What bothered me the most about that very long part of the movie where they had to learn how to do all the water stuff, was that this movie actually did some proper worldbuilding by showing that the water people were actually physically adapted to the water (different tail, webbed hands, some sort of second eyelid), but then threw all of that overboard, because by the end of the training sequence the forest people were just as well adapted to the water as the water people. Apparently that's something you can learn in a few days, and it doesn't actually have anything to do with how your body has evolved at all.
Well actually they weren’t as adapted as everyone else since at the end when the ship went down everyone was still struggling to breathe underwater more than a couple minutes. I think what we should be focusing on is the fact that Jake choked the colonel, made sure he passed out and started sinking but the colonel still survived even though he was brought back to land WAY after everyone else. Hell even Jake passed out before anyone was even close to saving them.
This is exactly what i was saying when me and my girlfriend watched it. I was like "Maybe she'll be able to dodge the crab robot with her natural swimming adaptation?" Then she doesn't use any swimming to get out of the way that is using her tail.
Like Rae learning to be the best Jedi ever with just a few weeks of training. Building a character's abilities at the expense of storyline cohesivity is just plain boring, and the audience is beginning to understand that we can demand more of these major studios.
True. They should have improved to the point they were still crappy at staying underwater long. Once they were shown the Scuba jellyfish the obvious question is, "Why don't they bring these with them every time? They allow any of the people to swim underwater and breath through the magic scuba jellyfish that somehow get oxygen to your lungs without penetrating your lungs. You can stay underwater indefinitely with them.
Even the whales are noble savage hypocrites: "we dont Kill, you killed, you are an outcast". Social animals are meant to be in packs. One of them being alone is not only cruel; is a death sentence! (If not for plot armor) PS glad you bringed up the defensless unarmed humans being killed by hippie smurf Ripley
To be fair, it wasn't "you killed, you are an outcast!", but rather "your action caused many more deaths then there would be if you had done nothing, so you are an outcast". But it's still the mantra of "fighting back makes us suffer more, so we'd rather let ourselves get hunted down slowly in stead."
The whales are basically using Batman ideology, which of course works prefectly for Batman, look how good is he at protecting Gotham etc. *picture of mass graves caused by Joker shenanigans, which whom Batman could kill several times and nobody would mind*
@@Bongyes And I thought I was the only one who was driven nuts by that. I enjoy Batman as a character, but Gotham is a city of Redshirts, sacrificed on the altar of 'principle'.
@@givmi_more_w9251 not sure what a redshirt is (or do you refer of those constsntly dying red shited dudes in Star Trek?) But yeah morals.of Batman make no sense considering Jokers and others killcount. Now if Joker was like doing... Tax evasion then sure, dont kill him, but he does way more than that. Repeatedly. Without remorse or shred of hesitation. He should be dead across multitude of mutliverses immidietaly
The thing that bothered me the most is that nobody acknowledged the fact that the girl started using godlike powers at the end. Like wtf, it should be the most incredible action ever performed in the history of pandora and nobody bats an eye
Well, why would they? Clearly the Planet/Ecosystem, that they know is aware and consider their Diety, is intervening using her as an Avatar. Sure, they don't see it on that scale every day, but when you believe every single drop of rain/storm/earthquake/wave is an act of your deity, it's kind of every day, ya know? I'm being factious there, because honestly that's just... really badly done and I absolutely agree with you.
@@HpArtcraft yeah, ok. But I still feel someone should have brought it up after the battle. Like I know that It will happen in the sequel but still, I wasn't satisfied😂
43:40 The best part about this? The first Avatar film had a deleted scene about how the humans needed to mine the metal to save Earth from the envionmental conseqences of their actions, but they cut it to make sure there wasn't any moral ambiguity in the film.
i'm glad they did. in a world of virtue signaling justifying raping another world for our benefit should nit be tolerated especially since it was our own fault our planet was dying
@@mercynamikoye9084Ah, yes, let's just look at this from a broad species perspective and ignore the fact that it's not at all the children of the people who don't deserve to die horribly on a dying planet just because the sins of their forefathers. Get off your high horse. You're doing plenty of virtue signaling yourself, you sanctimonious ass.
It's also mentioned at the end of the first film, when all of the humans are being kicked off of Pandora, Sully tells them to "go back to your dying world."
@@mercynamikoye9084 I mean... the movie wouldn't have had this point of view, even with the scene in it. The scene would have added something. It wouldn't have changed the movies opinion, that the humans were doing something very wrong. It would have instead added some background, something to think about for a second. It would have, at the very least, shown the potential of not having the movie be Black and white, good and evil, but of having depth, ambiguity. Are the humans here really only evil? Or do they think of themselves as having good intentions? What makes a human good? Having good intentions or having whatever intentions but with a good outcome? Instead both movies are "This is pure evil and this is pure good" which just doesnt exist and in my opinion, is very dangerous
Imagine Jake and Neytiri silently agreeing to abandon the colony but never really talking about it and Jake lying that they would eventually return. Letting it fester till it gets the both of them by the end and boom. Drama. Imagine Spider luring Quaritch 2.0 and gang into pairing with the dragon birdies in hopes to get them killed - he lies and does get a few of them hurt bad or killed but - Quaritch manages to subjugate one bird and boom. Drama. Imagine the kids actually being smart and not to mention brave, where they hatch a plot to damage Quaritch's ship. Succeeding but eventually getting caught and actually putting up a fight permanently scarring the bad guy. Quaritch retailiates and kills a kid brutally, resulting in all out rage filled war and boom. Drama. Imagine spider actually saves the day by the end but it isn't seen that way by the family and Neytiri especially blames him for everything that's gone wrong. Misunderstood kid who now is in serious danger of his own Mother hating him. Actually, screw this hateful neglectful mom figure Neytiri. She should've loved this kid just as her own from the beginning. Would've added more gravitas by the end with the misunderstanding. Imagine the story ends but it leads to a lot of the sea people also being dead. And Jake etc. heading home to only find that the Na'avi were also nearly wiped out but a lot of the young ones were taken away. IMAGINE. If instead of the Whale golden goop that gave life extension it was actually the natives of Pandora and their blood that is found to be capable of long life. Have a scientist group from the Humans explore Pandora to figure this out while Jake's story is going on. IMAGINE. That the end of part 2 leads to Jake and Co. watching the skies as multiple ships take off from all over Pandora, carrying infants and younglings from across multiple tribes. Major Stakes. Angry Sully. And their decision to take the War to them. All or Nothing. Fade to Black. My ideas are probably basic af but imagine if it were anything but what we got. Sigh. So many narrative threads to explore and close in the next 1-2 films. I hope it ends with Avatar 3 but it wont. lol
I hope you're using that ability to flush out stories for your own creations because if you get something off the ground, I would read/watch/or listen to it.
@@TheLittlePlatoon Why thank you! It just surprises me sometimes how people will millions of dollars worth of talent can't put things together like they once used to 😅 If only they bothered to explore other media for their own inspirations. Nah. Stick to our tired shlock cus arrogance
@@Drifter2025 Eons ago I wrote one half of a script for a story that had hints of Bourne and Hannah (2011) all of it a romance laid against a backdrop of family and revenge. But like everything else it fell by the wayside and I never bothered to pick it up again 😅 maybe I should just give it a go. Thank you! 🤗
@@fitterniti i think hollywood is clinging to the old farts that made classic movies and instead of them retiring they don't ever fuck off, i think people should make room for the next generation writers that use their own creativity and aren't brainwashed by media and politics or corrupted by money and are only fueled by their passions when something like that happens then we will get golden movies again but until then were in the shitshow movie era people
James Horner's real work for Avatar, written with the help of a musical anthropologist, was rejetced by Cameron for sounding too alien when it was what he had asked Horner for. The only part that made it into the film was the Naavi lament after their home is destroyed. So they hacked something together that Cameron approved of. As it was his last work before he died it was a crimnal way to treat him. I'd love to hear the real Avatar soundtrack.
@@way-out Yes, that's how I found out about it! I was so disappointed to hear about the lost potential, I'd love to listen to the original concept of it all.
@falcon_by_the_lake Apparently he did the same thing on their first work together "Aliens". Horner had composed music for the film but Cameron kept saying it "didn't fit the scenes" so Cameron threatened to fire Horner and replace him with "somebody who can get the job done fast". Horner reportedly replied:"If you do may I stay for free and learn from this composer for I've never heard of anybody who can compose a good score in a week." Cameron let him stay and told him to "improvise". And this is why the score of Aliens contains a lot of "butchered" work from other films Horner had scored before. It would appear nothing much had changed after 35 odd years.
If James Cameron wrote Star Wars: Darth: "Luke, join me, and we can rule together." Luke: "Ok." Darth: "Now, help me find and eliminate the rebellion." Luke: "Ok." Darth: "We're also building a second Death Star." Luke: "Ok." Second Death Star fires laser... Luke: "No!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Speaking of music, there is a music channel called Sideways, he made a video titled "Why Avatar has the Most Ironic Soundtrack of All Time". Basically, during the production of the first movie, they figured out how alien instruments would be, based on the different anatomy of the Na'vi. They actually made alien music! Then decided to not use it because it sounded weird...
How, at all, would the instruments be different based on their anatomy? They're tall blue humans with tails, it's not like they have extra hands or breathing holes or anything
@@dilboo They don't have extra, they have less. The Na'vi only have 3 fingers on their hand. The thumb is usually used to support flute type instruments, which only leaves them 6 fingers to use compared to the 8 of humans. Go watch Sideways' video, he explains everything and more much better than I can here.
The two scenes that were the most idiotic from this movie were the Doctors flying in. That scene was literally only for plot movement, but because the doctors were too stupid to think “Oh maybe the baddies can track us.” Scene two: WHERE THE F DID ALL SEA SMURFS GO HALFWAY THROUGH THE FINAL FIGHT?!?!?!
My dude, his daughter had a seizure and was possibly going to die. She needed medical assistance, that's worth the potential of maybe being tracked. As for the Metkayina not being around at the end of the fight, of course they arent going to stick around to help the few stragglers still there that caused all of this. It's perfectly logical. Though the real world reason is because James Cameron wanted to focus on the Sully family and thought the others would detract from it.
@@Sivanot *''My dude, his daughter had a seizure and was possibly going to die. She needed medical assistance, that's worth the potential of maybe being tracked''* ronal was literally in walking distance and yet some how, some why she entered the tent after those scientists. then healed kiri in a minute. *''As for the Metkayina not being around at the end of the fight, of course they arent going to stick around to help the few stragglers still there that caused all of this. It's perfectly logical.''* they werent there just for helping sully's family. it was pretty clear that they were eager to fight back against the sky people after what they did their whales. on top of that they captured tonowari's children. yet they disappeared before they secured the kids. *''Though the real world reason is because James Cameron wanted to focus on the Sully family and thought the others would detract from it.''* i've heard he cutted the original script for the massive amount of gun usage. either way its a stupid ass reasons. he literally sabotaged his own writing.
@@barisbal7782 Ronal was clearly gathering what she needed to help as Tsahik in the time it took to scientists to fly over. Though I agree it's unlikely that she would have gotten there after, it really doesn't matter. I do agree that the Metkayina vanishing at the end was a mistake that could have fairly easily had in-story reasoning written in. Though I still thoroughly enjoyed how it turned out in the end.
@@Sivanot the things she gathered were something she can carry in her arms. how come it took for her to gather them long enough for the scientists across the ocean and still enter the tent before her? sorry, not believable *''Though I still thoroughly enjoyed how it turned out in the end.''* thats fair. i enjoyed the movie as well. but the bad scenes are still there with little to no excuse
@@barisbal7782 I literally said that it was unlikely for the scientists to have beaten her there. But it doesnt really matter, it 'not being believable' isn't exactly damaging to the narrative in any way.
1:03:18 This bit was just hilarious to me. "Your spawn has the blood of demons!" "No you don't understand, I was off the sky people (demons) but I was transplanted into this body (demonic possession) and I procreated with one of your own (unholy union) and these are my children (demonspawn)!" He basically repeated their objection to his existence and expects a different outcome. They think you are a demon and they are primitive savages to who you explain that no in fact you used to be a demon but then you possessed this body and procreated with it.
I love that Dreamworks basically said “idgaf about your cinematic event” and put out an earth shatteringly good story about a talking cat right alongside Avatar that held its own in box office and became an instant classic XD Edit (several months later): Ok perhaps "Earth Shattering" was a bit much lol, but I stand by "Instant Classic". I was still high on the hype of finding a movie that I actually adored and showed multiple people when I wrote this haha. I just really love Final Wish, and I think its the most creative endeavor I've seen in the box office in a long time, and my god, the animation style and score suit the story so perfectly! For context, my favorite film of all time is The Princess Bride. I've grown up with it, and love both the movie and the book so much I've been writing AU's and FanFics around it since Middle School. And its not just the sweet and silly Fractured Fairy Tale surface story - Its the deeper themes of life being unfair, and love being the thing that makes it worth living for that are echoed throughout it in all of the main cast in different ways. Never in my life have I seen a family movie take on something similar and execute it almost Flawlessly, until Final Wish. You already know what I mean by now. Its Silly, beautiful, and action packed on the surface. It has characters with varying levels of complexity, yet their stories all twine together beautifully. It has nuanced and tactfully handled themes of mortality, betrayal, found family, love, friendship, and trust, AND it doesn't shove any of this into the audience's face. To me, This is on-par with The Princess Bride, and (I can't believe I'm saying this) does many things even better from a art and storytelling perspective. It's a kid's movie about cute fuzzy animals and wishing stars. And I sincerely see it becoming a generational classic the same way my favorite movie in the world is.
@@portalmanHUNit was to me. It legitimately made me think and ponder about my own mortality, confronting my fears, and gaining an appreciation for what I have right now. Its pure kino. Suit yourself
For me it was one big family drama with the kids constantly getting themselves in trouble at the cost of everyone else... Its like they inherited all the childish human qualities they could from Jake and he failed to counter that as a parent.
@@juliii_g i totally agree on this but an additional point I would like to add on this is watching from a non-western culture its so annoying to see kids do this constantly and is mostly an American problem or rather a western world problem. We constantly shout at our screens for years as to why American culture is so obsessed with kids getting themselves in trouble despite legitimate warnings
I feel like the movie could have been an "Alien wonders of the world" style movie, where they just imagine how an alien World could look like. Then, in 3 years, you would see the footage being played on huge TVs in an Electronic store that wants to show how great the TVs look. That would have made much more sense than the stupid, less than half assed story, they tried to make
I hate James Cameron. I stopped supporting him and Neteyam. He loves to defeat Neteyam and Na'vi in his evil films. He is crazy. Stop supporting Avatar. I'd rather support Russia, and I do love Russia.
And yet, for all its genius, he still makes the same basic mistake as every other reviewer: he blames the movie's short comings on incompleteness, unbelievable. How can someone who is possibly intelligent simultaneously be so ignorant? These are PROFESIONALS, they know what they are doing. Just like ESG scores and Black Rock, you think a monstrosity evil like Black Rock cares about equality and justice, NO, this is about control. Similarly, James Cameron knows what he is doing, your metrics are WRONG, this is not about making a "good movie", it is about programming the viewer, OMG, welcome to the 20th Century. This is about demonizing the West, making them hate themselves, so they accept the coming Communist agenda. Implanting guilt into the western consciousness. You may tell yourself I am way off base, but even those who live deep within denial, can only remain blissfully ignorant for so long.
So, you are saying that people like Cameron cannot, for any reason, be bad at what he is doing? "The director has a vision", and so, the movie shouldn't be good as long as the message is sent? My guy, there is an environmentalist movie that is so well done that almost everyone loves it to the core: Wall-E. That movie is "complete", if you will. Cameron could have made a movie that brainwashes the population into accepting communism if it was well-made. But he didn't. He didn't know what he was doing: a billion-dollar movie. And actually, you are wrong. Platoon said it many times: "this is what Cameron wants, so this is what Cameron gets", so he is admitting that Jamie-boy knows what he does, speading an environmentalist message, but he sacrifices the quality of the movie as a result. Omitting many potential good scenes and adding pretty bloat. But also, what is the essayist flaw in saying that the people in charge don't know what they are doing? Why is it a flaw? What makes it a flaw? Because the intention is clear, however, as they make a movie or whatever, they stumble upon it so hard and make a bad product. So no, you are wrong. Directors and writers may not know what they are doing, they might know why they are doing it, or what for; they want to send a message, but don't know how to make a movie that conveys it properly. That is what you should understand.
I remember viewing the first avatar and finding it ironic to be preached at about environmental issues by a multinational conglomerate. Little did I know, 'twas but a sign of things to come.
I just noticed by seeing the clip on repeat: didn't they tell us that they had to use the avatars to explore Pandora because this planet very ecosystem was too dangerous for a human? And by that they meant not only the air being toxic, but the whole environment: plants were bigger and moved, animals were bigger and more vicious. The Na'vi were supposed to have evolved to adapt to these harsh conditions. They were larger and their limbs were longer to be accomodate for the bigger distances and sizes of the world they live in. Yet, we see Spider jumping around the floating isles vines like it's nothing. Him being raised in Pandora should not be enough for him not having serious physical difficulties living there.
I mean the army guys don't just white phosphorus the tree as there opening move so what do you expect seriously that tree holds the planets ecosystem together and you can't breath on it anyway so why not just burn it?
Pandora does release an immunologic response to human threats, yes. However, given the navi are connected to it and Pandora being a huge network, I wonder if Pandora is able to recognize some human beings not as threats but rather allies. Like when Jake first arrived and got lost in the jungle and the woodsprites went to "greet" him. It would seem Pandora has some way of discriminating humans from threat to ally maybe?
I mean clearly it's not flawless movement given that him being unable to keep up with the others is what got him caught in the first place, also he grew up on Pandora, he's not a full grown human trying to adapt to a new environment.
