SPOILERS FOR THE AVATAR SERIES, OBVIOUSLY#

I went out to watch this movie with my parents on New Year’s Day. This movie was definitely not a great start to the year, even if a massive upgrade from my Christmas Day movie, but it definitely had some things going for it.

When I came out of the theater and wrote my preliminary notes, I described this movie as “The Way of Water but it’s almost 3 and a half hours long”. I came out of the movie theater exhausted and just looking to get home as soon as possible to do whatever I did when I actually got home at the time. It’s easy to say that the movie’s content definitely did not warrant its runtime, even if I did get enjoyment of it all of the way through; at its core, the movie is a ton of subplots that happen to be resolved around the same time because of the same situation, and while that’s a boring way of handling it, it’s at least servicable to each of these subplots. The entire movie is supplemented by even more depth and detail into every aspect of the worldbuilding, something that was captivating on its own; everything about the wind tribe, for how little we actually saw of them, was very interestingly thought out, even if the implication of Jake cutting apart a living creature with his knife to slow his fall is a bit morbid in post (which, to be fair, it was a life or death situation). This series continues to strike again and again with interesting worldbuilding, but disappointingly, it’s probably one of the most captivating things about the series at length and one of the few reasons the movies stand up in my eyes.

As for the subplots themselves, I’d say they were resolved pretty well on their own. It seems the Sullies are in a far better state than when they started, as is the village and the world, but because of this, it feels like there’s nothing to go on for an Avatar 4 that they’re so clearly teasing with how easily that new villain retreated; if the third movie was already basically just the second but again, what else can you do when you’ve got so little to go off of? Again, I also get why many of them were resolved at the same time, but it feels weird in some areas. I also didn’t like that they basically just typecast each individual villain with an individual Sully and tried really, really hard to keep to those; I’d loved to have seen Neytiri more directly fending off Quaritch, for one, or Jake being subject to the immense pain that Varang bonding with a Na’vi seemed to cause, especially as someone who’s both got military training and also wasn’t originally a Na’vi, and it’s painful how hard they skirted some of those plays with their choreography. There’s a lot about this movie that feels unnatural; I feel like that was the point I was trying to get to, where the threads don’t feel connected, or people even just move weirdly to get certain things to happen.

Let me hone in on each of those subplots. I want to start with Lo’ak, who was supposed to be the successor to the main protagonist role from a Jake who obviously still kind of had to play that role due to some of the decisions they made, especially with the fact that he’s the narrator of the entire thing, but that all falls flat. There’s not enough narration from him and definitely not focus on him to give him the spotlight he deserves; seeing him and his plotlines, I often found myself wondering what would happen to Jake, who would just do something of even more prominence in the next scene anyways like I anticipated he would. Where’s the focus on Lo’ak’s growth? Why does it feel like the only way he’s actually grown in is moving on from his brother’s death, save maybe being able to get Payakan to speak properly to their elders? I think the first scene that highlights that is strong, but the rest of it is, unfortunately for him, very confusing. Either he should not have been a narrator of this film and the focus should’ve stayed on Jake or he should’ve been given a proper spotlight that he wasn’t, where he had to take center stage and fight the main fight, but he got none of that.

Onto Jake and Neytiri, the actual primary dynamic of the film. Jake was portrayed just perfectly competently for the character he needed to be; he was about as main character as a main character could be in a way that was easy to care about, but hard to care about deeply enough; again, as I mentioned for Lo’ak, Jake’s presence was just unoffensive enough to make him stand out as a lead, but not enough to make him feel like one, and that makes Lo’ak’s entire arc awkward as a result. Jake’s moment of weakness is very confusing, as he has no real reason to heel turn and try to kill Spider when Neytiri suddenly has the exact opposite reaction to the theme of her arc the entire movie. According to interviews transcribed on Wikipedia, where I had to go to get the proper spelling of the names of each of these characters, Neytiri was very much supposed to be seen as “unrecognizable” and even racist, which she absolutely demonstrates, but in the same way that Jake’s moment of weakness does, her sudden face turn feels very unearned. Even though their dynamic focuses on her hatred towards humans and does address the fact that that’s where Jake started, beyond that one interaction, much of it feels vapid. Why is this happening? Why is Neytiri suddenly racist in the first place, especially as someone who not only married a human, but adopted one in the second movie as well in the form of Spider? Why is she fine with being at the human encampment like she is? What’s going on at all?

