MovieChat Forums > Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) Discussion > Well - just finished watching it and I c...

Well - just finished watching it and I can only conclude that this film is for juveniles

posted 2 years ago by maximmm (3147)
5 replies | jump to latest

In the first film - there were issues, to be sure. The premise of the film was to mine unobtanium. What happened to nuclear power? What about solar energy? The reasons for the energy crisis are unknownium. At least, you had scientists in that film - and humanity wasn't depicted as completely dumb.

In this film, any pretense of humans comprising of diverse people with varying intelligence is gone - they've all gone pure evil and dumb - it is so in your face, it's laughable and makes the first film seem like a masterpiece (even though that film had similar issues as well on a much smaller scale).

Because the writers lacked any sort of imagination, old villains make a come back, being resurrected from the dead. Speaking of which - considering that one of the secondary reasons for returning to this planet was to obtain the whale brain enzymes which grand humans immortality, one has to wonder - doesn't the ability to download/store memories and upload them into new bodies (Na'vi bodies, in this case) already solve the immortality issue?

There are all sort of events where characters act oddly and out of character. At the same time, in some segments, even bigger oddities occur. During the big conflict, Na'vi attack the ship to save the kids - yet.... at a certain point, all of the water Na'vi disappear, leaving our blue protagonists the only ones fighting the marines - how did that happen? Where did the water Na'vi disappear off to? (this is clearly an editing issue - btw, I hear Avatar 3 is 9 hours long as of this moment - all sfx will be added in and then the film will be cut to 3 hours - so similar editing issues are likely, if not more so)

There are so many dodgy writing and editing bits that by the end of it all, if you ever spend any amount of time thinking about it, you'll come to realize that your brain has been assaulted by incompetence and idiocracy time and time again.

Who is this film for, I wonder? Shouldn't it target people who are older/more mature than the first film (considering that 12 years have passed since the original)? It's surreal to think that the character depiction and their motivations have been stripped of any semblance of complexity which was present in the first film (even if it was present in the first film only in small amounts). Point being - this film is substantially dumber than the first film in terms of story. I would not recommend this film to.... well, pretty much anyone that cares about a decent story and/or well developed and deep characters.

Full disclosure: I saw this film in 2D - so I was paying a lot more attention to the story/characters than the 3D/sfx effects. I will say this about the visuals - na'vi look like videogame characters - not photorealistic. I haven't seen any improvements from the first film in that regard - only the difference being, this film focused on the na'vi world like 95 percent of the time, so the crappy graphics stood out a lot more than they did in the first film. Digital sfx do look better in 3D though, so I suppose it's possible that focusing on na'vi in this film may have improved the 3D experience.

[–] Painter (37) 2 years ago

"doesn't the ability to download/store memories and upload them into new bodies (Na'vi bodies, in this case) already solve the immortality issue?"

Actually no. This is a mechanicistic view of living beings and does not take into account what can be called 'soul' for wanting of a better term. If they make a copy of your mind and for the sake of argument put it in a body that's the exact copy of yours, you will still be in your original body. If you die in your original body your conscience is gone. Forever. The copy will be you only for others that won't see a difference, but the original you it's no more.

This is the huge flaw in the transhumanistic ideal of downloading and uploading minds. If possible it would create just infnite copies and the original (i.E. you, your soul) would be lost sooner or later.

[–] maximmm (3147) 2 years ago

And that's another thing - why create copies of many marines, when you can clone the best one and send a legion of them?

As for the soul - there's no doubt that we are closely linked to our bodies and indeed.... that can be a strong argument that many would not see it a life extension, but you can also bet your arse that many would try and succeed - and after they do succeed, slowly but surely those questions about soul would slowly go away.
In Star Trek, many argued that everytime you transport, you are killed and then recreated anew. Alas, Star Trek also has that clone fallacy - I'm genuinely surprised that no one ever bothered to create a clone army there as well (Will Riker was cloned by accident - also, the immortality aspect of that technology, where people willfully accept being teleported (which means, being killed and recreated elsewhere) yet do not use the same technology to grand themselves immortality.

A lot of sci-fi shows feature paradoxes of that sort which never get explored or mentioned.

[–] Painter (37) 2 years ago

Now, that's an awfully good question. I guess writers couldn't move away from the very human 'individual' mindset.

Oh, they certainly will because they are mistaken in thinking that a copy of you is still you. I don't think that the discussion about the soul or the conscience or whatever will fade away. As soon as those people will start to die and understand that they are most definitely not coming back they'll start to panic. There's also the other faction busy with studying telomeres and how to invert the aging process.

Having said that, human beings being the little shits that they are, in the future they will probably find a way to use the mind download as in the movie, to use the skills and the experience of very special individuals, like great sport champions etc. at least for a while.

[–] acelesson (718) 2 years ago

You mean like the genome soldiers in Metal Gear Solid?

[–] LanceDance (1126) 2 years ago

During the big conflict, Na'vi attack the ship to save the kids - yet.... at a certain point, all of the water Na'vi disappear, leaving our blue protagonists the only ones fighting the marines - how did that happen? Where did the water Na'vi disappear off to?

I was wondering that too, I didn't recall the water Na'vi chief ordering a retreat or something, especially since the chief's daughter was still hanging around when the rest of them disappeared. The least the editors could've done is have some battle ambiance in the background: sounds of gunshots, Na'vi doing battle cries, animals screeching and growling, etc, while the main characters were fighting. Maybe the extended edition will explain where they went or something.