Every scene from the villain's pov I couldn't help but wonder "okay, but what if they didn't do evil things?" "What if they incentivized the neighboring sea-na'vi to rat out Sully by giving them resources?" "Why don't they try to establish trade relations and alliances with certain na'vi tribes, like we did in America?" "Why are there literally zero na'vi that are interested in superior human technology?" Even evil people can be nice purely for selfish reasons, killing civilians does nothing to help them. The writing throughout this 3 hours of CGI sludge is downright braindead. Beyond the logical plot conveniences, I just find it hilariously convenient how the humans are both evil enough and incompetent enough to justify mercilessly slaughtering them in every interaction. I bet they feel like they have to make the message as simplistic as possible exactly because of the historical context it's derived from. Because the second they add a bit of nuance to their story, people will start to realize the nuance of colonization. Some people suffer, cultures get erased; but some benefit from it, even cheer on colonization of their own people. The French tended to have had good relations with American tribes. I know Pandora has this cultish nature-worship that never fails them, but nature in our world is pretty dang brutal. I want to see the scene where a na'vi gets stung to death by alien hornets or a parasitic brain mold causes one to go insane. Yes, humans destroy nature and the planet, but it's for the sake of knowing that we no longer are at its mercy. We build houses, farms, hospitals, things that na'vi would certainly want. And let's not forget how twisted cultural and religious practices can get when you live in a primitive society. Like in the book "Things Fall Apart" you have Africans that join European colonizers just to escape human sacrifice. This movie's nothing but propaganda.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see something like that pop up in the third film. But yeah, it’s weird (and shallow) that nothing like it has occurred already. The very obvious thing is for the humans to eventually realise that the only way to survive on Pandora is to be a Navi, and the only way to really be a Navi is to transfer your consciousness via a spirit tree, so eventually they’ll bend the knee and blend into nature and live happily ever after.
Precisely. They won't add any kind of balance or nuance to the overarching themes of these films because then audiences would have to consider that maybe colonization isn't the pinnacle of evil and the descendants of colonizers aren't inherently evil demons that need to repent.
And of course, in real life, the native tribes of the Americas ranged from pacifistic to brutal totalitarians, almost to the point of genocide. Imagine if the next tribe of Navi are basically Aztecs. Of course, that either won't happen, or it will superficially, but they'll turn good after a good cry, or some kind of cheesy reveal that they were evil really only because 1 guy at the top was evil, and they'll abandon their entire way of life as soon as he is cast down.
Cameron sees humans as generally bad (all the bad ones are white, you'll notice) and the blue people generally, almost entirely good. There are no traitors or greedy ones.
Because that would hit too close to reality than Hollywood likes to get to actual Native America history. Natives in North America fought each other to dominate the beaver skin trade with Europeans. Why? To procure more more European good, mostly firearms and ammunition so they could further dominate other tribes. Native American history is far bloodier than many would like to admit.
I already forgot I watched the movie. But I remember the best part where Jack leaves his people to not endanger them and comes to the water people to endanger them.
Another issue you missed ( or I missed you mentioning it) was that in Avatar they couldn't upload someone's brain into an avatar, they operated them like a biological drones from their normal bodies, so not only did Chip not download his brain in the OG, they expressly lacked the tech to do it. Jake only managed it with the help of their Gaia knockoff.
I think the slight difference (which still causes all manner of problems) is that, in this case, Smurf Chip only has OG Chip’s memories, not his consciousness. He’s not the same person… except where the plot needs him to be the same person. But it means he’s untethered to a human host - not really an Avatar at all.
@The Little Platoon If they could do that then they could've done that for Sigourney Weaver in the OG and not bothered with the spirit tree upload BS, I don't remember that ever being discussed as an option. Edit: of course I saw the movie once in its initial theater run, so my memory is a bit fuzzy
Why is it so hard to understand that the RDA is very capable of keeping their projects secret? It raises the stakes. Not to mention Quaritch foreshadowed the Recoms that a lot seem to miss; "A Recom Gyrene in an Avatar body.. that's a potent mix."
I don't understand why they didn't upload Jake's dead brother's brain into an avatar then? Wouldn't it be better to copy the brain of a scientist for whom an alien meat body has already been grown, and who knows everything about Pandora, instead of dragging his uneducated brother to the project? Is the brain of some stupid military man more valuable than the brain of a scientist, since no one thought of making copies of it just in case, while he was alive? What if he didn't have a convenient twin brother?
@@WalkingJellyfish Because at the time Jake entered, they didn't have the secret Recom project. Or maybe they did, but the point of the stakes is that the RDA is shady as hell. That's safe to assume. The amount of braindead assumptions in this comment section is astounding. Everything else you just wrote is gibberish because it keeps riding the same misjudged points.
I loved how at the end of Avatar, Jake Sully says about staying and fighting before the final battle. And then he runs away at the start of this film. And then after winning that battle he says that he now realises that he must stay and fight. Amazing character development 20/10.
Your forgot to mention in the first film jake sully don't have kids while in the second film he is a father have a family he thinks that by hiding he can protect his kids
@@ANONYMOUS-tg2tq Terrible writing. He's meant to be a strong leader. Instead he runs away scared and leaves all the other millions of women and children in danger instead. Awful.
@@thebatman4279 yes and he thinks by doing so he can protect his kids but no he was wrong this decision is not good running away is never the solution there is difference between terrible writing and chracter making terrible mistakes in real life people make mistakes most people think emotionally not rationally
@@ANONYMOUS-tg2tq I see your point, but I’d argue that’s an odd conclusion to come to immediately after his oldest son is killed in the exact battle he chose to stay and fight
I'm sorry but I have to correct you: some NPCs in Morrowind would refuse speaking about something with you if they didn't like you or if you belonged to an enemy faction, which means Morrowind NPCs have more autonomy and consistency within universe than Spider througout this film.
When I write my fanfics about a romance with blue alien race that is the best at everything people say I'm cringe. When Cameron does it, its a masterpiece. One of THE most overrated, empty, key-jangling movie series in the history of our planet. Give the xenos hell Platoon!
I honestly hope this wins Best Picture..... And thus ends any argument now and forever as to whether this truly is the twilight of the American movie industry this movie is very pretty crap. There is nothing redeemable, you are dumber for having seen it, but it's superficially pretty though in truth the art direction is so over saturated and repetitive that even the pretty loses any impact half way through....
For a long time, I felt like I was the only person who disliked Avatar and thought it was absolutely overrated. Everyone I asked liked it, and my family treats it like some mindblowing message about colonialism, capitalism, and destruction of the environment. Like as if this is the first movie bold enough to tell such a message. And I'm always like, "Guys, this is just Dances With Wolves in Space. It's a lazy rip-off!" It feels so bizarre how hypnotized they are by it just because it looks pretty. When I watched the first movie in cinema, I felt nothing except for the headache. And I thought something was wrong with me because I wasn't blown away
The two Avatar movies so far are actually a very good lesson for worldbuilders, fantasy and sci-fi: No matter how dense and supposedly interesting your worldbuilding is, if you're writing a story in your world, plot and characters have to be top priority. I don't doubt that a lot of work and care was put into designing the biology, culture, language, and so on. I actually find it cool that what is normally a niche hobby has been put on the big screen. The problem is, it seems that for both movies, the worldbuilding was the only thing they cared about. To draw a comparison to Tolkien, the reason why anyone cares about The Silmarillion and the hundreds upon hundreds of pages about the history of Middle Earth is because people liked the LOTR books.
Yall do realize that not all media needs to be high art, intense intellectual and to your preferences right? I laughed, I cried, and look forward to the next 5 or whatever. Go read Dune (again) instead of expecting a director who focuses on aesthetic .. to not do that
@@nailinthefashion Because Avatar 1 and 2 are an example of a pretty world with no esence. Both movies are full of cliches. If you accept that movies like something "fine" then that shows how bad cinema has fallen.
@@chrisjfhelep5095 it isn't about the presence of tropes, all movies have them, it is the execution. The Kiri scenes made me weep because of what was said and left to the imagination. Thank God my standards aren't as meticulous as others, or I wouldn't be nearly as happy. You're right. What are your favourite films?
@@nailinthefashion My favorite Films are: Mad Max: Fury Road, The New triology of Planet of The Apes, All Quiet in Western Front, Alien 1 and 2, Judge Dredd from 2012, and others. All those have tropes and like You said, it's all about the execution. I really disliked Avatar 2 because the movie basically believes that I'm so dump to see a complex history about morals that it just shows an argument about "Good boys vs Evil Boys". Hell, in the movie is mentioned that "Humanity wants Pandora like its new home" but does not develope that concept, it is forgotten five minutes later, instead we spend almost three hours of adolescent drama and eco-friendly propaganda.
"We're going to invade a whole planet, so we'll need to send at least five generals on staff, with one in charge." "Or just one colonel." "No, this is a whole planet, with multiple continents, multiple life forms, each possibly requiring a separate invasion force, each headed by a general officer, then a staff above them, directed by a group of generals with decades of experience." "Or just one colonel."
This was just hilarous :D At first we saw that more than one ship came to Pandora...and where the heck did the people, who were on them, disappear? And yeah, no leader was showed in the movie other than our single colonel. It seemed like a big army arrived, what I would have expected if they want to conquer a damn planet. It seemed that the humams had some kind of new settlement by the sea - where the tulkun-hunting ship went out - what were the people doing there? Didn't they want to win against the na'vis? ONE ship's crew was all we got as the biiig human force... Tough they would have still won -just as it seemed to happen in the first movie - if the outcast Tulkun does not save Jake and his little entourage's life. Just how it happened before this. The locals' plan : attack the humans - who have superior weapons and armor(tough now a damn na'vi arrow can pierce through the windows for some reason)- with wooden arrows and riding on fishes! We have a real chance to win! ~sorry about my long rant
Personally that is one major thing that buged me on this one. The first movie kind of had its reasons as first expedition force to be smaler,, and filled with scientists to map and discover the planet. While prepairing an area for more forces to follow wich gave the aclimated natives an edge to turn the battle with the help of the entity residong within all life on it. Like sure its kinda corny but makes sense. Now that they sent some of them back who could fully prepair the next force and clarify what extend awaits, and they wven displayed rhe larger prepaired force arrive it makes it unbelivably dumb they ONLY send out one colonel and 4 avatars plus what looks like non militaristic whalers with no additional backup when one ir two bstches of aircraft could wipe out the entire final battle with no issues. Without setting any spoiler those that saw it know. Now part one had some themes of enviormental care, and how humankimds greed killed earth. Forcong them to venture out and pillage/conquer planets like some Aliens were depictef in the past. Some themes of a crippled war veteran left to rot suddenly being able to run again among some more messages to ponder about. While it followed a somewhat consistant storyline start to finish. Wich explains the first movies huge success. This swcond installment comepletely felt mixed and randomized with no real logic behind the plot. All being extremely convinoent and in many ways just boring. The whole enviormental shift only done because they didn't want to reuse the forrest asthetic. Overalö the second one felt more like a visualy pleasing of a fanfic then an actual continuatiom of the first part.
@@TrafalgarWaterDLaw-dl5cm in the first movie, NO ONE mentioned, ever, that the Earth is dying. All was spoken about is the mysterious unobtanium, that's why the humans were here! Not a word about colonization, making place to humanity from Earth. Oh and about that entity...why did it decide to help? Before that it did not care about this genocide, but now that one human begged for help, it comes in like Superman and saves the day? In the second movie, this Earth-is-dying came out of nowhere. Before that, nothing about this "they greed killed the Earth". The first movie was clearly a bad copie of the Dance with the wolves. Just everybody is painted as black/white here. The natives are pure and good, the humans are greedy and evil.
This one I can believe. Its a colonial force, not a full planetary invasion. In the first movie it was - if memory serves - essentially a corporation establishing a mining colony for the unobtanium and then having some forces to defend the mining operation/deal with the natives in the one particular area. It wasnt the full might of earths military coming down to oppress the smurfs.
The Critical Drinker, I'm my opinion , had the best take on Avatar when he called it "Pochahatas Dances with Aliens in Ferngully whilst Saving Private Ryan from 9/11".
I remember leaving the theater just asking my siblings who died at the end then having a thirty minute argument about who had a relationship with a girl and who had a relationship with a whale
@@DangerZone200no but after watching movies for a while you tend to be able to sniff out this kind of stuff pretty quickly. They obviously have a thing for one another and it’s going to be explored in later movies.
I knew it was the older brother because of the haircuts, but I honestly thought the older brother was having scenes with the chief's daughter and apparently he wasn't?? I legit thought there would be a conflict between the brothers for the girl but apparently all her scenes were with the younger brother? I even predicted the older one would die BECAUSE the younger one got to vibe w her about whales, and, well, you gotta free her up for the one with the most parental issues that will need resolving in the future...
I watched the movie yesterday with my sister on her TV (I saw it in theaters) and after an hour she put her hands in the air and said WHEENNN DOES ANNYTHINGG HAAPPPEEEENN 😂
I checked my watch in the theater when they finally got to the water and it was over an hour before the movie subtitled "the way of water" actually found its way to the goddamn water.
I have never watched these movies. I was actually more fascinated by the “Avatar Syndrome”, where people wanted to be in that world. In my head canon, I thought the films were about the characters escaping, like 100% leaving everything behind, but the same conflicts still happen regardless - I was imagining a Lord of the Flies situation. I thought the “Avatar Syndrome” was a plot point, where characters used this new world to shed their humanity, but didn’t realize the negative shit they brought with them. And…now I realize it was nothing but fancy effects.
The original "Avatar" portrays an idealised world where humanoids live in harmony with nature. While many people - like The Little Platoon - seem unaffected by this, in others - like myself - it feeds an inate primal yearning towards an anarcho-primitivist lifestyle... that makes watching this movie somewhat of a spiritual experience. For years, I watched it anually on my birthday, usually after taking some MDMA (sometimes assisted with a psychedelic), as some sort of shamanic ritual. The second movie still suck, though.
@@OutOfTheBoxThinkerHonestly, if anything, that kind of makes me wish they stripped all the violence and pillaging from the first movie and just left it for the second, going for the triple threat of them leaving time to build up for an explosive battle between races, making that battle in the second movie less directly derivative, and letting the first movie just fully focus on the nature of this new world and the fantasy of becoming a part of it Then that way, it gives us two movies to really connect with this world like Jake did before letting us see it be torn down by people too greedy to see it for what it is
When the only thing people could say about The Way of Water was how much money it was making. But you heard nothing significant about the story, no quotable dialogue that wasn't in the trailer, no groundbreaking tales about the storytelling and no one really talking about the movie in and of itself... you realize how the ONLY thing it had going for it was special effects and the money it made. But that's all. It spoke volumes about what the movie actually had to offer.
That’s still the case. Scroll through this comment section and you find the $ referenced in almost every attempted defence of the film. (I address the point in the video, not that they’d know, as they’re not the type to watch before commenting.)
Majority of people are gasping and grasping at straws to stay relevant with the "current thing" - if you tell them something made some money, or something is written in the media to be nice-looking, they will burn they money just out of the despair to not miss out on something...
They ruined the roar in Jurassic World. They cut it off early right at the credits, instead of just fading to black and letting it run out fully. Such a simple, dumb mistake.
Avatar 3 *is* supposed to introduce us to the 'lava people' - The series is elemental, so it's Air, Water, Fire and Earth (as in planet Earth) in part 4.
@@Seomus Considering the main character is part of the air...nomads...oh god it really is just a garbage version of Avatar. What the heck. Didn't Shyamalan do enough damage on his own?
To be fair, it was entirely up to the sea people (who already didn't like them that much) if they would be given the protection and shelter they needed, so he didn't really have much of a choice in the mater
My punk band, The Late Nineteen-Hundreds, is working on a song called, "Alarm Clocks Bell." We have a line in it that is as follows, "1984 has your toes curled/But you're living in a Brave New World." I appreciate your intro. Spot on.
I saw this in theaters because my grandpa wanted to take me and my sisters to see it, so I figured why not. Never seen the first Avatar movie and now I very much don't want to. Spider's "arc" kept pissing me off, because he'd randomly help his evil dad with his evil plans, get mad at evil dad when he does something evil, and then go back to helping him. What a joke
First movie wasnt amazing or anything but back in the day it came out it was huge deal, its also very emotional in my opinion with a good story overall, Jake Sully is an ex marine who lost his ability to walk and since his twin brother was part of the avatar program but died he takes up the role to continue diplomatic relationships with the aliens using his brother's avatar( he does that because he is the only one compatible with the avatar of his brother and avatars are expensive to develop) so he joins the expedition exploring the alien world and being able to walk again but as he does this the army tells him to be their spy and if he does the job well they will cure his spine and he will be able to walk again, Jake accepts but as he is bonding with the blue aliens he falls in love with the girl and realises that his people are doing something very wrong in the alien planet just for the expensive resources of the planet, that changes his mind and he literally chooses to let go of the chance to cure his spine for the alien's sake. For all this i believe the first movie is really worth watching.
I think its normal for Spider to feel torn between being angry at his dad for being a piece of shit, but also feel saddened over the loss given it was his father after all and thats the closest he has to him. Its clear in the film he feels torn in between, and its also clear there will come a time where he will have to pick a side once in for all. I guess time will tell what he chooses feels right.
I think we're OVERLY challenged in media and politics to the point we're weary of it. Avatar 2 was just a basic story and great visuals that was a good escape FROM all the bull crap. Not everything has to push the boundaries. Review bombing, preaching at us and being divisive are in EVERY show coming out....people are tired of it.
@@syntheticmode The movie is crap,the visuals(which we are already used to) don´t save it,considering it has even less plot and character development than the last one,apart from the obvious preaching Cameron again couldn´t leave out of entertainment
"we live in a world that is profoundly uncomfortable with being challenged“ if you want to see HOW uncomfortable everyone REALLY is, try to say "outer space only exists on screens" and watch every intellectual turn into a witch-burning zelot XD
The greatest sin TWOW commits in my eyes is when Jake and the gang choose to LEAVE the Forest people. I remember that specifically being the point I zoned out and just admired the pretty visuals, because it’s an entirely batshit decision. Quaritch and his goons kidnapping the kids, then having Jake and Neytiri save them, should have not changed any perception of safety or confidence in their war effort against the humans. The kids were only CAPTURED, when they strayed AWAY from where they were supposed to be, and they DIDNT RUN AWAY when they could have. If the kids called in the threat and LEFT ASAP, instead of hanging around for some fucking reason, then Jake and some tribespeople could’ve ambushed them in little time, then BOOM, threat handled, even if the Marines get away and maybe still kidnapped Spider or something. Skipping forward, why the fuck would the next leap of logic be “okay we aren’t safe, Quaritch is hunting us, we need to abandon our home”. 1) Jake is the fucking chief or whatever of these people, for like 15 years. Why wouldn’t he have any moral or personal inclination to keep EVERYONE safe, not just his OWN family? They portray him in this movie like just some regular dude that lives with the tribe, not their goddamn LEADER, like what was SETUP in the first ten minutes. 2) Do the humans just stop warring with the Forest tribe when Jake leaves? According to the movie, yes, since we never hear from them again. That massive army with tons of stolen weapons and cargo is just going to magically go back to living in the woods I guess. The scientists should be rather nervous, since Jake isn’t chief anymore why would the other Navi be as open to listening to them? How about Kiri never seeing her mom again? Spider not getting some time in that room where he doesn’t need a mask? All that’s gone for the family I guess. 3) Jake was fucking human, he KNOWS ALREADY that you have to fight the humans to stop them, because they have better tech and will just keep coming if you don’t eliminate them. Running solves literally nothing, this is something he SHOULD’VE LEARNED ALREADY. Everything setup in the first 30-ish minutes should’ve implied Jake being MORE relentless in his war on humanity, MORE desperate to keep the tribe, and his family, safe. Instead, we get a pathetic coward who convinces his family to abandon their only home, where their friends and family live and thrive, in order to run from a threat that was already shown to be impossible to run from. There are so many better ways to write this story. What if Jake and Co go to the water people and “integrate” with them as part of diplomacy to get their help in their war? What if the water people were actually on good terms with the sky people and oblivious to their atrocities until their sins like the whale hunting or whatever were revealed. What if the water people were crucial in crippling the human settlement but wouldn’t take action due to them being extreme pacifists or even being really prejudiced against other Navi. The whole point of the ocean scenes were “wow these water Navi are so bliss and in tune with the sea”, have them be like the giants in Primal, where their peaceful life is shattered by an outside force and they have to rally together and march to war. There could’ve been this great final climax where the Forest people and Reef people fight together to outclass the human ships or whatever, the two tribes stand together, and cripple the human settlement. The humans are pushed back, the two tribes saved, and they prepare for Round 3 next time. I’m not going to act like any of my ideas are all that great or original but ffs, I would think it’s better than the leader of the tribe literally ditching his people for incredibly stupid, selfish reasons.
