This time on Pandora, Jake Sully and his family are reeling from a personal loss and must deal with a new fire-based threat to their homes and planet.
Just like the last two movies, the biggest compliment I can give a movie is to the visual effects. They are incredibly realistic and so well detailed; not to mention all the different designs for the creatures and environment, the filmmakers do a phenomenal job at making Pandora feel like a real place. Not to mention James Cameron does a fantastic job at making everything look incredibly cinematic. I would highly recommend seeing this movie on the biggest screen possible; it’s definitely worth it.
I was quite surprised with Jake Sully and Neytiri's storyline; both characters are grieving for the loss of one of their sons from the last movie, and it goes to some pretty heavy emotional places. Both actors bring a lot of raw emotion and heart to their performances, and it’s a storyline you don’t see in many big-budget blockbusters, and I thought the way they explored how grief and anger can lead to racial bigotry was rather nuanced for a movie about giant blue space cat people lol.
The children’s storylines are more of a mixed bag. I liked some of Lo'ak's (Jake Sully and Neytiri’s second son) plot, how he’s dealing with his own grief in his relationship with the water tribe’s daughter, but he’s also hanging around with that whale from the last one a lot; all that stuff feels like it's written straight out of the 90s, like Free Willy in Space… I’m surprised they never once said “radical dude,” lol.
There are some interesting developments with Spider, but again, his character is written like a surfer dude from a Captain Planet cartoon, and well, I like Sigourney Weaver’s performance, but her whole “Pandora Space Jesus” storyline is very predictable and a little too Schultzy for my taste.
The biggest scene dealer is Stephen Lang as Quaritch, who’s still doing his tough, gruff, sarcastic, military thing, but Lang brings a lot of charisma, menace, and subtle humor to the role that’s fun to watch. Also, as Oona Chaplin Varang, the fire-obsessed leader of the evil Navi tribe, was fun to watch. Granted, her character wasn’t too deep; she’s mostly just crazy, flirty, and ruthless, but you can tell Chaplin is having a lot of fun with the role and is very interesting to watch. I’d say she and Quaritch were my favorite characters to watch.
The evil Navi are also pretty credible threats; they’re pretty much orcs mixed with hillbillies on crank, but their ruthlessness and deranged attitude definitely give them a strong menace.
Kate Winslet has a small supporting role, but I liked her and Zoe Saldana’s chemistry; they have a fun frenemies dynamic.
There are a lot of actors/characters in this, and while everyone does a great job, it does feel a little excessive at points, like there are so many storylines going on that while you never quite lose track of them, it can get a bit much at times, so not everyone gets as much development.
The human villains are very underwritten; Edie Falco is just a generic military hardass. Angie, Giovanni Ribisi is this money-obsessed corporate dude.
It’s not in the movie a whole lot, but I liked how they explored Quaritch and Spider’s estranged father-son relationship; it was very well written and let the actors give more nuanced and layered performances.
Another high point for the movie was the action scenes; they were very well paced, suspenseful, and had a very “epic” scale to them. Again, my hats are off to the animators on this entire film; they’re for sure going to win the Oscar this year.
For an over three-hour movie, I never felt the run time, and everything had a good pace to it, so that was really impressive.
A very light sort of spoiler… This movie has pretty much the same climax as the last one; like, as far as where it takes place and all the different fight moves and how things come together, it’s pretty similar to the last one. Granted, I think it was done better in this one, but just don’t go in expecting something totally new at the end.
So the information, the action, and the visuals are stunning, but the characters and story aren’t anything new and in certain cases can be a bit small and predictable, but there are some new wrinkles woven throughout that make this probably my favorite Avatar movie. No, I’m not dressing up as a blue cat guy anytime soon, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I enjoyed the film, but I do think if you’re going to see this, you have to see it on the big screen; the detail work and scale were meant to be seen on the biggest screen possible, and I don’t know if you’ll get that same fact on home TV. I give the film somewhere between a high three stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️ and a low four stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️… Granted, a lot of that is going to the visuals and action, but it is definitely worth the hype.
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