Tuesday, November 21, 2023

Avatar: The First Water Bender

Speaking of newer movies. the library had a copy of Avatar: The Way of Water (2022). Can't say I am a big fan of the original, but I wanted to see where Cameron was going with it.

It takes place many years after the original. Sully (Sam Worthington) has settled down in his avatar with his native wife (Zoe Saldana), and they now have a big batch of Na'avi/human kids. A few Na'avi friendly scientists stayed behind, and one wild human kid, who liked to run with the Na'avi kids. The corporate army have left. But they are coming back.

The hard-ass colonel killed in the last movie (Stephen Lang) is being revived from a personality recording in a Na'avi body. Although his mission is to recover control of Pandora's resources, he has a particular hard-on for Sully.  

So there are some fights, and Sully decides his family and tribe should retreat instead of trying to fight these well armed Earthmen. So he manages to get in with a water tribe. But will he lead the fight to them? And what of the shovel-headed space whales?

OK, the whales look kind of goofy. In general, the movie looks lovely. The human/Na'avi hybrids looked a lot like humans in a lot of makeup (pink/red flesh peaking through around the eyes, etc). I assume they are entirely digital motion-capture constructs, so it must be intentional. The digital scenery is pretty but I'm not sure it's mind-blowing. I prefer Roger Dean album covers. 

Also the plot got silly in places - The kid (Jack Champion) going over to the dark side so readily, for ex. The Poseidon Adventure section where everyone is drowning, except the girl with the air bladders who isn't treating this as an emergency. But there are some great blow-em-up fight scenes, and who needs logic for that?

In the end, I didn't think this was a great movie. But as an expensive, low-brow action adventure movie, it was fine. I might not watch it again, but I bet I'll watch the sequel.

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