I watched the movie when it came out and omg it would have been so much more enjoyable if this was actually the storyline. What you wrote is so much better than what they did in the movie.
Yeah it made no sense for them to leave the Forest. The humans were there to invade the fucking planet why would they just ignore the village once jake and his family left. Like sure the Guys whos task it was to kill jake would Go After them and maybe leave the village alone but Not the other humans.
This! I was about to comment this! Very well said, your ideas would solve so many issues this film has… The fact that Jake leaves the forest shouldn’t remove the threat they face, the human military will not forget the original location of the final battle of the first film. This idiotic idea of randomly running away stinks of plot contrivance… so infuriatingly lazy writing
He literally left to protect his family and to protect the forest ppl.... to lead the danger away from them. Are all you ppl in the comments really this slow that you don't understand something that simple? I thought it was obvious. "I don't want them bringing another war and death here again, so I'll leave". It wasn't a complicated thing to figure out.
The writing is incredibly weak in both movies. And Jake is a dislikeable character, irresponsible, selfish and destroys everything he gets in contact with. But the world building is legendary.
@@notundermywatch3163 Then you should read Orson Scott Card's Enders Game and Speaker for the Dead which Avatar/Cameron pretty much stole the majority of ideas from. Not the first time Cameron has plagerized or stolen ideas. See: Terminator/ Harlen Ellison
I don’t mean to be mean but you might be brain dead. I’m pretty stupid and I could tell the difference , the older brother wore more “accessories” like clothes and necklaces and crowns , the younger just had like a loin cloth.
@@santi_super_stunts2573 idk man, I'm a character designer, I know what makes a character pop and what can be done to distinguish them. The ones in this movie just didn't do it for me. Especially in the action scenes where everything moves by quickly, accessoried very easily fade into the background and make the individuals hard to recognize
@@-localbard- i also love character design, imo there should be a deliberate balence of features; it infuriates me when i see bland designs or characters so overdone they look like walking piles lmao ok exaggeration but still
@@paradoxtatorstudios9681 Yes exactly! The design of the navi on their own I think is a very nice base, they don't just look like re-textured humans, they have their own features. But when it comes to the individuals maaann are they boring. They could've played around with body types or different markings, eye color and shape, hair decor and more recognizable clothes with distinct patterns or something. I'm also a sucker for symbolism so something like different types of plants, flowers, corals or stones with different meanings being used to paint a picture of the character's personality (especially since they're very oriented to nature). Many missed opportunities
That post from 4chan on Chip's philosophy is really good. I wish we had some version of that Chip instead of what we got. I don't understand how the same man who gave us Aliens and Terminator 2 managed to provide Avatar. Avatar 2 is even worse than that hollow offering.
Its because Cameron is a self proclaimed tree hugger. The reasons his movies that are about saving the environment are the same as the reasons why movies about faith made by Christians often times suck. Cameron is creating his own "God's not dead".
@Space junk A good comparison with the themes argument for Avatar 2 is how Catholics like me often cringe at those faith-based films, but go, "Hey, they're trying, and at least they talk about [insert good thing]." While I share those feelings, since seeing good themes is refreshing for a weary soul, I agree with Platoon that such ham-fisted attempts at preaching hurt the message more than help it.
There were two villains set out initially, I think. General Carmela and Major Jolly Rancher, did anyone notice General Carmela's character completely disappeared and was forgotten about about 35 minutes in??
The biggest Eye roll I had about the film was with Chip smurf's introduction, the entire concept basically made me check out immediately, because not only was it a pretty solid plot point that the big bad huwyte people could not not do the the brain transfer dance, but it also completely begged the question of why the fuck Sigourney Weavers character had to die and be replaced by the Jesus child of Pandora. When stakes for your characters only exist for the sake of the directors whims and are applied selectively they cease being stakes at all. It's like watching a 4 year old play pretend at that point, sure it can be cute and entertaining on a level, but you'll have a hard time following what's going on a lot of the time.
Not that it makes any criticism better, but the jelly fish has a 10-second scene where they say it helps (or lets you) breather under water, which beckons the question why they don't just use that all the time, but whatever
To be fair, I wouldn't exactly say the Na'vi are the type to hold animals in captivity, and since it seems like those jellies are pretty rare to come by in the wild, I'm guessing they just aren't available in most cases
1:18:39 aw man that footage of the windows 98 aquarium screensaver gave me more emotion than the entire 3 hours of Avatar. I’m transported back to sleepovers at my friend’s house in the late 90s; we’re going to sleep in the living room and there’s not a sound except for the artificial water sounds of that screensaver. Harness THAT billion dollar nostalgia, James Cameron, dang.
1:15:04 Just to point it out, it is mentioned that they have placed a tracker in Spider's breathing mask, so that he in fact can't just run away whenever, since he can't just put off the mask
Amazing how you can make a video that's only 15 minutes longer than The Way of Water, and yet it has 100x as much depth and thought put into it than the film itself.
At 3:05:52, weirdly enough, the jellyfish cloak is actually one of the few payoffs in this movie. Way earlier in the movie, the sea kid smurfs taught sully's kid smurfs that attaching the jellyfish to their backs will help them to breathe (and it's not really explained how). It's not a good setup, considering that it happens so early and is rather forgettable, but still a setup with a payoff nonetheless.
The context for it in this review also has a payoff. He earlier stated he couldn't read the subtitles and this just so happened to be something explained by subtitles so he has no clue what the significance of the cloak is hours later.
Are you serious? It was so blatant setup that I was like - there you go! These things are the plot armor that will help them breathe under water later on. It was obvious & really bad to give them an organic magical oxygen tank. 🤦🏻♂️
it also made no sense at all that putting a jellyfish on your back would let you breathe underwater - it makes literally zero sense biologically - even if it did make sense, why wouldn't you have one on all the time? it makes no sense narratively either
To say that it's a pay off is stretching they spent the entire movie playing up a character to be a messiah and it concludes in her making fish glow and summoning jelly fish
Re: Quarrich’s return: one thing that’s missed is _why would the clone care about seeking revenge?_ Sully killed the original, not the clone, so why would blue man group Quarrich care about that? Wouldn’t a more realistic reaction be "damn, clone me sucked! Better go on to do other evil things then!"
How did Spider survive and eat properly in the non-technological community for years while having to wear a breather mask all the time? That would be pure torture - and wouldn't the mask need a continual supply of scrubber cartridges/earth-type air canisters?
What a lot of people don't seem to understand is that this is a movie, not an unreal 5 tech demo. Visuals may absolutely play a part, but they should NOT be the sole focus of a full length feature film.
Comparing modern cinema (and especially Avatar) to Huxley's Feelies really nails the feeling I had for quite a while. I couldn't find the words to describe what felt off to me, but I think your comparison comes very close. And it made me feel better about my decision to completely abandon modern movies for good and instead read good books.
@The Little Platoon At least you work harder on your scripts than the screen writers in Hollywood these days. I love your humor, your sharp and insightful criticism. I'd rather watch an over 3 hours long video reviewing and criticizing Avatar than watching the actual movie. Thank you for sitting through this space smurf schlock😉
To be very honest, there are still some very good movies being made, even those with budget behind them like last year Everything, Everywhere, All at once. And if you search, you can find some good but lesser known artistic movies.
3:22:20 The saddest part is that so much passionate work went into creating the details of this universe, from the vehicles to the astronomy to the languages. All gone to waste because Cameron apparently spent too long browsing Twitter. Also I've no idea how you did a 3.5 hour video on this without going insane, congratulations
@@insertcoolnamelater9334 Yeah, it's easy to tell especially if you're in the viual effects space. The amount of tech that was created for the Avatar movies is just mind boggling. That's why they look beautiful.
@Ghost most people aren't tho. Yes it's pretty, but also very generic and forgettable. Besides every expensive movie looks pretty. Hollywood should spend at least as much time on the script as they do on visual effects.
I find funny how at the beginning you said you had trouble differentiating between the smurfs, but you did recognize that the brother who died at the end was the older one, I was so confused by which one of the two just died that I asked my mom and she was asleep lol
I at first thought it was the younger brother and thought it was pretty ballsy that they killed off the one who got all that screen time. Of course, it then turned out to be the one sibling who got zero character development.
I had no problem at all differentiating between them, I thought it was obvious. it was also kinda obvious that he was going to die. he was the perfect role model older brother and didn’t have much space for character development nor was he that crucial to the plot, whereas the younger brother was still growing and learning and making mistakes and trying to be like his brother (also had much more screen time and was clearly a more important character). and so i predicted beforehand that they would probably kill off the older brother to boost the younger one develop as a character. and then it happened and I was right
One part I found very jarring was at the final battle the actual water tribe apparently just went home halfway through the battle, even though the chieftain's daughter was still in the hands of the enemy. This was the only reason they went to battle, but it appears they forgot about her and left.
One thing I hated as a woman who had a history of seizures was Sergorney having a seizure and immediately after the doctor is schooled by “natural healers” when he says she had a severe seizure
i mean she was having a seizure as a Navi and they were trying human solutions to her Navi condition. It would make sense for the Navi to have a solution to people being overwhelmed like that when interacting with Eywa, so their natural remedy isn’t exactly out of the realm of possibility for the film.
@@mateo3898 it still has to remain consistent within the framework of its world and story. And I’m sorry but a new age shaman tribal healer is not I repeat NOT going to be able to compete with modern medicine.
Great video so far. I think Aristotle would have a lot to say about the state of modern movies, given that he saw spectacle as the least important component of storytelling. He saw plot as the most important... what sacrilege!
It's actually explained what the water cape is. In a previous scene, it's mentioned that the Na'vi use it like a diving suit. It allows them to breathe through it while underwater when they connect to it.
I went to see this when it came out. Some of my mind-numbed friends told me I "...have to see it. It's like nothing you've ever seen before..." One of my first thoughts while watching this was, "Man, this sure seems a lot like 'Dances With Wolves"
Inspired last monologue. I attempt to get my students to reflect on their utterances - question the politics of their positions. Yet they all too often resort to left/right simplistic thinking. I love this channel for a chance for my brain to come alive whilst also being entertained. Thankyou.
Well to be fair the school system doesnt exactly encourage independent thinking. Do as we tell you rather and read these texts that we want you to read
@@leob4403 I teach university and am quite shocked at how lacking in critical thinking skills some students have. Others are fabulous and thankfully always challenging me. In fact it’s a key element of the course.
@@sarcatstix that sounds great which country is that? My experience with the university system here in Sweden is that independent thinking was never encouraged to any significant degree, and that has only gotten worse in this politically correct age
I still am convinced the Navi should have been crazy looking aliens instead of tall blue humans. It would have made the movies more interesting. Also please upload a reading of your 700 page pokemon novel.
The part where the eldest Sully son gets shot makes me laugh when it, then immediately, flashes to the shooter for just one moment. It totally feels like a kill-camera from almost any shooter game these days. It's totally out of place and silly. Just because I laugh, does not mean it belongs.
It's quite ironic that this "the planet is beautiful" movie was produced by Disney. How many acres of land do they clear and develop for their parks and studios? How much electricity did it take to run the computers that did all the CGI in this movie? Where did the water for all their motion-cap tanks come from? How many of the higher-ups involved with this movie have their own private jets?
Honestly it would have been better if the enemy this time was someone from Jakes old squad- maybe even the man who saved his life or who's life he saved which crippled him. Then it would make sense for him to take pity on his children and try to save them while also staying hostile since he does have family back home and he's here to save them
omg wtf that sounds infinitely better seriously fuck old senile james camron someone force him to retirement politics and social media has seriously corrupted the dudes knowledge and creativity
Having many interesting ideas avails you nothing if you're just going to introduce them and then move on to something else without digging in and taking time to explore any of them in depth - wide as an ocean and deep as a puddle seems an apt phrase for this particular 'feely'.
Would have been interesting to see Chip Hazard take Jake under his wing, almost like a father, and then end up feeling betrayed when he eventually went "full native". This woulda maybe made his clone's actions with Spider a little more understandable, as Chip would have been disposed to a more fatherly nature, and seeking a son figure, but with some hesitance because of aforementioned betrayal But thats too much thinking, right?
@@andrechagas2429 Aldous Huxley was one of the best authors of the English language to ever write. Brave New World is his most famous book and rightly so, but if you’re interested I highly recommend you check out The Perennial Philosophy, his analysis and presentation of what all the world’s religions have in common. It is a brilliant work and I promise it will provide insight into many aspects of life. He was a man who knew how to think, and knew how to communicate wisdom.
What I found quite funny was they didn't even bother de-aging Chip for his video remembrance scene, so somehow he ended up leaving a video before his death but looked older than he did when he erm... died? Sweet.
I am just amazed at the commitment that The Little Platoon took in learning how to hold his breath for the entire four days it took to watch this movie. I hear that the Critical Drinker could only manage to hold his breath for three days, but Little Platoon broke that record. And in the end isn't that the most important thing about art: the sheer act of endurance?
It’s hard to believe this was the bloke that gave us the brilliant Terminator 2, as for the talk of Avatar being aesthetically pleasing, when you visit an art gallery it ain’t just use of colours etc that makes a painting gorgeous, it’s what’s they depicting and the attention to details which makes a painting a masterpiece
Fantastic review. I praise your bravery, forbearance and endurance. Your sacrifice is laudable as thousands of people now don’t have to give the rotten studio a dime in order to know everything there is to know about this ‘event to behold’.
Every time ReefGirl comes out of the water and does the hair-flip thing, i get distracted by her eyes. Initially i thought it was supposed to be some sort of “second eyelid” for swimming, which she retracts upon exiting the water. Nope, turns out it’s just the CGI getting some layering at wrong timing, which just goes away a second after she blinks. Edit: 19:09 was the easiest example to find
... Wait. Goddamn it! I thought the same thing, part of the whole "water people are adapted to their environment", but... No, of course not. Attention to detail? Fuck everything.
This is the true beauty of your work: I don’t agree with everything you said, but you have laid your arguments so elegantly that I have nothing but respect and reverence for you ❤️
2:06:55 - 2:09:28 The track when the mother whale died is actually what took me out of the movie, because I instantly recognized it as the score that played when Hometree fell. Once it registered, I just sighed out of frustration. Yes, it's an emotional scene, but I don't equate the loss of one whale to the loss and forced removal of a hundred or so other people.
it literally wasn't just a whale it was the soul sister of the Queen of the water tribe. that was the catapult the tribe needed to stand behind jake and his family. they realized the humans were willing to destroy EVERYTHING to get to ONE person. these movies are a direct parallel of native tribal history and relationships in the US.
One thing I really dislike about these movies is they can't decide weather or not they are for adult audiences or kids. In a kids movie, a 400 million dollar kids movie, you can have basically no stakes and no danger in the villain because it just needs to look cool and have a good message, for the kids. In a movie to be taken seriously you can't have a military unit, the blue marine's, be so stupid and fucking useless. It ruins the suspense when they can't kill anything and don't do shit besides stand around, look around, and get ganked by the named characters. These are video game NPC's No in reality marines are pretty good at what they do, and our antagonists are supposed to be an elite kill team with the soul task of hunting down a traitor enemy war leader. Why do they suck so bad? The only thing they manage to do is kill a child and it's basically fucking pointless. That plot point only happens to make smurfette go on a rampage. And it wasn't dramatic the blue storm troopers got a single lucky shot after like millions of rounds of ammo are spent throughout the film. The why is because Cameron doesn't know how to write villains that are actually scary or suspenseful, or doesn't care too. There's a reason the alien in Alien is horrifying, there's a reason Homelander is terrifying, there's a reason Darth Vader demands the audience pay attention to every single word he says. Not once did Sully have to deal with the dilemma "these people are literally going to slaughter me and my family and I can't stop them" and have to find a gritty desperate way out to save himself and his children. No the dilema was whalers and the blue marines burning hootches. The resolution to that boring ass conflict was Sully just straight up Jon Snow charging the technologically advanced sky people who have guns, grenade launchers, mechanical crabs, helicopters, and the blue people won with no loses except a child dying for no reason. There was no stakes, no suspense, the action was one sided as fuck and the villain never posed a mental threat, a physical threat, or any other kind of threat. I feel like the thriller genre is dying and film are just refusing to get their hands dirty. PUSS AND BOOTS HAD A BETTER VILLAIN! And that was a kids movie.......
I'm not the only one that was despaired by the scene where they don't even check above and behind their backs, then proceeds to miss all their machine gun shots at close range with the children just leaping from behind a tree to the next.
