Caught this on a plane. It’s more Avatar! I still think the fundamental framing of Native American-esque aliens just feels not great coming from a guy like Cameron. Adding Pacific Islander-esque aliens (right down to face tattoos) feels like doubling down, but I guess there’s not much that could have been done about that issue while also making a sequel to Avatar.
It’s definitely very pretty! Maybe I’d have appreciated it more in a theater. It’s nice to see a movie with such vibrant colors these days. The characters are very emotive which is technically impressive. It feels kinda silly for something they could have done with 90% makeup and compositing tricks instead of making everyone CGI. But I guess that’s the world we live in now anyway.
The plot feels a little better than the first in that we’re focusing on very personal stakes: Jake’s family being hunted by Quaritch. It is a slight retread, but it actually feels more personal this time, especially with the added stakes of Jake’s children in the mix. I also like that their fight against the antagonistic humans felt realistically imbalanced. As a side note, it’s kinda cool that the time between the first movie and this one is actually borne out in the time passing in the intro.
The anti-whaling subplot is very interesting. It makes sense in the overall plotting, but it also feels arbitrarily exaggerated. Oh, the whales are actually beyond human-level intelligent with their own philosophy! But their brain gland makes neon yellow goop that stops human aging! I feel like going this hard in both directions makes it feel like the villains are just kinda arbitrarily evil while vaguely trying to justify it, but in a super heavy handed way. Like, in real life whaling is seen as inhumane despite whales not actually possessing human level intelligence.
Overall, it’s a very pretty mediocre scifi movie? I don’t see these ever becoming something better. I’m glad that everyone who watched it enjoyed it but I think I’ll probably skip the next 3 or however many we’re gonna get.