Vlada Korneeva

bad. bad bad bad. *SPOILERS ahead* the only thing i liked about this movie was the gorgeous cgi. the rest is quite literally a dumpster fire. i usually never write reviews on movies but this one was so bad that i had to. 1. the plot. it's literally just a rinse and repeat of the first movie, except this time its with fish instead of dragons. the narrative is so weak and seems like an excuse to chuck in all the cool world building they did. 2. the pacing. it is so messy. the beginning is way too fast and the middle and end are suuuper draggy. some stuff is shoved over and over in our faces while the rest is barely touched upon. 3. the villains. i cannot complain about them enough. first of all, the return of the first movie's villain is so badly thought out and frankly unbelievable. like... you really don't have to bring that guy back. please. put away that poor excuse you used to bring him back. its so bad. then, there's their motive for coming back to pandora, which is not even reavealed until like halfway through the movie? and then its never mentioned again? and lastly, the villains are barely explored throughout the movie. you'd think for a runtime of three hours they'd actually bother to flesh out the villains instead of using them as canon fodder. oh, except for the guy from the first movie, obviously. they just looove him. 4. the useless scenes. as previously stated, the movie has a run time of three whole hours. its long. and not for good reason. there are several scenes which are just unnecessarily long. an example being the scene where they hunt the big whale guys. it was so, so drawn out. even if they had cut it in half, i think it would still be just as, if not even more, impactful. and the battle at the end. it was way too long! so much repetition! honestly im not sure how they managed to spread so little content over three whole hours. thats some talent. 5. the characters. honestly, i was pretty excited at the very start, when i saw that they were introducing child characters and a family dynamic. but then half of the siblings got fleshed out and the other half... just did not. two of them (three if we include spider) were having character development, going through all that good stuff. but the other two just kinda. stood there. serving their purpose as the "oblivious little kid" and the "heroic, perfect, self sacrificing big brother" with no further character depth. also a more personal opinion: i dont like what they pulled with nytiri at the end. she's a fiercely protective mother, and has shown that she would do almost anything to protect her kids. but then she just... grabs spider and threatens to kill him to protect her kid. as far as i was concerned spider was also basically their child. theres the excuse that "she watched humans kill her son so she cared less about spider because he is human" but she watched humans destroy her home, kill her dad, and then she married one. "maybe because they aren't blood related then" she isn't blood related to Grace's daughter either. "because he was the best threat to use against villain guy" well, yeah, but to me, it's like she's sacrificing one of her children for another without a second thought. that isn't something i think nytiri would do. personally i think that scene was detrimental to her character. i did like the world building about the island naavi, but it was kinda hard to enjoy when all the other aspects of the movie were so bad. and that's about it. this is just my opinion, dont take it too seriously. if you liked the movie, good for you! thanks for reading i guess