With respect to your comments on "visual beauty" and "wonderlust," perhaps I'm leaning too much into the subjective dimension of aesthetics, but I would question the assertion that this film is truly visually beautiful. Visually stunning, perhaps, in the same way that being directly shot by a firework is stunning. The highly saturated color palette, the brightness, the constant layers of blues and greens on top of more blues, the extreme visual contrast, the relentless illumination and irridescence, are all exhausting! It gives me a headache, makes me want to look at almost anything else after a while, to the point that the "ugliness" of the colonizers you refer to is a welcome break from the overwhelming stimulation of color being shoved into my eye. Every time there is a real human face I cling to it like a shipwrecked mariner would a piece of driftwood, just to give myself something on which to anchor in a veritable tempest of light. It is almost hellish to me how vibrant everything is, and it detracts in its own way from the worldbuilding because it makes it impossible for me to imagine spending more than a few hours on Pandora before wanting to puke. It is as though some sadistic animator is trying to turn my visual cortex into foie gras. Video games have a similar visual problem with overreliance on particle effects and bloom, and this film reminds of some of the worst offenders of that medium. I've never been very good at drawing visual art, but my college drawing professor had a kind of healthy contempt for computer drawing. Most physical visual art achieves shadow and color by reflection, which means the quantity of light which hits the eye is never greater than the amount which hits the page or object from the principle light source. Color is thus subtractive, and the visual artist achieves their depiction by selectively paring back on the ambient light in which their work is displayed. Even though all film is ultimately back-lit during projection, this factor is the reason that older animated films (like Disney classics, or early Miyazaki/90s anime) have a more muted color palate, as the inked drawings ultimately leverage these subtractive color mechanics when they are photographed for sequencing into the final film. Humans, however, being diurnal creatures, have an instinctive attraction to things which are bright and shiny, where the light comes through the object (think gems or glass) or is almost totally reflected (as off polished metals). Our visual attraction to these sorts of objects means that, in an age of computer graphics, where images can be natively composed of light instead of selectively reflective pigments, using incredibly bright and backlit visuals is a kind of artistic hack, a cheap trick which can dazzle the viewer irrespective of qualities like composition or form. While it isn't bad in itself, I think it plays up the quality of these films as evincing the character of Huxley's "feelies," a kind of equivalent of making a meal with an abundance of sugar or MSG, like eating visual Doritos. Evolutionary, instinctive reactions overpower or subordinate the conscious mind and its critical faculties, and reduce the viewer to the status of a kind of passenger in their own brain. This may not always be an aesthetically desirable experience for the viewer! I long for at least some of the cinematic and visual restraint evinced by films of decades ago, which invite a deeper conscious appreciation of their elements than the superficial character of CG effects which dominate much contemporary filmmaking. You don't have to throw CG out the window entirely, but its use should be more balanced and careful, with greater economy on the use bright colors or rapid movement (as it is my opinion that many CG creatures are too overanimated to convey a sense of realism). I think it is an underappreciated fact that, although writing is often held as the great neglected element of Hollywood filmmaking, I think it has suffered visually in a similar way: ornament and style have superseded craft and substance, and Avatar is a symptom of both forms of artistic bankruptcy.
You have explained better than I can why I think a fully CG movie doesn't often work visually (there's some that do, but I can't name them from the top of my head :'D) Avatar probably would've been better if it took an Enchanted route. Where part of the movie is live action (like when Sully wasn't controlling his Avatar) and some of it is animated (when he's exploring Pandora) Of course since Avatar 2 doesn't switch between Earth and Pandora like the first movie did, we can't really have that here, especially since, when any character is at the base, its usually in the same room as smurf Chip, who by my logic, would be animated, not live action. Its just so hard to look at sometimes
James Horner's familiar theme was also prominently used as far back as Star Trek II in 1982. He had been going to that well for a very long time before Avatar.
@@jesperburns Composers tend to do this in general . Yes, Horner's re-use of themes took that idea to the nth degree, but a huge facet of being a career composer, especially in studio systems where there are several specifications and limitations put on composers, is having a stylistic short hand. Even John Williams has reused several ideas over his long career. It's inevitable.
Spider’s character should’ve been sent back and grown up indoctrinated and craving revenge for his dad or just an unnatural hatred for Na’vi. Returning as some sort of young commanding officer that is literally willing to do anything. Would’ve atleast given the movie stakes if he was part of some sort of squad that came better equipped and “knew” more or less what to expect from combat. If they were willing to kill any of Jake’s kids, it should’ve been the antagonist that did it in a much more drastic way. This movie had no balls.
One of the great sacrifices I made in my life (kidding, but it WAS a big sacrifice) was accepting to watch Avatar with a friend a second time, because he missed our party of friends who went to see it the first time. I spent most of the movie playing with my cellphone and my friend slept through half of it.
My wife & I were saying the same thing. We liked their other world so much we just wanted a movie showing all that and maybe having a few romances or some friendly competition but not all the war imagery. We watch movies to get away from our world of wars and political hatred, so we have to imagine it now on a foreign planet?
I honestly thought I was the only one that hated Avatar, everyone was going on and on and I was like, "huh?" This movie is basically insulting me and things I value...
As someone who watched and enjoyed this movie, I must say, you give this film entirely too much credit to imply that ANYONE noticed the difference between the bother who liked the whale and the other brother with no defining characteristics. I never once even considered any significance between the pair of them, and no, I don't remember either of their names.
1:51:58 just one small detail I wanted to point out, the second scientist who was with smurf scientist and the scientist on the whaling ship are 2 different guys. I understand you mistaking 2 doughy stubbly guys who both wear masks and have maybe 2 lines each for each other though (even if one of them is Vladislav the Poker)
He also apparently didn't bother to go back throughout the movie to figure out why "daughter smurf" could breathe underwater even though it was explicitly stated that the jellyfish that she had placed on herself allowed her to breathe underwater.
If there was just a little nuance in either film, they could be good. Eywa and the avatars have interesting potential that Cameron won’t explore because it means the na’vi would have flaws. Let’s see a na’vi going human, reverse the first film and introduce the human world. Question whether Ewya is good, it seems like a brain washing parasite in a lot of ways. Point out the obvious difference that the na’vi have a goddess in charge of all of their nature keeping everything in balance where as humanity doesn’t. Just something!
Even if they want to present Eywa as 100% good, they could at least show us snippets of Earth being trashed and dirty with children who have to learn about trees through history textbooks. It would enhance the “take care of the environment” messaging they were going for IMO.
I would say that Orwell's warning to the West was spot on. Authoritarianism comes in multiple flavors. We don't have Orwell's "boot stamping on a human face - for ever" style violent suppression yet. However we do have a concerted effort by governments and big tech to restrict speech and behavior. Words are being banned from use and the definition of others are being changed to suit the needs of our social engineering overlords. In places like Canada criminal charges are being filed against those that violate "hate speech" laws. Others are having their careers taken away by bureaucratic bodies created by government to punish those who step out of line. In some of those same countries big tech and government are restricting and controlling the news and information the public is allowed to consume and disseminate. Authoritarians don't necessarily need to be violent. Paternal corporatism is what organizations like the World Economic Forum are selling. They know what is best. All we need to do is bow to their will and accept their version of utopia.
I would say China is Orwell's 1984 and America and the rest of the West is Huxley's Brave new world as Platoon put it. But of course some aspects can be shared.
There’s definitely a more detailed breakdown there, but given my intro was already pushing 20 minutes I didn’t want to extend it in the video. All the above can be found in Brave New World, too. There’s a degree of cross-over, of course. But what you describe is being done, largely, in the name of comfort, peace, security and stability, not out of obeisance to some centralised dictatorial power that crams down by violently suppressive means on a fundamentally unwilling populace. Which, I’d argue, makes it more Huxley’s world than Orwell’s.
@@TheLittlePlatoon At the risk of being rude, I think you are being a little naive. Now, no, I am not about tell you about the Illuminati lizard people, but while the Tumblrina crying in the street about her feelings might be motivated by a desire for peace and comfort, it's not quite the same way when you get up higher in the halls of power. They use those methods because it's easier, because the overtly aggressive attempts are easy to spot and people are still generally unhappy with them, but they absolutely DO resort to the naked aggression when necessary, and the ultimate aim is still to achieve "centralized dictatorial power." The end goal of at least some of them is a comfortable, digital slavery--no one reads or sees or thinks or eats or engages in any activity not approved because it might threaten them, with the "it's for your own good" being merely the excuse. We know this because even when it's proven beyond all argument that some of their actions are BAD for everyone, they do it anyway, they double-down.
Whats the difference between the avatars made in the 1st one and the clone soldier versions? Cause what was the reason Jake was brought to Pandora? His brother was killed. His twin brother who had an avatar made from his DNA. So why did they recruit the paraplegic untrained brother, instead of resurrecting the original brother in his Avatar?
Correction that actually screws up the movie more: it is established in movie 1 that Unobtanium is necessary for the continued function of human life on earth. This, in fact, means that the only reason the humans are here to conquer instead of trade is because Jake didn't do his job in brokering trade deals and mining rights. Humanity is dying, it's his fault, and now that's Pandora's problem.
I dont think they were in dire need of the Unobtanium at the point of the first movie. It made the technology they had at that point possible and more helpful to them, yes, but the point was that humans were already killing the planet by not caring about it and they came to Pandora to use the same practices that was bringkng them close to extinction on Earth. They weren't going to establish peaceful trade networks worh the Na'vi, they established that they don't care. They just wanted info on the Na'vi (to which I don't understand since they would throw that all through the window at the climax) but planned to forcefully take what they were after anyways.
@@blackmist5575 it is established by businessman character that there are 20 billion people on earth and Unobtanium is what's keeping them from economic collapse. That would come with starvation. Even if only .1% of earth starved (which is generously low for a global collapse) more humans would die than an actual full genocide of Naavi (which was never the plan). The statement that continued life on earth need Unobtanium is a bit of an exaggeration. I'm simply stating that the loss of human life is going to be inevitably larger than that of the naavi. Also it is established by Sigourne Weaver that the whole purpose of the very expensive avatar project is to establish good relations with the locals to allow trade. In the end that all goes out the window because the humans NEED the mineral and the Naavi won't trade, with or without avatars. As for earth dying because humans didn't care for it, unless the moral of the story is that preventable mass starvation should be allowed because humans didn't recycle and a few blue people who won't trade shouldn't be forcibly moved, then the whole movie fails to have a moral through line and Jake quite literally fails to prevent the first war with aliens because he was chasing tail.
@@picivyvortac2641 yeah dude. its obvious that their goal is not to save earth but to make money. did you watch the movie and think about it for more than 2 seconds? i love these movies but i wouldnt say they're subtle...
The only things I remember about the first Avatar is the moment I realized I was watching "Space Pocahontas" and being bummed about what happened to Sigourney Weaver's character. This review tells me that 13 years later, both of those things would have remained constant.
Spider is helping the Smurf Marines because he wants his father's approval and love. Remember, in Hollywood lore, kids love their biological parents above everyone else, even if they have been raised by somebody else and have never seen their parents before. This has been also done to death.
What is wild to me is that Spider could, nay SHOULD have been an interesting, complex character, with an obvious but interesting character arc. Spider SHOULD have grown up feeling somewhat alienated from his foster family and foster culture. No matter how hard they tried to make him feel included, he cannot breathe the damn air they breathe, they age different than him, they literally tower over him, they can connect to the lifeforms around them in ways he simply can’t. Even though Jake Sully *was* human, he’s now a giant blue alien, not a human, and becoming more Navi over the years, So Spider should be THRILLED to connect to the humans that show up. It’s a great opportunity to show him, as a naive teenager, being unknowingly manipulated and exploited by his new human “friends” and “family”. Maybe his clone!dad could gaslight him about his foster family. They get the information and skills out of him that they want while creating a silent wedge between him and his foster family. His foster siblings meet him partway through this process, and try to show him that something’s wrong, but that just makes him feel like they’re not happy that he found somewhere to “fit in” so he leaves them. He doubles down on helping his new “friends”. Then, later, he realizes exactly what his new “friends” are really up to, and it’s understandable that he took so long to realize because he was so obviously overjoyed to meet other humans and so taken in by their manipulations because he is, in fact, a teenager. He doesn’t want to believe it. They wouldn’t *murder* other sentient beings, right?? He’s horrified. He protests, he tries to stop them, and they just shrug it off. He’s served his purpose, and now he’s dragged away. Then, he has his Heel-Turn-Face when he manages to find some legitimate way to turn the tide of the fight later on. Maybe the Friendly Scientist Dude helps him escape, or something, and then he has his moment to shine when he rescues his foster brother and they make up. This is, like, soooooo not complicated. It fact it’s so obvious that the fact they managed to screw it up so badly is actually fascinating in a car-crash rubbernecking kind of way.
What bothered me the most about that very long part of the movie where they had to learn how to do all the water stuff, was that this movie actually did some proper worldbuilding by showing that the water people were actually physically adapted to the water (different tail, webbed hands, some sort of second eyelid), but then threw all of that overboard, because by the end of the training sequence the forest people were just as well adapted to the water as the water people. Apparently that's something you can learn in a few days, and it doesn't actually have anything to do with how your body has evolved at all.
Well actually they weren’t as adapted as everyone else since at the end when the ship went down everyone was still struggling to breathe underwater more than a couple minutes. I think what we should be focusing on is the fact that Jake choked the colonel, made sure he passed out and started sinking but the colonel still survived even though he was brought back to land WAY after everyone else. Hell even Jake passed out before anyone was even close to saving them.
This is exactly what i was saying when me and my girlfriend watched it. I was like "Maybe she'll be able to dodge the crab robot with her natural swimming adaptation?" Then she doesn't use any swimming to get out of the way that is using her tail.
Like Rae learning to be the best Jedi ever with just a few weeks of training. Building a character's abilities at the expense of storyline cohesivity is just plain boring, and the audience is beginning to understand that we can demand more of these major studios.
This movie is really the epitome of frustratingly wasted potential.
True. They should have improved to the point they were still crappy at staying underwater long.
Once they were shown the Scuba jellyfish the obvious question is, "Why don't they bring these with them every time? They allow any of the people to swim underwater and breath through the magic scuba jellyfish that somehow get oxygen to your lungs without penetrating your lungs. You can stay underwater indefinitely with them.
Even the whales are noble savage hypocrites: "we dont Kill, you killed, you are an outcast". Social animals are meant to be in packs. One of them being alone is not only cruel; is a death sentence! (If not for plot armor)
PS glad you bringed up the defensless unarmed humans being killed by hippie smurf Ripley
To be fair, it wasn't "you killed, you are an outcast!", but rather "your action caused many more deaths then there would be if you had done nothing, so you are an outcast".
But it's still the mantra of "fighting back makes us suffer more, so we'd rather let ourselves get hunted down slowly in stead."
The whales are basically using Batman ideology, which of course works prefectly for Batman, look how good is he at protecting Gotham etc.
*picture of mass graves caused by Joker shenanigans, which whom Batman could kill several times and nobody would mind*
@@Bongyes And I thought I was the only one who was driven nuts by that. I enjoy Batman as a character, but Gotham is a city of Redshirts, sacrificed on the altar of 'principle'.
@@givmi_more_w9251 not sure what a redshirt is (or do you refer of those constsntly dying red shited dudes in Star Trek?) But yeah morals.of Batman make no sense considering Jokers and others killcount.
Now if Joker was like doing... Tax evasion then sure, dont kill him, but he does way more than that. Repeatedly. Without remorse or shred of hesitation. He should be dead across multitude of mutliverses immidietaly
@@Bongyes Tax evasion is of course the one thing he refuses to do.
The thing that bothered me the most is that nobody acknowledged the fact that the girl started using godlike powers at the end. Like wtf, it should be the most incredible action ever performed in the history of pandora and nobody bats an eye
Well, why would they? Clearly the Planet/Ecosystem, that they know is aware and consider their Diety, is intervening using her as an Avatar. Sure, they don't see it on that scale every day, but when you believe every single drop of rain/storm/earthquake/wave is an act of your deity, it's kind of every day, ya know?
I'm being factious there, because honestly that's just... really badly done and I absolutely agree with you.
Accept the two Metkayina kids were visibly shocked and scared when she destroyed the sub...
@@HpArtcraft yeah, ok. But I still feel someone should have brought it up after the battle. Like I know that It will happen in the sequel but still, I wasn't satisfied😂
@@randomusername3873 her powers lead to her having a seizure underwater, they're not letting her openly explore them for a reason.
its a 5 part movie series
probably a teaser to be explored later
43:40 The best part about this? The first Avatar film had a deleted scene about how the humans needed to mine the metal to save Earth from the envionmental conseqences of their actions, but they cut it to make sure there wasn't any moral ambiguity in the film.
i'm glad they did. in a world of virtue signaling justifying raping another world for our benefit should nit be tolerated especially since it was our own fault our planet was dying
@@mercynamikoye9084Ah, yes, let's just look at this from a broad species perspective and ignore the fact that it's not at all the children of the people who don't deserve to die horribly on a dying planet just because the sins of their forefathers.
Get off your high horse. You're doing plenty of virtue signaling yourself, you sanctimonious ass.
It's also mentioned at the end of the first film, when all of the humans are being kicked off of Pandora, Sully tells them to "go back to your dying world."
@@mercynamikoye9084 I mean... the movie wouldn't have had this point of view, even with the scene in it. The scene would have added something. It wouldn't have changed the movies opinion, that the humans were doing something very wrong. It would have instead added some background, something to think about for a second. It would have, at the very least, shown the potential of not having the movie be Black and white, good and evil, but of having depth, ambiguity. Are the humans here really only evil? Or do they think of themselves as having good intentions? What makes a human good? Having good intentions or having whatever intentions but with a good outcome?
Instead both movies are "This is pure evil and this is pure good" which just doesnt exist and in my opinion, is very dangerous
@@mercynamikoye9084all for mankind,theres no mercy or pity,our survival comes first no matter what,be it by negotiation or total war to extiction
Imagine Jake and Neytiri silently agreeing to abandon the colony but never really talking about it and Jake lying that they would eventually return. Letting it fester till it gets the both of them by the end and boom. Drama.
Imagine Spider luring Quaritch 2.0 and gang into pairing with the dragon birdies in hopes to get them killed - he lies and does get a few of them hurt bad or killed but - Quaritch manages to subjugate one bird and boom. Drama.
Imagine the kids actually being smart and not to mention brave, where they hatch a plot to damage Quaritch's ship. Succeeding but eventually getting caught and actually putting up a fight permanently scarring the bad guy. Quaritch retailiates and kills a kid brutally, resulting in all out rage filled war and boom. Drama.
Imagine spider actually saves the day by the end but it isn't seen that way by the family and Neytiri especially blames him for everything that's gone wrong. Misunderstood kid who now is in serious danger of his own Mother hating him. Actually, screw this hateful neglectful mom figure Neytiri. She should've loved this kid just as her own from the beginning. Would've added more gravitas by the end with the misunderstanding.
Imagine the story ends but it leads to a lot of the sea people also being dead. And Jake etc. heading home to only find that the Na'avi were also nearly wiped out but a lot of the young ones were taken away. IMAGINE. If instead of the Whale golden goop that gave life extension it was actually the natives of Pandora and their blood that is found to be capable of long life. Have a scientist group from the Humans explore Pandora to figure this out while Jake's story is going on.
