Sure we got some more world building in this one, but it pretty much ends in the exact same place as the last movie did. For how Cameron hyped this movie up, it felt like very little of importance happened in it.
shareWell to be fair, in the age of CG comic book “movies”, since when did story or writing matter.
shareI was wondering how they were going to spin out so many films, but having seen it I can see how.
I did think they skipped over the sky people returning and becoming established pretty quick, they probably could have made one movie upto Jake going into hiding, but instead focused on relationships like Spider and his father.
This definitely felt like they skipped what should have been an entire movie inbetween. It didn't feel like a movie. It felt like a condensed season of a tv show.
shareI could've done without the teenage angst between Sully's brats and the sea Na'vi, and that segment with the whale was on for too long.
The first whale segment was lovely. Then did another whale segment. And another one. And another one. It went on forever and they already made their point crystal clear in the first five minutes.
shareIt felt like it started over again. Movie began with something of a coda to the first, then it basically reboots with them joining the sea people where we finally get a real introduction to the new characters and see their development along with rediscovering the world and all that. Sort of reset everything and left loose ends to a hang a 3rd off of.
shareI was also wondering how they managed to drag out a story of such a one sided war for 3+ hours. Human loss = dozens of people and hundreds of millions of dollars of technology. Avatar loss = one single avatar.
shareNormally i'd be like, okay, do over. NOW the ball will start rolling. But I feel like we're going to be getting the ball rolling with every installment and never actually see the rube goldberg machine work its magic.
shareAdditional. A very real problem made itself clear with Star Wars. When you drop something, and then wait years to make another installment. You give fans too much time to invent their own fantasies. And no matter what you do, you'll never live up to that. The prequels to Star Wars sucked. But even if they were awesome, it wouldn't have mattered. That's not the f'n way I envisioned it. Jesus. What possible fate could they have given Luke that would have pleased anybody? A Dune God? An alien titty milk sucking loser? It don't matter. The point is, and i'll use Pirates of the Carribean as an example. You have to rail them sequels out. Don't give the fans time to invent their own fantasies. If Cameron pulls off his intentions, we'll all think very differently about Avatar 1 soon, same as we did Terminator after he dropped T2. Meaning you did it right the first time, but this is okay too.
sharePrequels for any book or film series are usually crap.
Sequels have better odds of being decent, but even those often made up being crap as well, since in each instance, what you usually have is the author/studio starting to milk the one thing that they did do right.