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joe viglione
I’m stunned by all the hype. Viewed last night at a critic’s screening. Was hoping for a lot more and less violence.
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joe viglione
This is a good movie but a big disappointment to me, and I’m a James Cameron fans, as noted in my many reviews of his many movies. Terminator 2: Judgment Day improved on the great original. This, like Matrix 4, is a retread, and like Matrix 4, not as entertaining. Interesting how it walks alongside Wakanda Forever very nicely, and from the same company. Good for one screening, but what do I know, there’s not much else in the cinema these days.
Trailer: https://youtu.be/d9MyW72ELq0
AVATAR 2: THE WAY OF THE WATER
Review by Joe Viglione
Do
you remember that TV episode of Ozzie and Harriet guest-starring on
Lloyd Bridge’s Sea Hunt? Of course you don’t. No one would be crazy
enough to film it. When James Cameron came out with an instant
classic, the Terminator, he followed it up with an even better film:
Terminator 2: Judgment Day. However the Terminator series has not been
able to continue to catch the magic, just as the new Matrix IV was
redundant beyond redundant. With a budget of $350–400 million – adding
in promotion and other necessities - nearly half a billion dollars,
possibly – one would expect more than a re-hashing of the previous,
groundbreaking film. But, alas, we have the Na'v version of the Swiss
Family Robinson – Jake Sully’s tribe, Lost in Space meets Waterworld,
two big screen pictures that lost a lot of money (1995’s Waterworld
produced by and starring Kevin Kostner, cost nearly 175 million – a
massive sum almost 30 years ago, bringing in 264.2 million; 1998’s Lost
in Space brought in 136.24 mill, on a budget of 80 million) Let’s do
the math: 255 million for both films a quarter of a century ago, return
on investment 398 million is tough for a film company to take.
But
we are talking Disney and James Cameron here with deep pockets, aren’t
we? Kate Winslet from Titanic is “Ronal, a free diver of the Metkayina
and Tonowari's wife,” (finding that info on Wikipedia, as the financials
above,) and to this critic, Winslet’s presence is an indicator that
Cameron decided to fuse his two big motion pictures, Titanic and Avatar,
into one. Not a bad idea, perhaps, but the lingering problem is the
biggest flaw in the first movie – the exile from Conan the Barbarian,
Stephen Lang as Colonel Miles Quaritch. Perhaps the most unlikeable
character from Avatar 1, he is the Bane to the Batman series, a villain
who isn’t up to the standards of Heath Ledger’s Joker or Arnold
Schwarzenegger as the original malicious Terminator, and without a Dr.
Doom or Green Goblin who can terrify simply by their presence, Colonel
Miles Quaritch falls far short of what is needed. That Lang is signed up
for about four Avatar films is to this appreciator of James Cameron’s
talents, regrettable.
Edie Falco as General Frances Ardmore looks
horrible. You’ve got the menacing Tony Soprano’s gangster wife, my God,
and she’s as unrecognizable in human form as Winslet is in Na’v form.
Just let her be what the audience loves, the sweetly malicious ruthless
gun moll like Ma Barker. These people are raping the resources of a
planet and killing with impunity. But they are caricatures of true
villainy, a grotesque imitation of Heath Ledger’s joker or Anthony
Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter, and therein, along with a sideways storyline,
is the problem.
The audience loved seeing the woeful Colonel
Quaritch get sliced and diced by Zoe Saldaña’s Neytiri in the first
film. Cameron’s penchant for bringing back his previous players, Susan
Alexandra "Sigourney" Weaver from Cameron’s Aliens (2nd Alien flick,
1986,) handsome Sam Worthington from 2009’s Terminator Salvation
(Directed by McG, but spawned from Cameron’s series; 2009 being the same
year as the original Avatar, Worthington doing double duty,) and I
intentionally use the word “handsome” as these actors in blue Na’v suits
aren’t very sexy to the human viewers. So take away the sexual
attraction most movies lean on to draw audience, and a decent storyline
and you are left with gratuitous violence underwater.
The film
itself is equally gratuitous (unnecessary or unwarranted) for a number
of reasons. When Christopher Lee came back from the dead in Hammer
Films’ Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, it was welcome for the
addiction-feeding of horror movie fans. Lang’s pedestrian army-boy, Col
Quaritch, is your garden variety over-macho psycho with a gun in his
hand.
Had Avatar 2: The Way of the Water arrived as the first in
the series, it would be spectacular. But we’ve waited thirteen years
for a “been there, done that.” The problem with sequels, which Cameron
avoided with Terminator 2, Judgment Day, improving on the menace of the
original, is what Universal films faced after the first horror talkie,
Bela Lugosi’s Dracula (1931) and Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein (1931)
…yes, The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) matched the brilliance of
Terminator 2: Judgment Day, but does anyone remember 1936’s sequel,
Dracula’s Daughter, even though allegedly taken from a deleted chapter
of Bram Stoker’s original Dracula novel? When the sequel pile of
monster movies originally concluded with Abbott and Costello Meet
Frankenstein (1948, and as hokey as it sounds, a classic and somewhat
revered film,) well, you get my point. The resurrected Col Quaritch
…memories from the thug implanted into a Na’v avatar, is the punchline,
the sick black-comedy relief, to the film’s detriment.
So, are those
the three and a half hours of filmmaking worth it? Wearing 3D glasses
for that length of time is a bother, but having the whale-type creatures
with high intelligence (a little borrow from Star Trek IV: The Voyage
Home, no doubt) as a highlight and the beautifully crafted fishies in
the underwater scenes as the wonderment that we expect from this series,
it’s not a disaster. Avatar2 is more like a disappointment. I expected
so much more. And hearing Zoe Saldaña’s Neytiri repeating “My Jake”
over and over is not going to get Zoe an Academy Award. I wanted a
squirt gun, honest to God, to shut her up. The Sully Family Robinson
would be a nice film for children if not for all the blood and gore,
watching an arm going flying off of a bad guy is extreme violence, in
both set up and execution. It was a cringe moment, and not exactly what
this filmgoer would call entertainment.
As stated in the
opening, this is James Cameron channeling his Titanic through its own
film "avatar," and the thirteen years and perhaps close to half a billion
could have been better utilized on the script.
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