IMAGINE. That the end of part 2 leads to Jake and Co. watching the skies as multiple ships take off from all over Pandora, carrying infants and younglings from across multiple tribes. Major Stakes. Angry Sully. And their decision to take the War to them. All or Nothing. Fade to Black.
My ideas are probably basic af but imagine if it were anything but what we got. Sigh. So many narrative threads to explore and close in the next 1-2 films. I hope it ends with Avatar 3 but it wont. lol
I’m pretty sure every single one of these would have dramatically improved the film.
I hope you're using that ability to flush out stories for your own creations because if you get something off the ground, I would read/watch/or listen to it.
@@TheLittlePlatoon Why thank you! It just surprises me sometimes how people will millions of dollars worth of talent can't put things together like they once used to 😅 If only they bothered to explore other media for their own inspirations. Nah. Stick to our tired shlock cus arrogance
@@Drifter2025 Eons ago I wrote one half of a script for a story that had hints of Bourne and Hannah (2011) all of it a romance laid against a backdrop of family and revenge. But like everything else it fell by the wayside and I never bothered to pick it up again 😅 maybe I should just give it a go. Thank you! 🤗
@@fitterniti i think hollywood is clinging to the old farts that made classic movies and instead of them retiring they don't ever fuck off, i think people should make room for the next generation writers that use their own creativity and aren't brainwashed by media and politics or corrupted by money and are only fueled by their passions when something like that happens then we will get golden movies again but until then were in the shitshow movie era people
"Because James Cameron wants it to happen" has been all the reason James Cameron has needed for about 30 years now.
Yes.
Beautiful pointless nonsense is like.... the whole point..
and its served him well
...which makes him the most average yank imaginable. That whole country is just me, me, me, me.
You don't even like T2?
James Horner's real work for Avatar, written with the help of a musical anthropologist, was rejetced by Cameron for sounding too alien when it was what he had asked Horner for. The only part that made it into the film was the Naavi lament after their home is destroyed. So they hacked something together that Cameron approved of. As it was his last work before he died it was a crimnal way to treat him. I'd love to hear the real Avatar soundtrack.
Cameron always sounds like an arrogant prick. He even clowns on superhero films when some of them are way better than his films.
Sideways video on that is excellent
@@way-out Yes, that's how I found out about it! I was so disappointed to hear about the lost potential, I'd love to listen to the original concept of it all.
@falcon_by_the_lake Apparently he did the same thing on their first work together "Aliens". Horner had composed music for the film but Cameron kept saying it "didn't fit the scenes" so Cameron threatened to fire Horner and replace him with "somebody who can get the job done fast". Horner reportedly replied:"If you do may I stay for free and learn from this composer for I've never heard of anybody who can compose a good score in a week."
Cameron let him stay and told him to "improvise". And this is why the score of Aliens contains a lot of "butchered" work from other films Horner had scored before.
It would appear nothing much had changed after 35 odd years.
Horner's last work was actually _The Magnificent Seven_ (2016), not _Avatar_ .
If James Cameron wrote Star Wars:
Darth: "Luke, join me, and we can rule together."
Luke: "Ok."
Darth: "Now, help me find and eliminate the rebellion."
Luke: "Ok."
Darth: "We're also building a second Death Star."
Luke: "Ok."
Second Death Star fires laser...
Luke: "No!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Speaking of music, there is a music channel called Sideways, he made a video titled "Why Avatar has the Most Ironic Soundtrack of All Time".
Basically, during the production of the first movie, they figured out how alien instruments would be, based on the different anatomy of the Na'vi. They actually made alien music!
Then decided to not use it because it sounded weird...
How, at all, would the instruments be different based on their anatomy? They're tall blue humans with tails, it's not like they have extra hands or breathing holes or anything
@@dilboo They don't have extra, they have less. The Na'vi only have 3 fingers on their hand. The thumb is usually used to support flute type instruments, which only leaves them 6 fingers to use compared to the 8 of humans.
Go watch Sideways' video, he explains everything and more much better than I can here.
@@0Defensor0 ah, that makes sense! Didn't even think about that
@@0Defensor0 I watch sideways I think it's channels fantastic just wish there was more content on it.
@@0Defensor0 Yes, the Horner-bashing in this video is just uncalled for. :-(
The two scenes that were the most idiotic from this movie were the Doctors flying in. That scene was literally only for plot movement, but because the doctors were too stupid to think “Oh maybe the baddies can track us.”
Scene two: WHERE THE F DID ALL SEA SMURFS GO HALFWAY THROUGH THE FINAL FIGHT?!?!?!
My dude, his daughter had a seizure and was possibly going to die. She needed medical assistance, that's worth the potential of maybe being tracked.
As for the Metkayina not being around at the end of the fight, of course they arent going to stick around to help the few stragglers still there that caused all of this. It's perfectly logical. Though the real world reason is because James Cameron wanted to focus on the Sully family and thought the others would detract from it.
@@Sivanot
*''My dude, his daughter had a seizure and was possibly going to die. She needed medical assistance, that's worth the potential of maybe being tracked''*
ronal was literally in walking distance and yet some how, some why she entered the tent after those scientists. then healed kiri in a minute.
*''As for the Metkayina not being around at the end of the fight, of course they arent going to stick around to help the few stragglers still there that caused all of this. It's perfectly logical.''*
they werent there just for helping sully's family. it was pretty clear that they were eager to fight back against the sky people after what they did their whales. on top of that they captured tonowari's children. yet they disappeared before they secured the kids.
*''Though the real world reason is because James Cameron wanted to focus on the Sully family and thought the others would detract from it.''*
i've heard he cutted the original script for the massive amount of gun usage. either way its a stupid ass reasons. he literally sabotaged his own writing.
@@barisbal7782 Ronal was clearly gathering what she needed to help as Tsahik in the time it took to scientists to fly over. Though I agree it's unlikely that she would have gotten there after, it really doesn't matter.
I do agree that the Metkayina vanishing at the end was a mistake that could have fairly easily had in-story reasoning written in. Though I still thoroughly enjoyed how it turned out in the end.
@@Sivanot the things she gathered were something she can carry in her arms. how come it took for her to gather them long enough for the scientists across the ocean and still enter the tent before her? sorry, not believable
*''Though I still thoroughly enjoyed how it turned out in the end.''*
thats fair. i enjoyed the movie as well. but the bad scenes are still there with little to no excuse
@@barisbal7782 I literally said that it was unlikely for the scientists to have beaten her there. But it doesnt really matter, it 'not being believable' isn't exactly damaging to the narrative in any way.
"Family is like wet bread... It's everywhere."
-Bilbo Baggins
"Family"
- Fast and Furious guy
@@manolgeorgiev9664 "MMmmm...Bread"
-Furious and Fat
Chaseface is triggered
Also, sand.
1:03:18 This bit was just hilarious to me.
"Your spawn has the blood of demons!"
"No you don't understand, I was off the sky people (demons) but I was transplanted into this body (demonic possession) and I procreated with one of your own (unholy union) and these are my children (demonspawn)!"
He basically repeated their objection to his existence and expects a different outcome. They think you are a demon and they are primitive savages to who you explain that no in fact you used to be a demon but then you possessed this body and procreated with it.
When Rey Skywalker yelled "the sea is always right!" I had to run in my room to deal with the excitement
Brainless adlib meme formats are the ______!
I squeezed so hard I peed myself. Stunning and brave!
Ain’t it dead yet???
Rey fucking skywalker
The Sea Is Always Trite!
I love that Dreamworks basically said “idgaf about your cinematic event” and put out an earth shatteringly good story about a talking cat right alongside Avatar that held its own in box office and became an instant classic XD
Edit (several months later): Ok perhaps "Earth Shattering" was a bit much lol, but I stand by "Instant Classic". I was still high on the hype of finding a movie that I actually adored and showed multiple people when I wrote this haha. I just really love Final Wish, and I think its the most creative endeavor I've seen in the box office in a long time, and my god, the animation style and score suit the story so perfectly!
For context, my favorite film of all time is The Princess Bride. I've grown up with it, and love both the movie and the book so much I've been writing AU's and FanFics around it since Middle School. And its not just the sweet and silly Fractured Fairy Tale surface story - Its the deeper themes of life being unfair, and love being the thing that makes it worth living for that are echoed throughout it in all of the main cast in different ways. Never in my life have I seen a family movie take on something similar and execute it almost Flawlessly, until Final Wish. You already know what I mean by now. Its Silly, beautiful, and action packed on the surface. It has characters with varying levels of complexity, yet their stories all twine together beautifully. It has nuanced and tactfully handled themes of mortality, betrayal, found family, love, friendship, and trust, AND it doesn't shove any of this into the audience's face. To me, This is on-par with The Princess Bride, and (I can't believe I'm saying this) does many things even better from a art and storytelling perspective. It's a kid's movie about cute fuzzy animals and wishing stars. And I sincerely see it becoming a generational classic the same way my favorite movie in the world is.
Puss in boot: the last wish: hold my beer.
On point
Fr tho
Alright Puss is good but not "earth shattering". Let's not get carried away.
@@portalmanHUNit was to me. It legitimately made me think and ponder about my own mortality, confronting my fears, and gaining an appreciation for what I have right now. Its pure kino. Suit yourself
For me it was one big family drama with the kids constantly getting themselves in trouble at the cost of everyone else...
Its like they inherited all the childish human qualities they could from Jake and he failed to counter that as a parent.
Except it was shit
This!! I was SO annoyed to see the kids get themselves in danger all the time 💀🤦🏼♀️
@@juliii_g i totally agree on this but an additional point I would like to add on this is watching from a non-western culture its so annoying to see kids do this constantly and is mostly an American problem or rather a western world problem. We constantly shout at our screens for years as to why American culture is so obsessed with kids getting themselves in trouble despite legitimate warnings
I feel like the movie could have been an "Alien wonders of the world" style movie, where they just imagine how an alien World could look like. Then, in 3 years, you would see the footage being played on huge TVs in an Electronic store that wants to show how great the TVs look. That would have made much more sense than the stupid, less than half assed story, they tried to make
I hate James Cameron. I stopped supporting him and Neteyam. He loves to defeat Neteyam and Na'vi in his evil films. He is crazy. Stop supporting Avatar. I'd rather support Russia, and I do love Russia.
My goodness, this video is longer than the movie itself. That’s honestly incredible.
He went full Mauler on this one...
EFAP: "Hold my beer"
And yet, for all its genius, he still makes the same basic mistake as every other reviewer: he blames the movie's short comings on incompleteness, unbelievable. How can someone who is possibly intelligent simultaneously be so ignorant? These are PROFESIONALS, they know what they are doing. Just like ESG scores and Black Rock, you think a monstrosity evil like Black Rock cares about equality and justice, NO, this is about control. Similarly, James Cameron knows what he is doing, your metrics are WRONG, this is not about making a "good movie", it is about programming the viewer, OMG, welcome to the 20th Century. This is about demonizing the West, making them hate themselves, so they accept the coming Communist agenda. Implanting guilt into the western consciousness. You may tell yourself I am way off base, but even those who live deep within denial, can only remain blissfully ignorant for so long.
@@tomt4822wut😅
So, you are saying that people like Cameron cannot, for any reason, be bad at what he is doing? "The director has a vision", and so, the movie shouldn't be good as long as the message is sent?
My guy, there is an environmentalist movie that is so well done that almost everyone loves it to the core: Wall-E. That movie is "complete", if you will. Cameron could have made a movie that brainwashes the population into accepting communism if it was well-made. But he didn't. He didn't know what he was doing: a billion-dollar movie.
And actually, you are wrong. Platoon said it many times: "this is what Cameron wants, so this is what Cameron gets", so he is admitting that Jamie-boy knows what he does, speading an environmentalist message, but he sacrifices the quality of the movie as a result. Omitting many potential good scenes and adding pretty bloat.
But also, what is the essayist flaw in saying that the people in charge don't know what they are doing? Why is it a flaw? What makes it a flaw?
Because the intention is clear, however, as they make a movie or whatever, they stumble upon it so hard and make a bad product. So no, you are wrong. Directors and writers may not know what they are doing, they might know why they are doing it, or what for; they want to send a message, but don't know how to make a movie that conveys it properly.
That is what you should understand.
I remember viewing the first avatar and finding it ironic to be preached at about environmental issues by a multinational conglomerate.
Little did I know, 'twas but a sign of things to come.
"How dare you?!"
It’s not like anyone other than a multinational conglomerate would have the money to put out such a movie or anything…
@@WraithLK One of my favorite horror is Shed (2019) made for $25,000 and honest the effects look better and it's camera effects are fun.
Bahh bahh
@@RanMouri82 Did you see her posing for photos in Germany lmao?
'twas - because 'twas the i in _it_ that was elided (and also 'cause a glottal stop in between the _t_ and _w_ would be weird)
I just noticed by seeing the clip on repeat: didn't they tell us that they had to use the avatars to explore Pandora because this planet very ecosystem was too dangerous for a human? And by that they meant not only the air being toxic, but the whole environment: plants were bigger and moved, animals were bigger and more vicious. The Na'vi were supposed to have evolved to adapt to these harsh conditions. They were larger and their limbs were longer to be accomodate for the bigger distances and sizes of the world they live in.
Yet, we see Spider jumping around the floating isles vines like it's nothing. Him being raised in Pandora should not be enough for him not having serious physical difficulties living there.
I mean the army guys don't just white phosphorus the tree as there opening move so what do you expect seriously that tree holds the planets ecosystem together and you can't breath on it anyway so why not just burn it?
The point of avatars was to try and be more acceptable to the natives first and foremost
Pandora does release an immunologic response to human threats, yes. However, given the navi are connected to it and Pandora being a huge network, I wonder if Pandora is able to recognize some human beings not as threats but rather allies. Like when Jake first arrived and got lost in the jungle and the woodsprites went to "greet" him. It would seem Pandora has some way of discriminating humans from threat to ally maybe?
,,zxxdh3
I mean clearly it's not flawless movement given that him being unable to keep up with the others is what got him caught in the first place, also he grew up on Pandora, he's not a full grown human trying to adapt to a new environment.
Every scene from the villain's pov I couldn't help but wonder "okay, but what if they didn't do evil things?" "What if they incentivized the neighboring sea-na'vi to rat out Sully by giving them resources?" "Why don't they try to establish trade relations and alliances with certain na'vi tribes, like we did in America?" "Why are there literally zero na'vi that are interested in superior human technology?" Even evil people can be nice purely for selfish reasons, killing civilians does nothing to help them. The writing throughout this 3 hours of CGI sludge is downright braindead. Beyond the logical plot conveniences, I just find it hilariously convenient how the humans are both evil enough and incompetent enough to justify mercilessly slaughtering them in every interaction.
I bet they feel like they have to make the message as simplistic as possible exactly because of the historical context it's derived from. Because the second they add a bit of nuance to their story, people will start to realize the nuance of colonization. Some people suffer, cultures get erased; but some benefit from it, even cheer on colonization of their own people. The French tended to have had good relations with American tribes. I know Pandora has this cultish nature-worship that never fails them, but nature in our world is pretty dang brutal. I want to see the scene where a na'vi gets stung to death by alien hornets or a parasitic brain mold causes one to go insane. Yes, humans destroy nature and the planet, but it's for the sake of knowing that we no longer are at its mercy. We build houses, farms, hospitals, things that na'vi would certainly want. And let's not forget how twisted cultural and religious practices can get when you live in a primitive society. Like in the book "Things Fall Apart" you have Africans that join European colonizers just to escape human sacrifice. This movie's nothing but propaganda.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see something like that pop up in the third film. But yeah, it’s weird (and shallow) that nothing like it has occurred already. The very obvious thing is for the humans to eventually realise that the only way to survive on Pandora is to be a Navi, and the only way to really be a Navi is to transfer your consciousness via a spirit tree, so eventually they’ll bend the knee and blend into nature and live happily ever after.
Precisely. They won't add any kind of balance or nuance to the overarching themes of these films because then audiences would have to consider that maybe colonization isn't the pinnacle of evil and the descendants of colonizers aren't inherently evil demons that need to repent.
And of course, in real life, the native tribes of the Americas ranged from pacifistic to brutal totalitarians, almost to the point of genocide. Imagine if the next tribe of Navi are basically Aztecs. Of course, that either won't happen, or it will superficially, but they'll turn good after a good cry, or some kind of cheesy reveal that they were evil really only because 1 guy at the top was evil, and they'll abandon their entire way of life as soon as he is cast down.
Cameron sees humans as generally bad (all the bad ones are white, you'll notice) and the blue people generally, almost entirely good. There are no traitors or greedy ones.
Because that would hit too close to reality than Hollywood likes to get to actual Native America history.
Natives in North America fought each other to dominate the beaver skin trade with Europeans.
Why?
To procure more more European good, mostly firearms and ammunition so they could further dominate other tribes.
Native American history is far bloodier than many would like to admit.
I already forgot I watched the movie. But I remember the best part where Jack leaves his people to not endanger them and comes to the water people to endanger them.
AHHAHAHHA, ++++
Movie so bad op already forgot the name of the furry protagonist jake sully
Some people see films for the story, some for the spectacle. Most can't tell the difference. That's why Avatar is so successful.
That's why my dad enjoyed Multiverse of Madness, I couldn't handle the character assassination, he loved the visuals.
or, maybe they are both valuable but not dependent
Society is simply getting less sophisticated and easier to trick
@@koopa5504bro people ran away from a two dimensional train on a canvas 120 years ago, I think we’re alright
@@tobylerone4285 brain of a mouse
Another issue you missed ( or I missed you mentioning it) was that in Avatar they couldn't upload someone's brain into an avatar, they operated them like a biological drones from their normal bodies, so not only did Chip not download his brain in the OG, they expressly lacked the tech to do it. Jake only managed it with the help of their Gaia knockoff.
I think the slight difference (which still causes all manner of problems) is that, in this case, Smurf Chip only has OG Chip’s memories, not his consciousness. He’s not the same person… except where the plot needs him to be the same person. But it means he’s untethered to a human host - not really an Avatar at all.
@The Little Platoon If they could do that then they could've done that for Sigourney Weaver in the OG and not bothered with the spirit tree upload BS, I don't remember that ever being discussed as an option.
Edit: of course I saw the movie once in its initial theater run, so my memory is a bit fuzzy
Why is it so hard to understand that the RDA is very capable of keeping their projects secret? It raises the stakes. Not to mention Quaritch foreshadowed the Recoms that a lot seem to miss; "A Recom Gyrene in an Avatar body.. that's a potent mix."
