you got to put in a chamber and controlled the blue meat suit remotely? You don't become the alien, you just basically wear a fancy costume. - After googling it, apparently, Sully transferred his brain to his meat suit form thanks to tree magic. I'm not the only one who forgot this its a common question apparently as there are about a dozen sites answering this specific question.

The main character got pretty racist pretty quick too (has he forgotten he's a human?), describing a human child as 'basically a feral cat' because the one human child on the planet wanted to play with the only four kids nearby who happen to be blue. To be fair, the kid is weirdly feral, hissing and spitting, covering himself in body paint and never washing himself, despite growing up in a hyper-science lab with scientists all around him and none of the Naavi are animalistic. It's weird and it's weird no one felt it should be addressed with some parenting. But then Sully insists his children call him "Sir" which is a terrifying mandate. They're his children not his subordinates so maybe he liked having a near-rabid child around due to just being a bit off-kilter himself.

"The Sky people have returned" dude, have your brains turned to mush? You know they're humans, you know the name of the company they work for and you're not telling anyone else, you are narrating to us. God, Sully's such a poseur. I'm shocked he's not grown a beard and wears a pork-pie hat telling us "I was Na'vi before it was cool"

Why are new Na'vi so amazed by the ever so slightly larger canine teeth, like every one of them, runs their tongue over them and acts all surprised? Not the insane ponytail that integrates with other life, or the tail, or pointy ears. its canines are at best 2% bigger than human canines which is mindblowing. Ugh.

Avatar makes an accidental but pretty strong case for a Creator, in that Naavi are really basically humans with very small differences (aside from the plug&play ponytails), they ride creatures that are almost identical to horses, and Pterodactyls are their means of flying we meet species very close to whales and dolphins. The trees are pretty much trees. However, it's also clear that the Na'vi are not native to Pandora, they're invaders as much as the Humans. They have two eyes and four limbs, no other creature follows this biological structure where six limbs and four eyes are common. The singular Na'vi integration braid is perhaps an indication they're native, but then the Na'vi can also breed with the demi-human Na'vi meat suits so perhaps that's a survival mechanism of their invasive species, or something brought about by the over-mind that controls all life on Pandora.

They also skip the fact humans have essentially created immortality with entirely perfect cloning tech (let's not get into the arguments of continuation of consciousness in clones) and instead just use that to make the good guys blue too. (I think we're supposed to be in favour of the Naavi, but it's hard to sympathise with the racist and insular misogynists chock to the brim with "you're the older brother you look after your younger brother" machismo.

They want to 'pacify' the locals, they have a total understanding of the genome as they can create clone bodies that can reproduce. It's inexplicable why they decide to use grunts to do this via ineffective raids rather than the (admittedly horrifying) choice to just use a bioweapon to wipe out the problem. Given the need to resettle Pandora, they're going to need to terraform it anyway to change the atmosphere so everything living there is going to die. Why wait? It also shifts the moral balance as the Human mission is pitched as "the earth is dying, humanity with it unless we can settle Pandora" at which point it becomes us/them survival question rather than the invaders/locals in the first film set up.

The story made more sense (kinda) when they were after the ridiculously named unobtanium as that didn't require killing all life on the planet. (they sort of address this later when we find out about the magic whale brain juice, but again, they have cloning tech immortality is a) already achieved and b) that level of engineering means they can just produce whale-juice themselves in a factory at scale.

"We think your Na'vi nature means you won't be spotted as invaders" - fake Na'vi proceeds to wear full US military combat gear so the stealth lasts about six minutes.

I'm 36 minutes into this three-hour-long film... This review is going to end up longer than the screenplay. (At a guess it will have more thought put into it too...)

I'm going for a walk...

The whole premise of cloning the marines into Na'vi was they were then as fast and strong as the locals but had better training. Given almost all of them then die in the first encounter it reads as nothing more than a way to bring back Stephen Lang.

The humans torture a child. Maybe because they'd not really established the humans as the bad guys prior to this so they wanted to really hit it home.

Oh, there's a bunch of beach Na'vi. Why would you live in a swamp when you could chill on a white sand beach? Swamp Na'vi really got the raw end of the deal. They're a slightly different colour and have different tails. They look a lot like Atlanteans from Marvel. they have flipper forearms. How different do they have to be to be a different species? Given the flippers, different colours and big tails its weird they're so hung up on the specific differences between the human/Naavi hybrids and the forest Naavi they probably never met before.

The wife Naavi (she rarely gets named or spoken to in this film) is very huffy and superior about the nice tent with the sea view given they literally live in a dirt hut at home.

Lots of long dragging scenes of swimming. I'm sure they'd be lovely in IMAX 3d, but without it is painful.

The whole sub-plot of the kids disliking each other and fighting is so discordantly CW and pointless. There's a planet-ending threat coming, Humans are going to commit omnicide on this planet and we're watching a couple of teens slap each other around?

1h17m in, I'm not sure what the actual plot is. No one asked about Unobtanium yet, do humans not want it anymore? (No, they don't they have a new magic thing to find now, its on whales rather than trees so what a coincidence that Sullys now hanging out on the ocean rather than in a tree.)

