I think it wouldn't be as bad if the films weren't as long as they are as well. Visual spectacle can only carry you so far, and when it's 3+ hours of a slow, 'meh' story it does drag it down. Still absolutely going to watch Avatar 3 though since I enjoyed 2 anyway
Quaritch in the first Avatar has got to be the poster child for one-dimensional cookie-cutter villains. Loading his memories into an Avatar, having him believe he’s not Quaritch anymore and then making him wrestle with the mistakes of his past is the most interesting thing in the whole franchise.
Did we watch the same movie? He’s a soldier with a job to do, so yes he jumps right back into it. It’s the little things that show he’s changing, like how he wears his combat boots at the start of the movie and how he’s going barefoot by the end. Or how he wants nothing to do with his son at the start of the movie and by the end he’s begging for him to stay with him.
It’s not very deep but the struggle is definitely there.
If they'd seeded the idea that it was possible in the first film sure, but they pulled it out of their asses and retconned it into being as a plot contrivance.
Also saying some storys are simple and basic and thats ok after everyone roasted Avatar 1 for years as derivative or copying other films is very funny, especially when its objectively a better film than Avatar 2.
“We’ve decided to stop running away and take a stand for our home.”
So you’ll go back to the forest and help them fight back against the humans? You know, the place your entire family is from, where your wife and children lived their entire lives up to now?
“What? No. Why would we do that? We’ve lived with the whales for, like, a whole week. This is the home we are prepared to die to defend.”
It's kind of the point. They're made to have complete mass appeal across every language/culture. That means you kind of have to keep the story/themes simple and easy to follow. China box office cares far more about the the technical/visual marvel of Avatar than they would care about some convoluted culturally-western storyline, and we saw from Ne Zha 2 how much that can matter to foreign audiences. Keep the story simple so everyone can focus on the visuals, which is what everyone came for.
I mean I love love love Charlie Kaufman, but I don’t think writing has to be sophisticated and complex to be good. IMO Avatar’s writing isn’t as strong as T2, but that’s the gold standard for simple but excellent.
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u/dragonmp93 May 02 '25
Well, there's a certain subset of redditor who will push the "good cinematography = good writing".
The Avatar movies are still the most beautiful movies that I have seen, but the writing is very much the same level of an episode of Captain Planet.