I don't understand why they didn't upload Jake's dead brother's brain into an avatar then? Wouldn't it be better to copy the brain of a scientist for whom an alien meat body has already been grown, and who knows everything about Pandora, instead of dragging his uneducated brother to the project? Is the brain of some stupid military man more valuable than the brain of a scientist, since no one thought of making copies of it just in case, while he was alive? What if he didn't have a convenient twin brother?
@@WalkingJellyfish Because at the time Jake entered, they didn't have the secret Recom project. Or maybe they did, but the point of the stakes is that the RDA is shady as hell. That's safe to assume. The amount of braindead assumptions in this comment section is astounding. Everything else you just wrote is gibberish because it keeps riding the same misjudged points.
I loved how at the end of Avatar, Jake Sully says about staying and fighting before the final battle. And then he runs away at the start of this film. And then after winning that battle he says that he now realises that he must stay and fight. Amazing character development 20/10.
Your forgot to mention in the first film jake sully don't have kids while in the second film he is a father have a family he thinks that by hiding he can protect his kids
@@ANONYMOUS-tg2tq Terrible writing. He's meant to be a strong leader. Instead he runs away scared and leaves all the other millions of women and children in danger instead. Awful.
@@thebatman4279 yes and he thinks by doing so he can protect his kids but no he was wrong this decision is not good running away is never the solution there is difference between terrible writing and chracter making terrible mistakes in real life people make mistakes most people think emotionally not rationally
@@thebatman4279 at that time he have nothing to lose . He runs away not because he is afraid of dying he was afraid of his children getting killed
@@ANONYMOUS-tg2tq I see your point, but I’d argue that’s an odd conclusion to come to immediately after his oldest son is killed in the exact battle he chose to stay and fight
I'm sorry but I have to correct you: some NPCs in Morrowind would refuse speaking about something with you if they didn't like you or if you belonged to an enemy faction, which means Morrowind NPCs have more autonomy and consistency within universe than Spider througout this film.
When I write my fanfics about a romance with blue alien race that is the best at everything people say I'm cringe.
When Cameron does it, its a masterpiece.
One of THE most overrated, empty, key-jangling movie series in the history of our planet. Give the xenos hell Platoon!
By the glorious name of the God-Emperor let none survive
I loved the first one, but I was also 10. Overall the graphics, the spirituality, I found it beautiful. This second one was.... meh
I honestly hope this wins Best Picture..... And thus ends any argument now and forever as to whether this truly is the twilight of the American movie industry
this movie is very pretty crap. There is nothing redeemable, you are dumber for having seen it, but it's superficially pretty
though in truth the art direction is so over saturated and repetitive that even the pretty loses any impact half way through....
For a long time, I felt like I was the only person who disliked Avatar and thought it was absolutely overrated. Everyone I asked liked it, and my family treats it like some mindblowing message about colonialism, capitalism, and destruction of the environment. Like as if this is the first movie bold enough to tell such a message. And I'm always like, "Guys, this is just Dances With Wolves in Space. It's a lazy rip-off!" It feels so bizarre how hypnotized they are by it just because it looks pretty. When I watched the first movie in cinema, I felt nothing except for the headache. And I thought something was wrong with me because I wasn't blown away
Tell me more about your blue mistress.
The two Avatar movies so far are actually a very good lesson for worldbuilders, fantasy and sci-fi:
No matter how dense and supposedly interesting your worldbuilding is, if you're writing a story in your world, plot and characters have to be top priority. I don't doubt that a lot of work and care was put into designing the biology, culture, language, and so on. I actually find it cool that what is normally a niche hobby has been put on the big screen. The problem is, it seems that for both movies, the worldbuilding was the only thing they cared about.
To draw a comparison to Tolkien, the reason why anyone cares about The Silmarillion and the hundreds upon hundreds of pages about the history of Middle Earth is because people liked the LOTR books.
Yall do realize that not all media needs to be high art, intense intellectual and to your preferences right? I laughed, I cried, and look forward to the next 5 or whatever. Go read Dune (again) instead of expecting a director who focuses on aesthetic .. to not do that
@@nailinthefashion Because Avatar 1 and 2 are an example of a pretty world with no esence. Both movies are full of cliches. If you accept that movies like something "fine" then that shows how bad cinema has fallen.
@@chrisjfhelep5095 it isn't about the presence of tropes, all movies have them, it is the execution. The Kiri scenes made me weep because of what was said and left to the imagination. Thank God my standards aren't as meticulous as others, or I wouldn't be nearly as happy. You're right. What are your favourite films?
@@nailinthefashion My favorite Films are: Mad Max: Fury Road, The New triology of Planet of The Apes, All Quiet in Western Front, Alien 1 and 2, Judge Dredd from 2012, and others.
All those have tropes and like You said, it's all about the execution. I really disliked Avatar 2 because the movie basically believes that I'm so dump to see a complex history about morals that it just shows an argument about "Good boys vs Evil Boys". Hell, in the movie is mentioned that "Humanity wants Pandora like its new home" but does not develope that concept, it is forgotten five minutes later, instead we spend almost three hours of adolescent drama and eco-friendly propaganda.
@@chrisjfhelep5095 everything makes more sense now, thanks, take care!
"We're going to invade a whole planet, so we'll need to send at least five generals on staff, with one in charge."
"Or just one colonel."
"No, this is a whole planet, with multiple continents, multiple life forms, each possibly requiring a separate invasion force, each headed by a general officer, then a staff above them, directed by a group of generals with decades of experience."
"Or just one colonel."
This was just hilarous :D
At first we saw that more than one ship came to Pandora...and where the heck did the people, who were on them, disappear? And yeah, no leader was showed in the movie other than our single colonel.
It seemed like a big army arrived, what I would have expected if they want to conquer a damn planet.
It seemed that the humams had some kind of new settlement by the sea - where the tulkun-hunting ship went out - what were the people doing there? Didn't they want to win against the na'vis?
ONE ship's crew was all we got as the biiig human force...
Tough they would have still won -just as it seemed to happen in the first movie - if the outcast Tulkun does not save Jake and his little entourage's life. Just how it happened before this.
The locals' plan : attack the humans - who have superior weapons and armor(tough now a damn na'vi arrow can pierce through the windows for some reason)- with wooden arrows and riding on fishes! We have a real chance to win!
~sorry about my long rant
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOGIC
Personally that is one major thing that buged me on this one.
The first movie kind of had its reasons as first expedition force to be smaler,, and filled with scientists to map and discover the planet. While prepairing an area for more forces to follow wich gave the aclimated natives an edge to turn the battle with the help of the entity residong within all life on it.
Like sure its kinda corny but makes sense. Now that they sent some of them back who could fully prepair the next force and clarify what extend awaits, and they wven displayed rhe larger prepaired force arrive it makes it unbelivably dumb they ONLY send out one colonel and 4 avatars plus what looks like non militaristic whalers with no additional backup when one ir two bstches of aircraft could wipe out the entire final battle with no issues.
Without setting any spoiler those that saw it know.
Now part one had some themes of enviormental care, and how humankimds greed killed earth. Forcong them to venture out and pillage/conquer planets like some Aliens were depictef in the past. Some themes of a crippled war veteran left to rot suddenly being able to run again among some more messages to ponder about. While it followed a somewhat consistant storyline start to finish.
Wich explains the first movies huge success.
This swcond installment comepletely felt mixed and randomized with no real logic behind the plot. All being extremely convinoent and in many ways just boring.
The whole enviormental shift only done because they didn't want to reuse the forrest asthetic.
Overalö the second one felt more like a visualy pleasing of a fanfic then an actual continuatiom of the first part.
@@TrafalgarWaterDLaw-dl5cm in the first movie, NO ONE mentioned, ever, that the Earth is dying. All was spoken about is the mysterious unobtanium, that's why the humans were here! Not a word about colonization, making place to humanity from Earth.
Oh and about that entity...why did it decide to help? Before that it did not care about this genocide, but now that one human begged for help, it comes in like Superman and saves the day?
In the second movie, this Earth-is-dying came out of nowhere. Before that, nothing about this "they greed killed the Earth".
The first movie was clearly a bad copie of the Dance with the wolves. Just everybody is painted as black/white here. The natives are pure and good, the humans are greedy and evil.
This one I can believe. Its a colonial force, not a full planetary invasion. In the first movie it was - if memory serves - essentially a corporation establishing a mining colony for the unobtanium and then having some forces to defend the mining operation/deal with the natives in the one particular area. It wasnt the full might of earths military coming down to oppress the smurfs.
The Critical Drinker, I'm my opinion , had the best take on Avatar when he called it "Pochahatas Dances with Aliens in Ferngully whilst Saving Private Ryan from 9/11".
Nailed it
Dances with smurfs
Most pholk seem to ignore the influence of Ferngully, but you don't have to look too hard to see the parallels, "shot" by shot.
I remember leaving the theater just asking my siblings who died at the end then having a thirty minute argument about who had a relationship with a girl and who had a relationship with a whale
And both are the same kid 😁
did he have a relationship with the girl? because they didn't seem like they did have a relationship? 😅
@@DangerZone200 well I forgot the words love interest while writing it so I just filled in the blank as best I could lol
@@DangerZone200no but after watching movies for a while you tend to be able to sniff out this kind of stuff pretty quickly. They obviously have a thing for one another and it’s going to be explored in later movies.
I knew it was the older brother because of the haircuts, but I honestly thought the older brother was having scenes with the chief's daughter and apparently he wasn't?? I legit thought there would be a conflict between the brothers for the girl but apparently all her scenes were with the younger brother? I even predicted the older one would die BECAUSE the younger one got to vibe w her about whales, and, well, you gotta free her up for the one with the most parental issues that will need resolving in the future...
I watched the movie yesterday with my sister on her TV (I saw it in theaters) and after an hour she put her hands in the air and said WHEENNN DOES ANNYTHINGG HAAPPPEEEENN 😂
tell her to stop being on tiktok too much cuz her attention span is fuvked lmao
I checked my watch in the theater when they finally got to the water and it was over an hour before the movie subtitled "the way of water" actually found its way to the goddamn water.
I can watch 3 hours of you reacting but I can't watch a 30 minute video on my course work. Truly mind blowing
Procrastination is a wonderful thing!
@@TheLittlePlatoon pressure makes diamonds :)
Because you have a simple mind😊
This video won’t make you any smarter.
@@overdramaticgoddess9696Keep it down will ya?
@@BootySweat4491 hey hey hey, the person already admits their intentions with their username, so let them have their fun.
I have never watched these movies. I was actually more fascinated by the “Avatar Syndrome”, where people wanted to be in that world. In my head canon, I thought the films were about the characters escaping, like 100% leaving everything behind, but the same conflicts still happen regardless - I was imagining a Lord of the Flies situation.
I thought the “Avatar Syndrome” was a plot point, where characters used this new world to shed their humanity, but didn’t realize the negative shit they brought with them.
And…now I realize it was nothing but fancy effects.
The original "Avatar" portrays an idealised world where humanoids live in harmony with nature.
While many people - like The Little Platoon - seem unaffected by this, in others - like myself - it feeds an inate primal yearning towards an anarcho-primitivist lifestyle... that makes watching this movie somewhat of a spiritual experience.
For years, I watched it anually on my birthday, usually after taking some MDMA (sometimes assisted with a psychedelic), as some sort of shamanic ritual.
The second movie still suck, though.
@@OutOfTheBoxThinkerHonestly, if anything, that kind of makes me wish they stripped all the violence and pillaging from the first movie and just left it for the second, going for the triple threat of them leaving time to build up for an explosive battle between races, making that battle in the second movie less directly derivative, and letting the first movie just fully focus on the nature of this new world and the fantasy of becoming a part of it
Then that way, it gives us two movies to really connect with this world like Jake did before letting us see it be torn down by people too greedy to see it for what it is
When the only thing people could say about The Way of Water was how much money it was making. But you heard nothing significant about the story, no quotable dialogue that wasn't in the trailer, no groundbreaking tales about the storytelling and no one really talking about the movie in and of itself... you realize how the ONLY thing it had going for it was special effects and the money it made. But that's all. It spoke volumes about what the movie actually had to offer.
That’s still the case. Scroll through this comment section and you find the $ referenced in almost every attempted defence of the film. (I address the point in the video, not that they’d know, as they’re not the type to watch before commenting.)
Even the Disney Starwars trilogy had quotable moments. Bad moments, but memorable still the same.
@@fallenoak4560 It speaks volumes that the Way of Water doesn't even have a "They fly now!?"
Majority of people are gasping and grasping at straws to stay relevant with the "current thing" - if you tell them something made some money, or something is written in the media to be nice-looking, they will burn they money just out of the despair to not miss out on something...
Wasn't it the same way for the first film?
Man that Trex roar from JPark is absolutely iconic. Such a powerful noise.
For family
They ruined the roar in Jurassic World. They cut it off early right at the credits, instead of just fading to black and letting it run out fully. Such a simple, dumb mistake.
It’s the Wilhelm roar….so memorable that it rips you from any immersion in any movie that uses it outside the original
@@-MrFozzy-
I was laughing when the second boss in _Freedom Planet_ used the T-Rex roar for a robot mantis!
Avatar 3 *is* supposed to introduce us to the 'lava people' - The series is elemental, so it's Air, Water, Fire and Earth (as in planet Earth) in part 4.
Oh joy.
@@TheLittlePlatoon I hear their evil, too! So this is a secret adaptation of Avatar!
@@Seomus Considering the main character is part of the air...nomads...oh god it really is just a garbage version of Avatar. What the heck. Didn't Shyamalan do enough damage on his own?
@@Flaris Why does hollywood hate Avatar so much!!!!
@@Seomus Because they're jealous.
"It's designed to delight our senses and dull our minds." It seems like that is everything now.
I love how Jake first reaction to the sea children trying to have his son killed is to berate him
im just gonna take a swing in the dark about james cameron here and say his father was a bitter asshole and his projecting it on jakes character
Remember, it's for family.
Jake didn't know that. The chief's son only admitted to taking him out past the reef, and Loak said it was his own idea when he got back anyway.
Fathering at it's best
To be fair, it was entirely up to the sea people (who already didn't like them that much) if they would be given the protection and shelter they needed, so he didn't really have much of a choice in the mater
Longman must be proud
"Family..."
-Avatar 2: Water Boogaloo
It's like Microsoft's 2013 E3 panel.
"theres always time for family..."
-Avatar 3: fire nation attacks....with their family
Why wasn't Vin Diesel in this movie?
“Family”
-lady and the tramp 2: scamps adventure
"Avatar 2: Water Boogaloo" lmo 10/10
My punk band, The Late Nineteen-Hundreds, is working on a song called, "Alarm Clocks Bell."
We have a line in it that is as follows,
"1984 has your toes curled/But you're living in a Brave New World."
I appreciate your intro. Spot on.
That is a sick title❤️🔥
I saw this in theaters because my grandpa wanted to take me and my sisters to see it, so I figured why not. Never seen the first Avatar movie and now I very much don't want to. Spider's "arc" kept pissing me off, because he'd randomly help his evil dad with his evil plans, get mad at evil dad when he does something evil, and then go back to helping him. What a joke
First movie wasnt amazing or anything but back in the day it came out it was huge deal, its also very emotional in my opinion with a good story overall, Jake Sully is an ex marine who lost his ability to walk and since his twin brother was part of the avatar program but died he takes up the role to continue diplomatic relationships with the aliens using his brother's avatar( he does that because he is the only one compatible with the avatar of his brother and avatars are expensive to develop) so he joins the expedition exploring the alien world and being able to walk again but as he does this the army tells him to be their spy and if he does the job well they will cure his spine and he will be able to walk again, Jake accepts but as he is bonding with the blue aliens he falls in love with the girl and realises that his people are doing something very wrong in the alien planet just for the expensive resources of the planet, that changes his mind and he literally chooses to let go of the chance to cure his spine for the alien's sake. For all this i believe the first movie is really worth watching.
I think its normal for Spider to feel torn between being angry at his dad for being a piece of shit, but also feel saddened over the loss given it was his father after all and thats the closest he has to him. Its clear in the film he feels torn in between, and its also clear there will come a time where he will have to pick a side once in for all. I guess time will tell what he chooses feels right.
I love the first movie 💕💙 didn't like this second though I wanted to love it.
8:21 dude I love this quote! “ we live in a world that is profoundly uncomfortable with being challenged“ so freaking true
I think we're OVERLY challenged in media and politics to the point we're weary of it. Avatar 2 was just a basic story and great visuals that was a good escape FROM all the bull crap. Not everything has to push the boundaries. Review bombing, preaching at us and being divisive are in EVERY show coming out....people are tired of it.
@@syntheticmode Yea, but the movie is shit
@@syntheticmode But this movie did just that... 🤨
@@syntheticmode The movie is crap,the visuals(which we are already used to) don´t save it,considering it has even less plot and character development than the last one,apart from the obvious preaching Cameron again couldn´t leave out of entertainment
"we live in a world that is profoundly uncomfortable with being challenged“
if you want to see HOW uncomfortable everyone REALLY is, try to say "outer space only exists on screens" and watch every intellectual turn into a witch-burning zelot XD
The greatest sin TWOW commits in my eyes is when Jake and the gang choose to LEAVE the Forest people. I remember that specifically being the point I zoned out and just admired the pretty visuals, because it’s an entirely batshit decision. Quaritch and his goons kidnapping the kids, then having Jake and Neytiri save them, should have not changed any perception of safety or confidence in their war effort against the humans. The kids were only CAPTURED, when they strayed AWAY from where they were supposed to be, and they DIDNT RUN AWAY when they could have. If the kids called in the threat and LEFT ASAP, instead of hanging around for some fucking reason, then Jake and some tribespeople could’ve ambushed them in little time, then BOOM, threat handled, even if the Marines get away and maybe still kidnapped Spider or something. Skipping forward, why the fuck would the next leap of logic be “okay we aren’t safe, Quaritch is hunting us, we need to abandon our home”. 1) Jake is the fucking chief or whatever of these people, for like 15 years. Why wouldn’t he have any moral or personal inclination to keep EVERYONE safe, not just his OWN family? They portray him in this movie like just some regular dude that lives with the tribe, not their goddamn LEADER, like what was SETUP in the first ten minutes. 2) Do the humans just stop warring with the Forest tribe when Jake leaves? According to the movie, yes, since we never hear from them again. That massive army with tons of stolen weapons and cargo is just going to magically go back to living in the woods I guess. The scientists should be rather nervous, since Jake isn’t chief anymore why would the other Navi be as open to listening to them? How about Kiri never seeing her mom again? Spider not getting some time in that room where he doesn’t need a mask? All that’s gone for the family I guess. 3) Jake was fucking human, he KNOWS ALREADY that you have to fight the humans to stop them, because they have better tech and will just keep coming if you don’t eliminate them. Running solves literally nothing, this is something he SHOULD’VE LEARNED ALREADY. Everything setup in the first 30-ish minutes should’ve implied Jake being MORE relentless in his war on humanity, MORE desperate to keep the tribe, and his family, safe. Instead, we get a pathetic coward who convinces his family to abandon their only home, where their friends and family live and thrive, in order to run from a threat that was already shown to be impossible to run from. There are so many better ways to write this story. What if Jake and Co go to the water people and “integrate” with them as part of diplomacy to get their help in their war? What if the water people were actually on good terms with the sky people and oblivious to their atrocities until their sins like the whale hunting or whatever were revealed. What if the water people were crucial in crippling the human settlement but wouldn’t take action due to them being extreme pacifists or even being really prejudiced against other Navi. The whole point of the ocean scenes were “wow these water Navi are so bliss and in tune with the sea”, have them be like the giants in Primal, where their peaceful life is shattered by an outside force and they have to rally together and march to war. There could’ve been this great final climax where the Forest people and Reef people fight together to outclass the human ships or whatever, the two tribes stand together, and cripple the human settlement. The humans are pushed back, the two tribes saved, and they prepare for Round 3 next time. I’m not going to act like any of my ideas are all that great or original but ffs, I would think it’s better than the leader of the tribe literally ditching his people for incredibly stupid, selfish reasons.