I binged ExtraOrdinary earlier, 4-hour show, Was more engaged after the first two episodes than I am in Avatar. If you have 3h10 minutes spare, watch the first seven episodes of ExtraOrdinary. Its much better written.

We get a whole mouse and the lion scene. I'm sure in 3D IMAX it wouldn't be a boring waste of our time.

We're almost halfway through. So far nothings actually happened.

We get some dangerous nonsense that medical science doesn't work but some chanting and acupuncture work miracles. In a world of ever-increasing hostility towards science, Cameron promoting woo is concerning especially given the guy is a self-proclaimed explorer.

Taking another break to play GTA.

At least half of this movie should be left on the cutting room floor and we're only halfway done.

The water Na'vi turn green. It's unclear why. Not enough chlorine in the ocean is my assumption.

There are whalers in space. It's literally the side plot of a Futurama episode at this point, and not as clever. We get a throwaway line that there's immortality juice in them thaar whales. Again, this is a future where humanity has flawless mastery of genetics. Once they know that they can just manufacture it infinitely and for less cost than an interstellar whaling operation. Christ. Does no one even cast a glance over Cameron's scripts anymore? Is he scribbling this stuff in crayon whilst muttering to himself about how he's a modern-day Alexander Pope.

It's midnight and I just can't bring myself to watch another hour.... The film continues tomorrow...

And it's back.

The underwater fight scene is kinda cool, but with the bad Na'vi guy flying perfectly on a pterodactyl and the blue Na'vi already masters of the ocean, you have to wonder how hard it is to learn these skills the natives are so proud of. It's a bit HFY. Natives spend their lives mastering it, but Humans can rock up and be better at it in 20 minutes.

Why can the net they are using specifically to capture the Na;vi be cut by primitive tools, why not use woven steel netting?

The Na'vi have one gun and a bunch of spears. Humans have machine gun emplacements. So get an actual free-willy scene (from the outcast Whale, the one whale in all the world who has broken his species' pacifist oaths (yes, this was a thing, yes its stupid, but I have to choose which stupid things to complain about or this review would never end.)) which serves as a needed distraction for the doomed Na'vi to charge the base. They're fortunate absolutely none of the professional soldiers maintained the position they were given or heard the war cries. Once the element of surprise is gone the outgunned Na'vi start to lose badly, only helped by the people with guns who can't shoot straight from a stable gunnery platform, but the people with spears can be thrown with pinpoint accuracy from a leaping fish.

We've not really had anything about the world/spirit particularly other than the kid's epilepsy moment earlier that lead to the woo, but given it already tamed the Na'vi and brought them into the planetary 'balance', you have to wonder if the upcoming films will be Humanity against the group-mind trying to subsume their individuality. Terraforming against a group mindset on enslaving and converting humanity to be a piece of the ecosystem's balance would be interesting. We know from Avatar 1 after all the world spirit can and will take over life and direct it to its death if it's for the greater good. The Na'vi frame it as spiritual, but it's hard to not see it as anything other than terrifying enslavement to an indifferent god.

Spider knocks a soldier unconscious and then removes the soldier's mask. Given it's a battle, he's just killed this guy for his own amusement. It's never mentioned again.

Spider's clone father suddenly cares about him. Despite this never once being shown. Spider also saves his fake father. This is the same kid to ten minutes ago murdered a defenceless soldier for fun. Seems unlikely.

What's the point of a final showdown between Sully and Lang, given they've shown no reason they can't churn out dozens or hundreds of copies of Lang? How useful is killing him in an honourable dual actually? They're both blue, but Lang fights with a human knife. Sully with a Na'vi knife. Such insightful and deep symbolism. It's literal pottery. Oh no, they're going to drown. Despite the fact, the entire film is about the fact Na'vi can hold their breath for hours. Na'vi a heavier than water. Who knew? Seems super unlikely given the planet must have lower gravity than earth due to Na'vi being tall and slender. (though as an invasive species, I guess that doesn't necessarily track).

The Definitely Not Jesus Na'vi sends glowing fish to find her family whilst wearing glowing wings. It's not quite as heavy-handed as Snyder's Jesus symbolism, but it's not great.

They then give the body of the dead child to the monstrous over-mind to eat or protect, or consume or something. The glowing lights make it look nicer than decomposition I guess. The more I think about it, the more terrifying this overmind becomes. How much agency does Sully actually have since connecting to the Tree in the first film?

Sully then narrates how he shouldn't run away and needs to fight. So we've spent three hours getting back to where we were at the end of Avatar 1.

Verdict: C+ it's pretty and I'm sure in IMAX 3D it would be spectacular and the dragging scenes wouldn't drag so badly as the scene would be immersive, but the story is weaker than the first film which is an achievement, but not a good one. Cut an hour off the run time by ditching some of the teenaged angst plots and perpetual cycle of captured children, rescued children and it would be a stronger film.

I read a review which called "Avatar" Cameron's "Magnum Opus" That comment is more offensive than anything I've written above. The man gave us Terminator, Terminator 2, Aliens, True Lies and Titanic, every one of them better than Avatar which, in turn, is better than Avatar 2.