the director's technological aspect (CGI) is beautiful. The part about Pandora terrains, its creatures, is absolutely amazing.
Underneath the skin-deep beauty of computer graphics, it's all bland tho. The plot is copy-paste from the first movie. Some human marine dictator smirking villains devoid of character depth / motivation / reasoning wanna get revenge on the MC, joining forces with Tulkun hunting force bent on obtaining Tulkun Brain Liquid. All elements combined into just a poor recycle ofthe first movie.
All relevant characters makes dumb decisions, instantly abandoning their stance in the story due to being swept away by cheesy or cringey retort which make little sense. And they regret each of their decisions anyway at every turn, being sacrificed so that the movie can have its sequels, the next copy-pasted CGI eyecandy show-offs.
The characters regress instead of develop. Jake Sully's childrens having the conversation style of "hey yo wassup dude, lets get it cuz, dont do that bro" inside Pandora Realm is crazy unfitting.
After a long introduction (1 hour? 2 hour?) to Na'Vi's aquatic territory and all its visual feast, as the conflict begins...the movie turns from a dreamy and stunning fantasy documentary, to a boring and even largely irritating shooting action flick, inside of which all characters does nothing but shooting and cheaply provoking the enemies.
Anyway why are the Na'Vi not pretty or appealing or unique by human standards if they are humanoid anyway? Google quick search
Obviously to shoulder such a CGI budget, you should have much more creativity lol.
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Anyway, James Cameron will get so much more love if only he just made Avatar into an adventure movie in which the main plot is to unravel geographical beauty and wilderness of Pandora. If he wants some conflicts without him being able to formulate intelligent / unique reasoning for that, he can always make the movie climaxes into an aquatic survival story against nature and its creatures.
...Or the struggle of Na'Vi aquatic people to obtain an ancient artifact hidden in the deepest of Pandora ocean, with the Father of all Tulkun as its guardian deity, protecting the artifact to filter the worthy chosen one.
Or other alternatives, just make it into a romance story. A green pretty Na'Vi underestimate Lo'ak and his immigrant culture, just to later be mesmerized by Lo'Ak's ability to befriend a Tulkun in spiritual level.
I think these alternatives will make us connect to Pandora and its beauty on much deeper level, since the world itself will be its core element, instead of being sidelined in the actual version.
Those kinds of movie wouldn't be such a spoiled milk of a movie like this version, that spents its initial 2 hour to show us eyecandy world that has no relation to its Expendables-plot climax.
Regrettably, it's not enough for James Cameron to make a detailed CGI-oriented world that shows off his awesome craft, he also want this movie to be bombastic in conflict and physical war, even tho he can't recognize his own weak points in weaving proper plot or character. Thus for me, this extravagantly-visual movie that ultimately failed to develop its characters and plot and its emotional or cerebral core, is only worth being watched to the point before the guns and the bombs and the bombs and the guns happen.