I watched the movie when it came out and omg it would have been so much more enjoyable if this was actually the storyline. What you wrote is so much better than what they did in the movie.
Yeah it made no sense for them to leave the Forest. The humans were there to invade the fucking planet why would they just ignore the village once jake and his family left. Like sure the Guys whos task it was to kill jake would Go After them and maybe leave the village alone but Not the other humans.
This! I was about to comment this! Very well said, your ideas would solve so many issues this film has…
The fact that Jake leaves the forest shouldn’t remove the threat they face, the human military will not forget the original location of the final battle of the first film. This idiotic idea of randomly running away stinks of plot contrivance… so infuriatingly lazy writing
Those are the same things I have issues with after watching the movie! Plot doesn't make any sense..
He literally left to protect his family and to protect the forest ppl.... to lead the danger away from them. Are all you ppl in the comments really this slow that you don't understand something that simple? I thought it was obvious. "I don't want them bringing another war and death here again, so I'll leave". It wasn't a complicated thing to figure out.
Finally someone who really nails how I felt about Avatar 1 and 2. I could not have said it any better other than it is pretty and things blow up.
Especially with that brave new world comparison
The writing is incredibly weak in both movies. And Jake is a dislikeable character, irresponsible, selfish and destroys everything he gets in contact with. But the world building is legendary.
@@notundermywatch3163 Then you should read Orson Scott Card's Enders Game and Speaker for the Dead which Avatar/Cameron pretty much stole the majority of ideas from.
Not the first time Cameron has plagerized or stolen ideas. See: Terminator/ Harlen Ellison
@@notundermywatch3163At least Jake has a hero's journey.
when one of the sons died I was honestly relieved cuz I wouldn't have to perform any more brain gymnastics to keep track of who is who lmao
I don’t mean to be mean but you might be brain dead. I’m pretty stupid and I could tell the difference , the older brother wore more “accessories” like clothes and necklaces and crowns , the younger just had like a loin cloth.
@@santi_super_stunts2573 idk man, I'm a character designer, I know what makes a character pop and what can be done to distinguish them. The ones in this movie just didn't do it for me. Especially in the action scenes where everything moves by quickly, accessoried very easily fade into the background and make the individuals hard to recognize
@@-localbard- i also love character design, imo there should be a deliberate balence of features; it infuriates me when i see bland designs or characters so overdone they look like walking piles lmao
ok exaggeration but still
@@paradoxtatorstudios9681 Yes exactly! The design of the navi on their own I think is a very nice base, they don't just look like re-textured humans, they have their own features. But when it comes to the individuals maaann are they boring. They could've played around with body types or different markings, eye color and shape, hair decor and more recognizable clothes with distinct patterns or something. I'm also a sucker for symbolism so something like different types of plants, flowers, corals or stones with different meanings being used to paint a picture of the character's personality (especially since they're very oriented to nature). Many missed opportunities
@@-localbard- Yeah i started not being able to tell who was who other then gender and size because they all just kinda blended into each other lol
That post from 4chan on Chip's philosophy is really good. I wish we had some version of that Chip instead of what we got. I don't understand how the same man who gave us Aliens and Terminator 2 managed to provide Avatar. Avatar 2 is even worse than that hollow offering.
Its because Cameron is a self proclaimed tree hugger. The reasons his movies that are about saving the environment are the same as the reasons why movies about faith made by Christians often times suck. Cameron is creating his own "God's not dead".
It's supposed to be a Warhammer 40K quote said to an uppity elf, I couldn't myself find a source though.
@Space junk A good comparison with the themes argument for Avatar 2 is how Catholics like me often cringe at those faith-based films, but go, "Hey, they're trying, and at least they talk about [insert good thing]." While I share those feelings, since seeing good themes is refreshing for a weary soul, I agree with Platoon that such ham-fisted attempts at preaching hurt the message more than help it.
@@leecherboy Okay, that's actually really fucking cool.
@@spacejunk2186 Which Cameron, Kirk or James?
There were two villains set out initially, I think. General Carmela and Major Jolly Rancher, did anyone notice General Carmela's character completely disappeared and was forgotten about about 35 minutes in??
OH! I forgot about her!!!! Haha!
lol
Major Jolly Rancher 😂
EXACTLY
Meanwhile off-cam the entire Forest colony was killed and wiped out
The biggest Eye roll I had about the film was with Chip smurf's introduction, the entire concept basically made me check out immediately, because not only was it a pretty solid plot point that the big bad huwyte people could not not do the the brain transfer dance, but it also completely begged the question of why the fuck Sigourney Weavers character had to die and be replaced by the Jesus child of Pandora. When stakes for your characters only exist for the sake of the directors whims and are applied selectively they cease being stakes at all. It's like watching a 4 year old play pretend at that point, sure it can be cute and entertaining on a level, but you'll have a hard time following what's going on a lot of the time.
Not that it makes any criticism better, but the jelly fish has a 10-second scene where they say it helps (or lets you) breather under water, which beckons the question why they don't just use that all the time, but whatever
I know right? That scene opens a whole new crate of worms for the story
To be fair, I wouldn't exactly say the Na'vi are the type to hold animals in captivity, and since it seems like those jellies are pretty rare to come by in the wild, I'm guessing they just aren't available in most cases
@damienearl8302Except they use space Horses , flying and water dinos .etc so they do have animals in captivity
1:18:39 aw man that footage of the windows 98 aquarium screensaver gave me more emotion than the entire 3 hours of Avatar. I’m transported back to sleepovers at my friend’s house in the late 90s; we’re going to sleep in the living room and there’s not a sound except for the artificial water sounds of that screensaver.
Harness THAT billion dollar nostalgia, James Cameron, dang.
1:15:04 Just to point it out, it is mentioned that they have placed a tracker in Spider's breathing mask, so that he in fact can't just run away whenever, since he can't just put off the mask
Amazing how you can make a video that's only 15 minutes longer than The Way of Water, and yet it has 100x as much depth and thought put into it than the film itself.
At 3:05:52, weirdly enough, the jellyfish cloak is actually one of the few payoffs in this movie. Way earlier in the movie, the sea kid smurfs taught sully's kid smurfs that attaching the jellyfish to their backs will help them to breathe (and it's not really explained how). It's not a good setup, considering that it happens so early and is rather forgettable, but still a setup with a payoff nonetheless.
The context for it in this review also has a payoff. He earlier stated he couldn't read the subtitles and this just so happened to be something explained by subtitles so he has no clue what the significance of the cloak is hours later.
Are you serious? It was so blatant setup that I was like - there you go! These things are the plot armor that will help them breathe under water later on. It was obvious & really bad to give them an organic magical oxygen tank. 🤦🏻♂️
it also made no sense at all that putting a jellyfish on your back would let you breathe underwater
- it makes literally zero sense biologically
- even if it did make sense, why wouldn't you have one on all the time? it makes no sense narratively either
To say that it's a pay off is stretching they spent the entire movie playing up a character to be a messiah and it concludes in her making fish glow and summoning jelly fish
@@bungeboy007 I didn't say that it was a good one
Re: Quarrich’s return: one thing that’s missed is _why would the clone care about seeking revenge?_ Sully killed the original, not the clone, so why would blue man group Quarrich care about that? Wouldn’t a more realistic reaction be "damn, clone me sucked! Better go on to do other evil things then!"
Where's earth's Armies? This stuff lets them travel space, oh wait, that would actually make sense.
I would have made clone Quarrich not know he's a clone for a very long time makes more sense why he would want revenge then
“Lol skill issue”
-his clone
@@namkia205 that would've at least been an interesting twist [for the protagonists] in the second film
How did Spider survive and eat properly in the non-technological community for years while having to wear a breather mask all the time? That would be pure torture - and wouldn't the mask need a continual supply of scrubber cartridges/earth-type air canisters?
Lets just say it runs on unobtainium.. - Jimmy Cameroon probably
I was wondering that too! I couldn't help but ask myself that midway though this video.
If you watch the movie, you would understand he lived with the scientists guys. 🙄
@@unnatural2024yeah great, how many canisters did they bring with them in the first movie? Enough to last a decade for a few dozen people?
What a lot of people don't seem to understand is that this is a movie, not an unreal 5 tech demo. Visuals may absolutely play a part, but they should NOT be the sole focus of a full length feature film.
Pretty much. I'm baffled how many people get butthurt over others criticizing story in a storytelling medium.
Comparing modern cinema (and especially Avatar) to Huxley's Feelies really nails the feeling I had for quite a while. I couldn't find the words to describe what felt off to me, but I think your comparison comes very close. And it made me feel better about my decision to completely abandon modern movies for good and instead read good books.
If my livelihood wasn’t at stake I’d probably join you!
@The Little Platoon At least you work harder on your scripts than the screen writers in Hollywood these days. I love your humor, your sharp and insightful criticism. I'd rather watch an over 3 hours long video reviewing and criticizing Avatar than watching the actual movie. Thank you for sitting through this space smurf schlock😉
@@NoxAtlas Gotta agree. His insights and dry sense of humor keep me coming back. 👍
To be very honest, there are still some very good movies being made, even those with budget behind them like last year Everything, Everywhere, All at once. And if you search, you can find some good but lesser known artistic movies.
Totally agree. Me too.
3:22:20 The saddest part is that so much passionate work went into creating the details of this universe, from the vehicles to the astronomy to the languages. All gone to waste because Cameron apparently spent too long browsing Twitter. Also I've no idea how you did a 3.5 hour video on this without going insane, congratulations
Passionate work went into this? Sorry, but one really can't tell.
@@insertcoolnamelater9334 Yeah, it's easy to tell especially if you're in the viual effects space. The amount of tech that was created for the Avatar movies is just mind boggling. That's why they look beautiful.
@Ghost most people aren't tho. Yes it's pretty, but also very generic and forgettable. Besides every expensive movie looks pretty. Hollywood should spend at least as much time on the script as they do on visual effects.
@@insertcoolnamelater9334 this video illustrates my point pretty well th-cam.com/video/tL5sX8VmvB8/w-d-xo.html
@@insertcoolnamelater9334 Yes, mindless consumer can’t the environnement design, the creature design and all the cgi stuff.
I find funny how at the beginning you said you had trouble differentiating between the smurfs, but you did recognize that the brother who died at the end was the older one, I was so confused by which one of the two just died that I asked my mom and she was asleep lol
Haha! 😂
😂😂
I at first thought it was the younger brother and thought it was pretty ballsy that they killed off the one who got all that screen time. Of course, it then turned out to be the one sibling who got zero character development.
I had no idea either lol and my bf was sleeping too 😂😂
I had no problem at all differentiating between them, I thought it was obvious. it was also kinda obvious that he was going to die. he was the perfect role model older brother and didn’t have much space for character development nor was he that crucial to the plot, whereas the younger brother was still growing and learning and making mistakes and trying to be like his brother (also had much more screen time and was clearly a more important character). and so i predicted beforehand that they would probably kill off the older brother to boost the younger one develop as a character. and then it happened and I was right
One part I found very jarring was at the final battle the actual water tribe apparently just went home halfway through the battle, even though the chieftain's daughter was still in the hands of the enemy. This was the only reason they went to battle, but it appears they forgot about her and left.
One thing I hated as a woman who had a history of seizures was Sergorney having a seizure and immediately after the doctor is schooled by “natural healers” when he says she had a severe seizure
i mean she was having a seizure as a Navi and they were trying human solutions to her Navi condition. It would make sense for the Navi to have a solution to people being overwhelmed like that when interacting with Eywa, so their natural remedy isn’t exactly out of the realm of possibility for the film.
@@mateo3898 except you know in reality without modern medicine she would be dead lol .
@@gamingforever9121 except you know, this isn't reality
@@gamingforever9121 well it’s not reality…it’s a movie
@@mateo3898 it still has to remain consistent within the framework of its world and story. And I’m sorry but a new age shaman tribal healer is not I repeat NOT going to be able to compete with modern medicine.
Great video so far. I think Aristotle would have a lot to say about the state of modern movies, given that he saw spectacle as the least important component of storytelling. He saw plot as the most important... what sacrilege!
Aristotle would have a lot to say about a lot
since he believed most people are literally retarded, i agree with you.
and him.
@@TheCapedWanderer I would say Aristotle _does_ have a lot to say about a lot.
@@boobah5643 I could say a lot about what Aristotle’s got a lot to say about
It's actually explained what the water cape is.
In a previous scene, it's mentioned that the Na'vi use it like a diving suit. It allows them to breathe through it while underwater when they connect to it.
Well, "explained"...this sounds more like some magic stuff. They put these things on their back...and boom they can breathe through it. But how?
@@orsolyaszakacs9439 But why, that's bigger question. How did that thing even evolve?
@@MachineMan-mj4gj our questions are without any aswer, unfortunately.
@@orsolyaszakacs9439 Obviously it's a very rare item that gives them underwater breathing as a passive as long as it's equipped.
@@AzureRoxe thank you, but I understand that. My porblems were that how these things work, how do the nav'is put them on their back.
I went to see this when it came out. Some of my mind-numbed friends told me I "...have to see it. It's like nothing you've ever seen before..."
One of my first thoughts while watching this was, "Man, this sure seems a lot like 'Dances With Wolves"
I never watched Dances with wolves, so..
@johnyaxon__ Now, you don't need to...lol.
But seriously, DWW story line is EXACTLY the same as Avatar only with Native Americans.
Inspired last monologue.
I attempt to get my students to reflect on their utterances - question the politics of their positions. Yet they all too often resort to left/right simplistic thinking. I love this channel for a chance for my brain to come alive whilst also being entertained. Thankyou.
I’m glad to hear it!
Well to be fair the school system doesnt exactly encourage independent thinking. Do as we tell you rather and read these texts that we want you to read
@@leob4403 I teach university and am quite shocked at how lacking in critical thinking skills some students have. Others are fabulous and thankfully always challenging me. In fact it’s a key element of the course.
@@sarcatstix that sounds great which country is that? My experience with the university system here in Sweden is that independent thinking was never encouraged to any significant degree, and that has only gotten worse in this politically correct age
@@leob4403 Germany, but I am from England and a little …anarchic for sone tastes here.
I still am convinced the Navi should have been crazy looking aliens instead of tall blue humans. It would have made the movies more interesting.
Also please upload a reading of your 700 page pokemon novel.
But... but ma titillation!
How about blue millipedes that live on walking purple plants?
I want to see someone replace all the Navi with much more bizarre looking aliens and see how many people suddenly don't like them as much.
@@SpecterVonBaren I believe I accidentally did that in my show, instead of the Navi, they are centipede people who live in moving trees.
@@BarakonOoohhhh, so that was just shameless self promotion
Yeah, that tracks!
Entertainment of late has become an ideological boot stomping on our faces, and it has seemingly lasted forever.
it's been like this for centuries my friends. only change is the media via wich the propaganda and distraction machine delivers its message.
Of late? It always has been.
The part where the eldest Sully son gets shot makes me laugh when it, then immediately, flashes to the shooter for just one moment. It totally feels like a kill-camera from almost any shooter game these days. It's totally out of place and silly. Just because I laugh, does not mean it belongs.
It's quite ironic that this "the planet is beautiful" movie was produced by Disney. How many acres of land do they clear and develop for their parks and studios? How much electricity did it take to run the computers that did all the CGI in this movie? Where did the water for all their motion-cap tanks come from? How many of the higher-ups involved with this movie have their own private jets?
Calm down rambo😂
This movie was well into production long before Disney bought Fox.
About as much as the big tech companies you love.
@@billbally4419 And just how many of the "big tech companies [I] love" preach about saving the environment?
@@Hard-R-Energy That doesn't negate anything I just said.
Honestly it would have been better if the enemy this time was someone from Jakes old squad- maybe even the man who saved his life or who's life he saved which crippled him.
Then it would make sense for him to take pity on his children and try to save them while also staying hostile since he does have family back home and he's here to save them
omg wtf that sounds infinitely better seriously fuck old senile james camron someone force him to retirement politics and social media has seriously corrupted the dudes knowledge and creativity
Having many interesting ideas avails you nothing if you're just going to introduce them and then move on to something else without digging in and taking time to explore any of them in depth - wide as an ocean and deep as a puddle seems an apt phrase for this particular 'feely'.
Would have been interesting to see Chip Hazard take Jake under his wing, almost like a father, and then end up feeling betrayed when he eventually went "full native".
This woulda maybe made his clone's actions with Spider a little more understandable, as Chip would have been disposed to a more fatherly nature, and seeking a son figure, but with some hesitance because of aforementioned betrayal
But thats too much thinking, right?
Introducing Huxley and Orwell is very poetic to the downfall of cinema and rarely talked about. Keep up the amazing work!
Who is this Huxley and what is is book called? Want to know more on how it applies to today's society.
@@andrechagas2429 Brave New World. Read it.
I agree! General Hux was one of the best New characters from the amazing sequel trilogy!
@@alverdeo965 Thank you very much. Will do.
@@andrechagas2429 Aldous Huxley was one of the best authors of the English language to ever write. Brave New World is his most famous book and rightly so, but if you’re interested I highly recommend you check out The Perennial Philosophy, his analysis and presentation of what all the world’s religions have in common. It is a brilliant work and I promise it will provide insight into many aspects of life. He was a man who knew how to think, and knew how to communicate wisdom.
What I found quite funny was they didn't even bother de-aging Chip for his video remembrance scene, so somehow he ended up leaving a video before his death but looked older than he did when he erm... died? Sweet.
