James Cameron does it again. Creates a beautiful, vibrant world with a basic, paint by numbers plot. If someone had stepped in and cut this movie an hour shorter, we might have been okay but instead I was getting bored, checked my watch and saw I still had 45 minutes to go.
Is the world beautiful? Yes, absolutely. Does the adjusted frame rate work? No, action scenes feel like a cut scene from a video game. How's the story? Mediocre. The overarching story gets lost and forgotten because James Cameron wants to paint the whole world. As he does that, he fills it in with random cliché side plots to distract you until you remember, oh yeah, there's a big bad villain out there. The story feels like something my 6 year old niece would write. Bouncing from one thought to the next.
Rough synopsis: Oh the *Insert character/Group* is in trouble! Lets go save them. How could you do that? You know better. Here's a beautiful CGI thing to look at. Rinse/repeat.
Major themes carry over from the first one. Humanity is bad except for "our" white savior. He's the good guy. Here's a new group of Navi that don't trust us at first but they'll come around after a scary moment.
The story feels like Cameron kept adding on one story trope after another and no one walked into the room to knock the pen out of his hand. If you end up watching it, do yourself a favor and get up to pee halfway through. Grab some popcorn and a drink. Maybe taking a break from Pandora will make it not so insufferably long.
