‘Avatar: The Way of Water,’ and why I wanted to drown myself during most of the film

A few weekends ago, me and a couple of friends were bored, and wanted to watch a movie. If only we knew what we were getting ourselves into. 

The first part of the movie was fine, we were reunited with the Na’vi people, and introduced to a new character, “Spider” a white American who was orphaned during the Na’vi, human conflict. We learn later in the movie that he’s also technically Quaritch’s biological son.

The plot to me felt underwhelming, and the writing felt forced and uncomfortable at times, but still overall the movie was fine up to this point. The second half of the movie is when it really all started to fall apart.

 The US army decides it’s a great idea to take the DNA of the dead American soldiers from the conflict and their memories to pretty much clone them, but in a Na’vi body, to infiltrate and take down the Na’vi people from the inside. The soldiers acting was extremely underwhelming, and their writing was corny and careless.

I found it confusing and lame that when they landed on Pandora, instead of taking the logical approach and pretending to be Na’vi like they were instructed to do, they started making a sweep through the forest with assault rifles loudly speaking in English borderline yelling, “we’re here! Come shoot us!” Somehow, this strange approach was successful, and Quaritch and the other soldiers end up almost abducting Jake Sully’s kids, and getting away with Spider. 

Following Spider’s kidnapping, Jake Sully, his wife and renowned Na’vi warrior Neytiri, decide to take their kids and flee to another one of the many tribes on Pandora. The next hour or so of the movie is mostly just a montage of the Na’vi people learning how to swim and be “one with the water” accompanied by some bad filler lines and bullying from the locals.

 To be fair, the action sequences and effects in the movie were fantastic. The scene where the Na’vi warriors are annihilating the soldiers with bows and arrows was very well choreographed, and the special effects were great. But these few entertaining action scenes couldn’t make up for the lackluster plot, and definitely couldn’t make up for the extremely disappointing ending.

 While the American soldiers are closing in on the village they relocated to, Jake Sully and some Na’vi warriors attempt to rescue Spider and the other kids from the American battleship HQ. It all goes pretty badly as you would expect, and ends up in a standoff between Quaritch, Jake, the kids and Neytiri. During this standoff, Quaritch has one of Jake and Neytiri’s kids captive, and for some reason Neytiri decides the logical plan to get him to release the kid is to put a knife to Spider’s neck. Somehow, even though Quaritchs clone technically has no relation to Spider, Neytiri’s plan works, and he releases the kid. In one of the final,and in my opinion most aggravating scenes in the film, Spider decides to rescue Quaritch after he kidnapped and almost killed him and his friends, and lets him go. I understand that they did this so they could make another movie but realistically letting him go is one the most idiotic moves you could make, and puts your friends and family’s life at risk all because you feel connected to this clone of your deadbeat father. Overall, the movie was entertaining but an hour and a half too long, and rushed.