I am just amazed at the commitment that The Little Platoon took in learning how to hold his breath for the entire four days it took to watch this movie. I hear that the Critical Drinker could only manage to hold his breath for three days, but Little Platoon broke that record. And in the end isn't that the most important thing about art: the sheer act of endurance?
It’s hard to believe this was the bloke that gave us the brilliant Terminator 2, as for the talk of Avatar being aesthetically pleasing, when you visit an art gallery it ain’t just use of colours etc that makes a painting gorgeous, it’s what’s they depicting and the attention to details which makes a painting a masterpiece
I can't wait to see your animated avatar evolve but I must admit: I'm glad the static one is back for the time being :)
He was getting into the uncanny valley I'm glad the other one is back haha
The animated one was nightmare inducing
@@JamesSchulte It was one of the worst things I've ever seen.
Tiptoe through the tulips Esq
Missed opportunity to call the water smurfs "The Snorks".
Fantastic review. I praise your bravery, forbearance and endurance. Your sacrifice is laudable as thousands of people now don’t have to give the rotten studio a dime in order to know everything there is to know about this ‘event to behold’.
Every time ReefGirl comes out of the water and does the hair-flip thing, i get distracted by her eyes. Initially i thought it was supposed to be some sort of “second eyelid” for swimming, which she retracts upon exiting the water. Nope, turns out it’s just the CGI getting some layering at wrong timing, which just goes away a second after she blinks.
Edit: 19:09 was the easiest example to find
... Wait. Goddamn it! I thought the same thing, part of the whole "water people are adapted to their environment", but... No, of course not. Attention to detail?
Fuck everything.
Nope, these are actual second eyelids. It happens multiple times, and much closer up sometimes.
This is the true beauty of your work: I don’t agree with everything you said, but you have laid your arguments so elegantly that I have nothing but respect and reverence for you ❤️
And it makes me think, which is more than I can say for recent blockbusters.
@@RanMouri82 same here!
@@RanMouri82 if u need a 3 hour vid to make u think I don't even know what to say lmao
2:06:55 - 2:09:28 The track when the mother whale died is actually what took me out of the movie, because I instantly recognized it as the score that played when Hometree fell. Once it registered, I just sighed out of frustration. Yes, it's an emotional scene, but I don't equate the loss of one whale to the loss and forced removal of a hundred or so other people.
it literally wasn't just a whale it was the soul sister of the Queen of the water tribe. that was the catapult the tribe needed to stand behind jake and his family. they realized the humans were willing to destroy EVERYTHING to get to ONE person. these movies are a direct parallel of native tribal history and relationships in the US.
@@leabee8101Yeah, a romanticized, sterilized, cheap copy of that parallel.
Слезовыдвлищающая сцена*
@@leabee8101
Oh no, anyway
But but but it's a tulkun, they have maths, music, philosophy and shit 😂
One thing I really dislike about these movies is they can't decide weather or not they are for adult audiences or kids. In a kids movie, a 400 million dollar kids movie, you can have basically no stakes and no danger in the villain because it just needs to look cool and have a good message, for the kids. In a movie to be taken seriously you can't have a military unit, the blue marine's, be so stupid and fucking useless. It ruins the suspense when they can't kill anything and don't do shit besides stand around, look around, and get ganked by the named characters.
These are video game NPC's
No in reality marines are pretty good at what they do, and our antagonists are supposed to be an elite kill team with the soul task of hunting down a traitor enemy war leader. Why do they suck so bad? The only thing they manage to do is kill a child and it's basically fucking pointless. That plot point only happens to make smurfette go on a rampage. And it wasn't dramatic the blue storm troopers got a single lucky shot after like millions of rounds of ammo are spent throughout the film.
The why is because Cameron doesn't know how to write villains that are actually scary or suspenseful, or doesn't care too. There's a reason the alien in Alien is horrifying, there's a reason Homelander is terrifying, there's a reason Darth Vader demands the audience pay attention to every single word he says. Not once did Sully have to deal with the dilemma "these people are literally going to slaughter me and my family and I can't stop them" and have to find a gritty desperate way out to save himself and his children. No the dilema was whalers and the blue marines burning hootches. The resolution to that boring ass conflict was Sully just straight up Jon Snow charging the technologically advanced sky people who have guns, grenade launchers, mechanical crabs, helicopters, and the blue people won with no loses except a child dying for no reason. There was no stakes, no suspense, the action was one sided as fuck and the villain never posed a mental threat, a physical threat, or any other kind of threat.
I feel like the thriller genre is dying and film are just refusing to get their hands dirty. PUSS AND BOOTS HAD A BETTER VILLAIN! And that was a kids movie.......
I'm not the only one that was despaired by the scene where they don't even check above and behind their backs, then proceeds to miss all their machine gun shots at close range with the children just leaping from behind a tree to the next.
With respect to your comments on "visual beauty" and "wonderlust," perhaps I'm leaning too much into the subjective dimension of aesthetics, but I would question the assertion that this film is truly visually beautiful. Visually stunning, perhaps, in the same way that being directly shot by a firework is stunning. The highly saturated color palette, the brightness, the constant layers of blues and greens on top of more blues, the extreme visual contrast, the relentless illumination and irridescence, are all exhausting! It gives me a headache, makes me want to look at almost anything else after a while, to the point that the "ugliness" of the colonizers you refer to is a welcome break from the overwhelming stimulation of color being shoved into my eye. Every time there is a real human face I cling to it like a shipwrecked mariner would a piece of driftwood, just to give myself something on which to anchor in a veritable tempest of light. It is almost hellish to me how vibrant everything is, and it detracts in its own way from the worldbuilding because it makes it impossible for me to imagine spending more than a few hours on Pandora before wanting to puke. It is as though some sadistic animator is trying to turn my visual cortex into foie gras. Video games have a similar visual problem with overreliance on particle effects and bloom, and this film reminds of some of the worst offenders of that medium.
I've never been very good at drawing visual art, but my college drawing professor had a kind of healthy contempt for computer drawing. Most physical visual art achieves shadow and color by reflection, which means the quantity of light which hits the eye is never greater than the amount which hits the page or object from the principle light source. Color is thus subtractive, and the visual artist achieves their depiction by selectively paring back on the ambient light in which their work is displayed. Even though all film is ultimately back-lit during projection, this factor is the reason that older animated films (like Disney classics, or early Miyazaki/90s anime) have a more muted color palate, as the inked drawings ultimately leverage these subtractive color mechanics when they are photographed for sequencing into the final film.
Humans, however, being diurnal creatures, have an instinctive attraction to things which are bright and shiny, where the light comes through the object (think gems or glass) or is almost totally reflected (as off polished metals). Our visual attraction to these sorts of objects means that, in an age of computer graphics, where images can be natively composed of light instead of selectively reflective pigments, using incredibly bright and backlit visuals is a kind of artistic hack, a cheap trick which can dazzle the viewer irrespective of qualities like composition or form. While it isn't bad in itself, I think it plays up the quality of these films as evincing the character of Huxley's "feelies," a kind of equivalent of making a meal with an abundance of sugar or MSG, like eating visual Doritos. Evolutionary, instinctive reactions overpower or subordinate the conscious mind and its critical faculties, and reduce the viewer to the status of a kind of passenger in their own brain. This may not always be an aesthetically desirable experience for the viewer!
I long for at least some of the cinematic and visual restraint evinced by films of decades ago, which invite a deeper conscious appreciation of their elements than the superficial character of CG effects which dominate much contemporary filmmaking. You don't have to throw CG out the window entirely, but its use should be more balanced and careful, with greater economy on the use bright colors or rapid movement (as it is my opinion that many CG creatures are too overanimated to convey a sense of realism). I think it is an underappreciated fact that, although writing is often held as the great neglected element of Hollywood filmmaking, I think it has suffered visually in a similar way: ornament and style have superseded craft and substance, and Avatar is a symptom of both forms of artistic bankruptcy.
The artificial light thing was very interesting, thank you.
You have explained better than I can why I think a fully CG movie doesn't often work visually (there's some that do, but I can't name them from the top of my head :'D)
Avatar probably would've been better if it took an Enchanted route. Where part of the movie is live action (like when Sully wasn't controlling his Avatar) and some of it is animated (when he's exploring Pandora)
Of course since Avatar 2 doesn't switch between Earth and Pandora like the first movie did, we can't really have that here, especially since, when any character is at the base, its usually in the same room as smurf Chip, who by my logic, would be animated, not live action. Its just so hard to look at sometimes
Absolute banger of a comment. Well said!
Wth are u yapping about
James Horner's familiar theme was also prominently used as far back as Star Trek II in 1982. He had been going to that well for a very long time before Avatar.
Just like most other composers. Hans Zimmer has been recycling his scores and clock ticking sound in almost every soundtrack he ever made.
@@jesperburns Composers tend to do this in general . Yes, Horner's re-use of themes took that idea to the nth degree, but a huge facet of being a career composer, especially in studio systems where there are several specifications and limitations put on composers, is having a stylistic short hand. Even John Williams has reused several ideas over his long career. It's inevitable.
Spider’s character should’ve been sent back and grown up indoctrinated and craving revenge for his dad or just an unnatural hatred for Na’vi. Returning as some sort of young commanding officer that is literally willing to do anything. Would’ve atleast given the movie stakes if he was part of some sort of squad that came better equipped and “knew” more or less what to expect from combat. If they were willing to kill any of Jake’s kids, it should’ve been the antagonist that did it in a much more drastic way. This movie had no balls.
Exactly what I thought. Give us someone so evil that they will do anything to ensure humanities place in the galaxy as rulers.
One of the great sacrifices I made in my life (kidding, but it WAS a big sacrifice) was accepting to watch Avatar with a friend a second time, because he missed our party of friends who went to see it the first time. I spent most of the movie playing with my cellphone and my friend slept through half of it.
your soul will never be redeemed
My wife & I were saying the same thing. We liked their other world so much we just wanted a movie showing all that and maybe having a few romances or some friendly competition but not all the war imagery. We watch movies to get away from our world of wars and political hatred, so we have to imagine it now on a foreign planet?
I honestly thought I was the only one that hated Avatar, everyone was going on and on and I was like, "huh?" This movie is basically insulting me and things I value...
Glad you went back to the static images of your avatar, rather than the semi-fluid motion I saw before. It looked downright creepy.
I dunno bout yall, but im just waiting for
Avatar: The route of Fire
Avatar: The path of Air
Avatar: The road of Earth
and everything changed when the fire nation attacked
The next movies resource will be a penis enhancing drug that actually works.
@@shinjiikari1021dont you mean the evil white people?
As someone who watched and enjoyed this movie, I must say, you give this film entirely too much credit to imply that ANYONE noticed the difference between the bother who liked the whale and the other brother with no defining characteristics. I never once even considered any significance between the pair of them, and no, I don't remember either of their names.
1:51:58 just one small detail I wanted to point out, the second scientist who was with smurf scientist and the scientist on the whaling ship are 2 different guys. I understand you mistaking 2 doughy stubbly guys who both wear masks and have maybe 2 lines each for each other though (even if one of them is Vladislav the Poker)
He also apparently didn't bother to go back throughout the movie to figure out why "daughter smurf" could breathe underwater even though it was explicitly stated that the jellyfish that she had placed on herself allowed her to breathe underwater.
If there was just a little nuance in either film, they could be good. Eywa and the avatars have interesting potential that Cameron won’t explore because it means the na’vi would have flaws.
Let’s see a na’vi going human, reverse the first film and introduce the human world. Question whether Ewya is good, it seems like a brain washing parasite in a lot of ways.
Point out the obvious difference that the na’vi have a goddess in charge of all of their nature keeping everything in balance where as humanity doesn’t. Just something!
Now that'd be some actual sci-fi.
BORING, FART NOISES.
Even if they want to present Eywa as 100% good, they could at least show us snippets of Earth being trashed and dirty with children who have to learn about trees through history textbooks. It would enhance the “take care of the environment” messaging they were going for IMO.
Phenomenal discussion. If you want to watch a film that is beautifully animated with a compelling story, watch Puss in Boots The Last Wish.
Couldn’t watch it because the dog got on my nerves lol
I would say that Orwell's warning to the West was spot on. Authoritarianism comes in multiple flavors. We don't have Orwell's "boot stamping on a human face - for ever" style violent suppression yet. However we do have a concerted effort by governments and big tech to restrict speech and behavior. Words are being banned from use and the definition of others are being changed to suit the needs of our social engineering overlords. In places like Canada criminal charges are being filed against those that violate "hate speech" laws. Others are having their careers taken away by bureaucratic bodies created by government to punish those who step out of line. In some of those same countries big tech and government are restricting and controlling the news and information the public is allowed to consume and disseminate. Authoritarians don't necessarily need to be violent. Paternal corporatism is what organizations like the World Economic Forum are selling. They know what is best. All we need to do is bow to their will and accept their version of utopia.
I would say China is Orwell's 1984 and America and the rest of the West is Huxley's Brave new world as Platoon put it. But of course some aspects can be shared.
Or the alphabet people saying people are trying to kill them by buying a video game about a wizard school.
There’s definitely a more detailed breakdown there, but given my intro was already pushing 20 minutes I didn’t want to extend it in the video. All the above can be found in Brave New World, too. There’s a degree of cross-over, of course. But what you describe is being done, largely, in the name of comfort, peace, security and stability, not out of obeisance to some centralised dictatorial power that crams down by violently suppressive means on a fundamentally unwilling populace. Which, I’d argue, makes it more Huxley’s world than Orwell’s.
@@TheLittlePlatoon At the risk of being rude, I think you are being a little naive. Now, no, I am not about tell you about the Illuminati lizard people, but while the Tumblrina crying in the street about her feelings might be motivated by a desire for peace and comfort, it's not quite the same way when you get up higher in the halls of power. They use those methods because it's easier, because the overtly aggressive attempts are easy to spot and people are still generally unhappy with them, but they absolutely DO resort to the naked aggression when necessary, and the ultimate aim is still to achieve "centralized dictatorial power." The end goal of at least some of them is a comfortable, digital slavery--no one reads or sees or thinks or eats or engages in any activity not approved because it might threaten them, with the "it's for your own good" being merely the excuse. We know this because even when it's proven beyond all argument that some of their actions are BAD for everyone, they do it anyway, they double-down.
Whats the difference between the avatars made in the 1st one and the clone soldier versions? Cause what was the reason Jake was brought to Pandora? His brother was killed. His twin brother who had an avatar made from his DNA. So why did they recruit the paraplegic untrained brother, instead of resurrecting the original brother in his Avatar?
++++
Correction that actually screws up the movie more: it is established in movie 1 that Unobtanium is necessary for the continued function of human life on earth. This, in fact, means that the only reason the humans are here to conquer instead of trade is because Jake didn't do his job in brokering trade deals and mining rights. Humanity is dying, it's his fault, and now that's Pandora's problem.
I dont think they were in dire need of the Unobtanium at the point of the first movie. It made the technology they had at that point possible and more helpful to them, yes, but the point was that humans were already killing the planet by not caring about it and they came to Pandora to use the same practices that was bringkng them close to extinction on Earth. They weren't going to establish peaceful trade networks worh the Na'vi, they established that they don't care. They just wanted info on the Na'vi (to which I don't understand since they would throw that all through the window at the climax) but planned to forcefully take what they were after anyways.
@@blackmist5575 it is established by businessman character that there are 20 billion people on earth and Unobtanium is what's keeping them from economic collapse. That would come with starvation. Even if only .1% of earth starved (which is generously low for a global collapse) more humans would die than an actual full genocide of Naavi (which was never the plan). The statement that continued life on earth need Unobtanium is a bit of an exaggeration. I'm simply stating that the loss of human life is going to be inevitably larger than that of the naavi. Also it is established by Sigourne Weaver that the whole purpose of the very expensive avatar project is to establish good relations with the locals to allow trade. In the end that all goes out the window because the humans NEED the mineral and the Naavi won't trade, with or without avatars. As for earth dying because humans didn't care for it, unless the moral of the story is that preventable mass starvation should be allowed because humans didn't recycle and a few blue people who won't trade shouldn't be forcibly moved, then the whole movie fails to have a moral through line and Jake quite literally fails to prevent the first war with aliens because he was chasing tail.
thats not a plot hole, thats a hypocrisy of the humans
@@want2killu of the humans?
@@picivyvortac2641 yeah dude. its obvious that their goal is not to save earth but to make money. did you watch the movie and think about it for more than 2 seconds? i love these movies but i wouldnt say they're subtle...
The only things I remember about the first Avatar is the moment I realized I was watching "Space Pocahontas" and being bummed about what happened to Sigourney Weaver's character. This review tells me that 13 years later, both of those things would have remained constant.
Spider is helping the Smurf Marines because he wants his father's approval and love. Remember, in Hollywood lore, kids love their biological parents above everyone else, even if they have been raised by somebody else and have never seen their parents before. This has been also done to death.
What is wild to me is that Spider could, nay SHOULD have been an interesting, complex character, with an obvious but interesting character arc.
Spider SHOULD have grown up feeling somewhat alienated from his foster family and foster culture. No matter how hard they tried to make him feel included, he cannot breathe the damn air they breathe, they age different than him, they literally tower over him, they can connect to the lifeforms around them in ways he simply can’t. Even though Jake Sully *was* human, he’s now a giant blue alien, not a human, and becoming more Navi over the years,
So Spider should be THRILLED to connect to the humans that show up. It’s a great opportunity to show him, as a naive teenager, being unknowingly manipulated and exploited by his new human “friends” and “family”. Maybe his clone!dad could gaslight him about his foster family. They get the information and skills out of him that they want while creating a silent wedge between him and his foster family. His foster siblings meet him partway through this process, and try to show him that something’s wrong, but that just makes him feel like they’re not happy that he found somewhere to “fit in” so he leaves them. He doubles down on helping his new “friends”.
Then, later, he realizes exactly what his new “friends” are really up to, and it’s understandable that he took so long to realize because he was so obviously overjoyed to meet other humans and so taken in by their manipulations because he is, in fact, a teenager. He doesn’t want to believe it. They wouldn’t *murder* other sentient beings, right?? He’s horrified. He protests, he tries to stop them, and they just shrug it off. He’s served his purpose, and now he’s dragged away.
Then, he has his Heel-Turn-Face when he manages to find some legitimate way to turn the tide of the fight later on. Maybe the Friendly Scientist Dude helps him escape, or something, and then he has his moment to shine when he rescues his foster brother and they make up.
This is, like, soooooo not complicated. It fact it’s so obvious that the fact they managed to screw it up so badly is actually fascinating in a car-crash rubbernecking kind of way.