Avatar - The Age of Water

I have to be honest right from the jump. I have a serious hate on for the first Avatar movie and especially director James Cameron. I have listened to him talk for nearly a decade about a sequel to a movie that I hated. While the visuals were pretty, the story he told with all those bells and whistles was severely lacking. I hate that it made so much money and that just because it's number one in that area that it's the greatest movie of all time. I resent that implication especially with Avatar. It's a boring film when it should have been groundbreaking. Now I have to put in three hours to see if I will find some redemption for this property. I really HOPE to hate it but I can't do that without watching it first.

Is it just me or do ALL of the inhabitants of this planet look alike. I can't tell the difference between one or another. Maybe I am racist against skinny blue people who are all the same skin tone and body shape.

It's a gorgeous looking film but even that become boring after the first hour of Navi running through the forests. I get it. Then we go to the equally beautiful water. I get that point again and the movie still needs to pound the balloon juice environmental message into my head while having our family overcome obstacles in their new home. At three hours plus, it's just too long a movie.

"The Sea gives and the Sea takes." That is some deep philosophy at work here. Underwater Cirque de Soleil is another way of looking at the second hour of this epic. Everyone just floats around with beautiful lighting and music. Then the humans arrive to burn it all down just like they would in real life.

Usually the humans are bad and the blue people are good but this time the old enemy from the first movie is back from the dead in the blue form of his enemy. This puts Jake Sully and his Navi half breed kids in danger so they leave the forest and seek out the reef people for sanctuary. Of course the war follows them and we are back fighting in the waters instead of the trees this time. That leads to a final act that reminds me more of Titanic than Avatar with not everyone of the family living to see the end of the film.

But it's still basically the same movie as the original Avatar. The people (and the giant whales they live with) are in danger from humanity and since the people are noble savages, they are the heroes of the film. Basically Dances with Blue Wolves AGAIN. There is nothing new here that we haven't seen a thousand times before. It's all just wrapped up in a prettier bow. This is certainly not what everyone waited more than a decade to see. But it is making a billion dollars by a movie consuming audience who has been sold a bill of goods. It will never be the classic that James Cameron wants it to be. It's just too ordinary for that.

Cameron is blurring the lines between over-earnest after-school special and bombastic action flick distinctly unsuited to the former's target audience.