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Avatar 2: The way of water

What I liked: Like the first one, the graphics in this movie are incredible. As one would expect from a movie called the Way of Water, there is a lot of water. The splashes, ripples, and movement in the water are all faultless. When you stop to remember that all of it is CG it's pretty staggering. I also liked that most of the 3D added depth to the film rather than sending 3D effects flying at your face. Our favorite blue family relocates to an island village so we get to meet sea creatures and the island clans. I liked that the sea people had rudder tails and broad hands. And I liked their springy walkways between their houses. Also like the first one, the animals were cool. I liked the plesiosaurs, the shark thing, and the tiny glowy jellyfish things. I really liked the underwater fairie wings. In addition to cool creatures we get cool robots. I  liked the crab robots but am unclear on why they were crabs other than that crabs make cool robots. The plot was better than the first one: it wasn't just a rehash of Pocohontus. It was more of a Tarzan/Moby Dick mash up maybe a bit of Romeo Juliet. This has been a good year for commentary on the 1800's whaling industry. What with this and the Sea Beast, this is the most pop culture press whalers have gotten since probably the 1800s. (Did a quick fact check on that and it turns out the US didn't actually ban whaling until 1971, so I guess this commentary is more timely than I had thought). You might not expect a train robbery in a movie about water and alien whales, and because it is so unexpected and so classic it was pretty fun to see especially with dragons.

What I didn't: The humans have come back to Pandora, this time there's more of them, they intend to stay, and eliminating our friend Jake Sully is their top priority. If I were going to take over a planet and there was only one guy on the planet capable of mounting an effective defense, I would probably either land on the other side of the planet, get situated and go deal with him later, or maybe never; or land directly on top of him, problem solved. I would not land next door to him and be annoyed when he attacks my train. That said, I do think the amount of jungle the spaceships torched upon landing was excessive, especially given the stated mission of colonizing Pandora. I also think that a guy who can pull off such a great train heist could plan a better battle strategy than coming straight at the technologically far superior group that is expecting you to attack. Jake Sully clearly loves his family, I'm not convinced by his parenting strategy. It seems like there isn't enough dynamic range in the types of penalties meted out for different blue teenage infractions. Call me crazy but getting in a fist fight, making friends with an evil whale, and tricking your neighbor into getting eaten by a shark should probably all have different punishments. I also question the logic of his children. After the second time you get kidnapped maybe you would stop running into dangerous situations with all your siblings. And definitely rethink going back into said dangerous situation once you already got saved. The bad guys have trouble flying into where the good guys hide because the dragons attack their helicopters but the attacks stop when the bad guys are blue. I'm curious about the mechanics of it. Are the blue guys more fragrant than a helicopter? Did they specifically install untinted windows in the helicopters? Do they sing traditional blue songs louder than the sound of the helicopter? I'm also curious about the water levels. Are there tides there or storms or tidal waves or anything? The village was always perfectly situated relative to the water and always accessible. All my ocean experiences suggest that at some point everyone would be hiking out to the waves because they overslept and it was low tide or the bad guys would come to attack and realize the currents or winds were wrong and way overshoot their target on the coast. 

Who should watch this? People who liked the first Avatar. People who like really excellent visual effects. People who thought there were too many life boats on the Titanic and that Ellen Ripley should have punched fewer aliens with her mech suit. 

Would I watch it again? Yes, but it will certainly be better on a big screen than a little TV.

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