SPOILER ALERT: If you don’t want plot points (meager though they are) revealed, don’t read this review.
I’ve been eagerly awaiting the release of Avatar 2 since I saw the first one (2009) a few times. I even learned a bit of the Na’vi language which sounds really nice.
I went to a local gourmet theater and saw it in 3D. The theater was wonderful and the service outstanding. The movie… Meh. All the things that drew me to the original were missing from this one. They gave nods to Eywa and spirituality in two of the young female Na’vi, but this one seemed more like a Disney corporate caricature with a completely formulaic approach that left me thinking “That was the story?” That’s the best summary of it.
It felt like a cheap rehash of the last plot with kids thrown in as heroes to make it Disney Approved, and to provide action scenes that could be integrated into video games and VR. They invent a new substance (remember Unobtainium from the last movie?) that involves killing whales for an emotional outrage. And this substance can infinitely extend human life! Oooh ahh! After first establishing a strong communicating soul-level relationship between a whale creature and the Na’vi, the movie shows the company on a slaughtering spree of the primary whale creature. And after the company spent trillions of dollars to build high tech ships and send them across the galaxy, tracked down and slaughtered the creature and extracted this chemical that keeps humans alive forever, we are told the chemical from this one creature could be sold for $80 million dollars. Cue Dr. Evil laugh. How about $800 billion? Did anyone even proofread this script?
We are told the secret that Earth has sent ships across the galaxy to Pandora, a planet where humans can’t breathe without technology, with the goal of settling the planet because Earth is dying. Great plan. But they can’t subdue the population because of the ex-human Jake Sully commanding the forces of the Na’vi. Think about that. Tech that can reach across the galaxy, put human memories and personalities into a new kind of avatar, do interrogation brain scans on captives, BUT have gunships with windows that are easily pierced by arrows and spears made of natural materials, and gunships that can’t track and eliminate airborne targets with tech like we have on jet fighters right now.
It is set in a new water world section of Pandora because Jake knows that the humans are hunting him and his family, and they try to hide. But having worked for the company that is hunting him, he would have known that they have only contempt for the Na’vi and would rather that all the Na’vi died to save them trouble and expense. Jake would have known that they would begin exterminating Na’vi and local nature just to draw him out. But he apparently didn’t know that, or kind of did but hoped for the best, I guess.
A lot of the movie subplot follows the teen troubles of the Na’vi children. Two seem spiritual and kind, the rest seem like your average teens. One teen is a human that is apparently the offspring of the primary villain. The teen endures torture and observes all the giddy locker room attitude of the company soldiers as they kill and torture Na’vi and animals, burn villages, and still the teen decided to protect and save the villain from death so he can return and do more of the same in the next movie.
I wanted a lot better plot and story. I wanted more Eywa. I wanted a LOT more Na’vi language instead of English. I wanted a deeply spiritual contrast to a take-it-by-force invasion, like in the first movie. Instead it was endless knife and arrows against thousand round clip rifles, and barely a nod to the goddess being that unites all life on Pandora.
It was painfully obvious that this movie was only a cheap knockoff of the last movie used as a stepping stone to more movies. And I’ve read that they want to introduce yet more “worlds” on Pandora. I’m willing to bet that each world becomes a Disney park or at least rides. There is a bitter irony in a corporation making billion dollars profit out of Avatar’s Pandora while making movies about an evil corporation trying to squeeze profit out of Pandora.
Computer Geekery 