Avatar — The Way of water
A pure personal Opinion piece with Avatar 1 in memory
I’m one of the several people who liked “Avatar” movie, but not “Avatar 2”. But, why ?
Why I liked Avatar 1
First, Avatar is a strange movie. It is a movie where villains are human and good guys are Aliens. But still, humans loved this movie. Doesn’t humans supposed to hate a movie where they are villains?
Avatar, for me, is the story of a “lazy, selfish, goal-less” protagonist who becomes an “ultimate leader” for a tribe and wins over the bad guys. This theme is so common in many movies, and subconsciously it connects without having any barriers.
But what makes Avatar, so special is its visualization of an alien planet. A new planet that’s never visited before. Of course, there are movies where planets other than Earth are visited. But, Avatar does the same in a spectacular way.
When you fight, nature helps you. This is the theme of Avatar movie. It is a celebration of human fighting spirit. It gives hope.
Why I didn’t like Avatar 2 as much as I liked Avatar 1
The movie starts with a bang, the protagonist, who is now a tribal leader, is attacking the train carrying weapons. In the first 30 mins, it promised me a story of a “revolutionary warrior”.
But it took not more than another 5 minutes to steer away from the “revolution” story to “running away”. The tribal leader shamelessly abandons the forest people and seeks shelter from “water people”. Why would the person who became leader at the end of Avatar 1 became so timid now?
The storyteller says, protagonist who is now a father has big responsibility of protecting kids. Why not, but as a leader to a tribe, you have bigger responsibility of protecting your tribe, people who believed in you.
Now, after getting shelter from “water people”, the usual drama of exploring the sea, sea life runs for another hour or so. Visually spectacular, yet the story moves now at snail pace. We won’t miss a bit of story, even if the one-hour compressed into 15 minutes.
During this time, the antagonist also makes slow moves. This also goes against his character. The antagonist of Part1 would never waste a single moment. He would have attacked the entire tribe, the moment our protagonist left it.
Then, the protagonist makes a mistake of calling his “friendly human” to help his daughter. This obviously gives away his location and “The Hunt” begins.
The scenes involving killing “a whale like sea animal” are very tragic. The emotion is rightly built, I’m expecting some revenge from the “sea animals” in climax now.
Slowly, the movie runs to a climax involving a ship chase. The “whale like animal” gets its revenge on the hunter. A whistle worthy moment.
The protagonist asks “sea people” to stand down as this is a “personal fight”. I mean, OK, as long as “the war ship” is active. We don’t see “sea people” until the end of the movie again. They just disappear, so do all the animals.
The ship sinking scenes are a treat to watch. The angry mother does her part by going on a killing spree. Once everyone from family trapped inside sinking ship and all hopes are lost, the director has beautifully visualized “Asatoma Sadgamaya, Tamasoma Jyothirgamaya, Mruthyoma Amrutangamaya”.
The family lost their elder son, the adopted son saves the antagonist. We are promised that a war will be there in Avatar 3. End titles start rolling.
At the end, for me, the whole movie is just a big trailer of 190 minutes duration for Avatar 3.
