| JerryLBell |
12-22-2022 09:57 PM |
It would be easy to say this film doesn't live up to the first. The first introduced this incredible new world and immersed you in it in a way that was pretty mind-boggling. It's hard to boggle your mind a second time with what might seem like the same tricks. I was so blown away by the original Matrix movie that the second and third ones, while equally amazing and thought-provoking, just couldn't blow us away the way the first one did. We were just too prepared for them and our expectations were too high.
That said, I welcomed a return to the forests of Pandora and the move to the ocean opened up a world of wonder to me much like the introduction of the forest had in the first film. But then, I'm a nature buff who loves birdwatching in rain forests and snorkeling in coral reefs. I'm a sucker for both those environments.
Some criticized the first movie as following the "White Messiah" trope. In too many movies, the poor, beleaguered natives can only throw off the shackles of the oppressors if led by a white guy. OK, in this case it was a blue-skinned avatar of a white guy, but that was perhaps a valid criticism. This film starts with Jake Sully/Turok Makto still leading his tribe but the tribe is much more on an even footing with him and in the majority of the film, he isn't the leader at all. The film gets to be much more about community and family.
Some people criticized the first film as being a bunch of tree-hugging hippie ecology crap and quick to paint the military/industrial complex as total bad guys. This film won't sway people who think that way and it throws in a "save the whales" vibe that won't win fans among that group. But I've seen enough rain forests that were chopped down for lumber and to grow oil palms and have swum in enough coral reefs that were damaged by overfishing, seen the count of birds where I live go down year after year and lived in areas where industrial runoff filled the rivers with dioxins and other carcinogens that I probably fall on the side of the tree-hugging, save-the-whales folks. The ecology message of these films speaks to the choir that I'm certainly in.
Somebody mentioned that this film isn't for "old people". I'm 68 and loved the film. When the first film came out, I took my wife's stepfather who was well into his 80s to it and he loved it. I don't think you can pigeonhole this film to a specific age group.
Somebody else mentioned without proving examples that the film was "vulgar and disgusting". Certainly the way the Sky People came back down and instantly deforested some pretty big chunks of the world was disgusting but that's probably not what was referred to. There were military folks that swore the way that some military folks do, and maybe that was vulgar. Or maybe it was the fact that the Na'vi don't exactly where a lot of clothes. There was no explicit nudity but plenty of partially bared buttocks and so-called "side boob" shots. Less that what you would have seen on old National Geographic documentaries of various non-technological tribes around the world.
Hey, in the end, it's just a movie. If you liked the first one, go see this one. If you didn't like the first one, don't go see this one. If you never saw the first one, I recommend you see it and then make up your mind as to whether or not you want to see this one. If you like an immersive experience, I recommend seeing it in 3D in the biggest and best theater you can find. If the idea of a nearly 3-hour run time sends your bladder into a panic, wait until you can watch it at home. Ain't no movie out there worth busting a bladder over!
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