 After just shy of 200 years, James Cameron has managed to put a sequel to Avatar in the big screen called Avatar 2, The Way of Water. I'm a big James Cameron fan. I love all of his films, and I went out and saw this bad boy last night, and I have to tell you. Afterwards, I wanted to drown myself. Before I dive in, because of the water, I should tell you this is gonna be a spoiler-free review. Probably won't be that long either. If you want to hear my full thoughts and why I did not like this movie, subscribe to the channel. Adam Does Movies. I post movie content each and every week. It's a fun time. We'd love to have you. Let's talk about this movie. The most obvious pointless praise I can give that everyone else on the planet has already said is it's a beautiful looking film. That's true. They spent like a billion dollars on the next few Avatar movies they have lined up. So yeah, it's state-of-the-art. Plus, it is Jim Cameron, my boy James. He knows how to make a beautiful looking film. He's a he's a pioneer in the industry. What really impressed me on the production side was the music, though. The score was taken up like three more notches this time. We have background chanting, which I love. The uh, And then there's action, of course, accompanying it at some point. While the visuals and music are impressive, he is doing some weird stuff with the frame rate that I can't say I love. We're not shooting at 30 frames per second a lot of times or 60 or 80. I think this guy's at 120. There's moments where these characters are just going too quickly. It's very cartoonish. I understand that it's animated, but it's got this like quasi-realistic look. At some points, actually at a lot of points, you really can't tell what you're looking at. Like, damn. Did they really shoot this or is it animated? It's impressive. It's like margarine. I can't believe it's not butter. I also can't believe how awful the story is in this film. I'm not going to go into it. I'm just going to say this is a three-hour movie, and it is very obvious what James Cameron's interested in. He is, after all, a deep-sea explorer. He loves the expeditions down there, and he's got a record saying the ocean comes first. Fill me in second. It's very obvious here when the entire plot of the movie revolves around Sully and his family living in the ocean world, living with the new tribe of Navi. There are multiple lengthy sections of sea creatures just doing their thing and Navi interacting with them and checking out some of the flora and the fauna and the different wildlife available. Now, I'm not even knocking that. It looks great. It's some of the best moments of the movie. They're magical experiences. Don't get me wrong. But when all the time is dedicated to that, and then it's just like two sentences to kind of push past major plot developments, especially in the beginning of the film, it's like, oh, yeah. This is what's been going on since you've been gone the last decade or so. It's like, what, you got to go into a little bit more detail there, which is another vague criticism I'm going to make right now and go into it in the spoilers. But there are so many plot points that make no sense and ruin the main characters. They just, Jake Sully is awful in this movie. Just a complete dipshit. The leader from the first film, Don. And then there's Zoe Saldana's character, Natiri. What happened? She's completely pushed aside for most of the movie. In the first, she was the main attraction. And the reason she's pushed aside is because we have a new generation of Navi to focus on now, the youth of today. And they are pretty bad all around. What James Cameron has done over the last couple of decades is he's looked at every single movie trope out there and he's pulled them all into this movie. So many cliches on display here. The father who doesn't listen to his kids. The kids who disobey the father constantly. The money hungry antagonists that will do anything and everything at all costs to get that sweet cash money. There are several different storylines jumbled into this nightmare narrative. I think if we would have scaled back to maybe an hour 45, two hour movie and just said, you know what? Maybe we do a whole movie about the Navi just interacting with their environment and not even have the human element at all. Or make it just kind of a looming threat that will lead into a third. This might have been more enjoyable because as I stated the national geographic style stuff was easily the highlight. I know a lot of critics have been praising the last act of this film because of the action. The action is not that great folks. It's it's nothing we haven't seen like countless times over outside of one or two impressive shots. I was so checked out at that point. I just wanted it to be over. I never actively look at my phone to see the time and I was doing this like every 15 minutes at the end. I'm like, oh my god, all my it's like one in the morning. When is this gonna end? And the reason is because I didn't have an investment or connection to almost any of the characters in this film. Some emotional stuff happens, but I didn't feel any of the weight of it. I just was waiting for it to move on. Inevitably when you do a polarizing review like this, you're gonna get a lot of haters in the comments. I've moved past that point. I don't really care. Say whatever you want. Call me a contrarian. Say I'm doing it for the views. The harsh truth is I think James Cameron's amazing. He's directed some of the greatest films of all time. This is the first movie that hasn't landed for me. This is the first misstep and I truly believe it's because he took so long to develop this tech and got so invested and infatuated with the ocean stuff that he just kind of lost sight of the prize. He didn't keep his eye on the ball. It really reminded me of George Lucas with Star Wars, the prequels. There was so much time in between that original trilogy and the new ones. It just felt so disjointed. It felt like the writing was completely changed. I didn't have that same connection with any of the characters. Oh, and there's another major issue with this. And this isn't a spoiler. They do this very early on. But the Navi language is almost not present at all because they do the thing where Jake Sully is like, I've lived with the tribe for so long now that it's like speaking English. And then everything else is English, the rest of the film. That doesn't work when you have cringey dialogue constantly. When it's said in their beautiful dialect, it comes across as like a spiritual tapestry of a beautiful imagery. Now it just comes off like the sun kissed our rosy cheeks. We knew we were one with Motherland. It doesn't work well and it's even worse when they're going like Hey, bro, let's go kill these guys. They're literally saying bro constantly. And then they do their more native type dances and it just, it doesn't flow well at all. You should have kept them speaking their native tongue. This was immensely disappointing for me. I'm not happy. I wasted three hours on this crap. I hope people are liking it because that's a big investment. It's a lot to not just sit there and watch the movie for three hours and plop down your hard earned cash, but also to deal with the jackasses in the theater that will inevitably ruin the experience for you. They tried. They tried their hardest with me, but I was able to look past them. I should also point out I went with three other people. All of them hated it as well. My buddy bless was there a couple seats down. He was like a child in this movie, throwing a tantrum every 20 minutes. He's over there like I had to respectfully say like, hey, keep it down a little bit. There's maybe one person in this thing that's kind of enjoying it. We don't want to ruin that for them. All right. Those are my sad thoughts on avatar two. I want to hear from you now. Did you see the film? Did you like it? Did your family go out? Mine would not sit through a three hour movie. They just won't do it. And I don't really want them to. My son's only 10. He doesn't need to sit there that long. That's miserable. And with the 3d, I should point out When I saw the first avatar in 3d, I was blown away by it. I legitimately thought this is the future of movies. And then like 14 years went by and nothing happened and now avatar two comes out in 3d And I was not near as impressed this time around and I don't know if it's because a lot of it takes place on the ocean So there isn't that layering you get from the forest. It didn't pop out as much There was definitely some cool effects some embers and floating particles But outside of that and the occasional cheesy spear out at your face Yeah, it did not blow me away like the original did definitely not something that I was like, wow This has to be seen on the big screen Um mainly because the story sucked so much ass. Anyway, those are my thoughts Let me know in the comments below if you've seen it if you want to see it still Like the video if you had a good time and once again think about subscribing We've got that spoiler video coming up right here on the corner. Appreciate it. Take care Since you're still here, I should point out there's a second channel now It's brand new called Adam after dark just started it like two weeks ago. There's already a few videos up there They're just short observational skits. I think they're funny. I have a good time making them Let's me show my creative side a little bit more. So yeah, check me out Adam after dark There'll be links on the link tree in the description below You can probably find a link somewhere else on the channel as well, but yeah, it's it's there It's ready for you. So please subscribe