Kiri’s plotline was very well-done overall, save the scenes of her trying to interface with the Spirit World, which I think could’ve been framed a bit better. I honestly forgot about the majority of her lore, but the idea of her being just a genetic copy of Grace’s avatar is very interesting and a neat plot thread. I just wish the fact that her presence in the Spirit World focused more on the dynamic between her and her mother, and furthermore, that the power of her bonds was explained in more detail than just being passed off as epilepsy, but to some extent, how can you really do that? It also feels quite dangerous to literally be ripping her nerve endings out of the ground, but honestly, what can one do? I do appreciate the scenes where she demonstrates her power, but a part of me wishes that the religious implications were a bit more focused on, as well as her status playing a more pertinent role in the movie after the forest scenes beyond being a deus ex machina at the very end, because she deserves some of that spotlight. I do like the touch of the face of the Great Mother very clearly being a human one, likely Grace’s, and I think that the ending fucks with that mysticism more than I’d like it to, even if it’s clear that she’s in touch with all of this, because it brings her right back down to earth like everyone else; personally, I would’ve liked that relationship to have stayed a bit more ambiguous, as well as for that ending to more directly showcase her newfound relationship with the Spirit World before it all.

I stand by Spider easily being the highlight of the movie. They nailed everything about him, from his personality to his main plot points to the cliffhangers that result from it; I even liked the fact that it seems like his skin is slowly starting to turn blue in some of these spots. He’s about as perfect of a character to the plot as you get in this world, and I appreciate that he gets to play such a pivotal role in it. I like the plot point of the failing masks, including the interactions that him being able to exist without one of these masks creates. I like that he’s able to take advantage of Quaritch’s emotions like he is, because it leads to really creative scenes and brings out Quaritch’s more interesting points as a character, making for the most interesting dynamic in the movie. I think Spider distinctly suffers from the least of this movie’s problems, even if his unresolved plot thread is still a bit weird and something I’d like to have seen pushed back a bit more in the progression of the plot. I definitely wish the results of Kiri’s ritual were more immediately present, either with him becoming more Na’vi to the point where he begins a transformation into one of them in an interesting way, or with him not getting affected as much by the ritual besides being able to breathe. I think the nature of the mycelial network should definitely have been explored more for the amount of screen time he ended up having. Him connecting to the Spirit World to save Kiri is probably the most powerful interaction in the movie in my eyes as well; I think Tuk also being there is a bit cheap, but the fact that he initiated it makes the scene. Despite everything happening around him, they could not mess him up at all, and I’m grateful for that.

Quaritch, on the other hand, was handled fine at best. I think they did him well, even if I groaned the moment I saw him on-screen as the main villain for the third movie in a row; again, I do like the interactions he has with Spider and Jake, but the moment he goes out to interact with Varang, it seems like things crumble and fall apart. Jake constantly talks about how Quaritch should “open his eyes”, but he ends up dying and that means nothing pays off. I hate how ambiguous that death is to the point where it might not be one. I hate that we’re denied of an implied redemption arc for the guy. I hate that half of his character arc goes out the window the moment he starts talking to Varang; what was all of that talk between him and Jake earlier, then? Speaking of: Where did all of that passion in his eyes go the moment the guy dived down to take care of Jake and co.? That was the perfect chance to end the movie right there, and he didn’t take it. That plays into him being a bold and brash idiot for sure, but it’s just more squandered potential for a character like this.

The other half of that couple, however, is definitely not the character best slated for the main antagonist title in a fourth movie. I appreciate that Pandora, especially the water tribe, is very much depicted as a society rife with internal conflict; Neytiri isn’t trusting of humans, the water tribe wasn’t trusting of the Sullies initially, even the wind tribe doesn’t want to risk having Sully on board, but it’s clear in that dialogue that they don’t hold any greater hostility towards him beyond that, and also who the only real native enemies of the people and creatures of this peaceful planet are, the only people that seem to universally be worth scorn: The ash people, a sadomasochist cult-tribe who goes out of their way just to rip away the best thing the people of Pandora have going for them just because they believe they were scorned themselves, even if they clearly weren’t. It seems to break the promise that Pandora puts down of oneness with nature, something that every movie in the series seems to exemplify: I was going to cite the fact that even a story like Genshin Impact’s puts a lot of attention onto just how kind the gods really are as my example initially, but even the original Avatar literally saw people begging to an Eywa that seemingly couldn’t help and being understanding coming out of that. This is someone who’s probably come from the same story and turns into a villain; Varang is unlikable, uninteresting, and feels almost discriminatory in how she’s presented. I’m certainly not looking forward to a movie all about her in the future.

I think when I began writing this, I wanted to be a bit kinder to this movie, because it ultimately was beautiful, but I think I took too long on that last paragraph. I think that speaks to how I felt about the movie: It had its good moments, but was not worth the length and was nothing stellar. I see what they’ve set up now and it’s clear to me that any future attempt at this series is going to be something I end up hating, and I’m certainly not looking forward to that, but this is a nice farewell to the current saga.