The sequel to the 2009 blockbuster epic, Avatar: The Way of the Water, is a predictable, tired tale wrapped in breathtaking cinematography. Pandora is the epitome of natural beauty, but with a delightful sci-fi twist, and the expensive but worthwhile technology makes this world feel real, especially in 3D.
However, regardless of how fantastic this world looks, this sequel is sub-par at best and represents a privileged ego trip with lazy writing, undeveloped characters and awkward dialogue at its worst.
Picking up 15 years after the original, Avatar 2 sees Jake Sully and Neytiri still together, but now with four children. The goal is to introduce a new dynamic to the story; how will the presence of the new generations affect things?
The focus on family may be a change for the franchise, but it's not a new idea (think of the nine Fast and Furious films).
Even the last Bond movie took a family turn. Yet Avatar somehow manages to make a family-centric film aggravating. Jake's patient and loving relationship with his daughters contrasts sharply with his conflicted relationship with his sons.
It is not only frustrating but sad that the character relies on old-fashioned ideals in his upbringing, seemingly failing to see how his sons could benefit from an open and loving parent.
This also ties into the recurring problem of gender stereotypes in film - male and female characters are often limited to the role prescribed by their binary gender.
Avatar 2 Movie 2023 Official Trailer
Male, pale, sterile and heterosexual. That a film released in 2022 is so unrepresentative is not only shocking, it is appalling. Existing in a reality of heterosexuality - without even a single character being queer-coded, let alone displayed and proud - the characters are pushed into stereotypical gender roles with dull, half-developed female characters and carbon copy alpha males who seem unable to communicate, let alone show complex emotions.
One of the most appalling examples is Jake, who doesn't even cry when his son dies and goes so far as to tell his wife to get over her grief. This film had the potential to show a better world, not only in the environment but also in the social sphere; instead, it sticks to old-fashioned depictions of stoic, emotionless men and uncontrolled, emotional women.
Furthermore, the narrative is not only poor, it is also repetitive. The film sees the Sully family leading a resistance against the invading human presence on Pandora, but when the last antagonist from the first film (Colonel Quaritch) resurfaces in the form of Avatar, the Sully's take refuge in the Metkayina ocean tribe. To stay, the Sullys must learn the ways of the water tribe.
As they learn, xenophobic clashes occur and a romance develops between Tsireya, the daughter of the tribal leader, and Lo'ak, the youngest of the Sully brothers. Meanwhile, Colonel Quaritch tracks them down, leaving a trail of fire and blood in his wake.
Then comes the final act, an action-packed battle between humans and Na'avi, and the most dramatic moment of the film - the death of Jake and Neytiri's firstborn. While a bold and impressive move, a shocking twist doesn't make up for the hours of nonsense that preceded it.
If the plot I've described sounds familiar, that's because in many ways it's a longer, more convoluted version of the first film. Avatar 2 takes the basic elements of Jake's story and gives them to his son, even repeating some key lines from the original story, resulting in a tedious and frankly embarrassing attempt to reference the first Avatar film, devaluing both films in the process.
Avatar doesn't just copy itself, it also borrows from other narrative tropes, making it boring, clichéd and utterly predictable. The unoriginal love story between Lo'ak and Tsireya is one of the biggest offenders. It mirrors that of Jake and Neytiri, whose story was already not very revolutionary. Finally, to make matters worse, Tsireya is essentially a Disney teenager crossed with a Bond girl, and she's even shown in slow motion when she gets out of the water.
The major problem with the film, then, is its writing. The narration is poor and the dialogue is clunky. The characters are limited to old clichés and lack so much diversity and depth that, even at the end of the film, I couldn't figure out who was who. Avatar 2 feels like a smorgasbord of different ideas that were hastily put together to meet a deadline, which is ridiculous when you consider that the writing of the sequels started almost ten years ago.
Yet in all that time, no one has managed to streamline the plot or come up with decent dialogue. Moreover, the writers left the only interesting plots unresolved, and many questions were left unanswered - almost as if the film served as a trailer.
While the film is not unbearable to watch, it does not hold up to scrutiny at all. The more one analyzes it, the more one re
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