Avatar: The Way of Water - Really Quite Bad

I went to the studio and I said let's not just do another movie let's wait for the fences I think what people are in store for is Avatar that timed 100. yeah yeah that that in a nutshell is the whole damn problem comparisons between George Orwell and Aldous Huxley are like the prologue or the training mission for any video atheist they're quite a good prologue or training Mission because they deal with the conceptual Society each taking aspects of the real world and extrapolating to some undesired end thereby providing us with a warning I don't intend to subject you to my own entry in the genre I got that out of the way when I started University though it's necessary to touch on it just a little bit as it sets up the argument that follows fourth width my short form conclusion is Orwell's 1984 is useful in the Far East where it seems to have been used as an instruction manual in the formation and business of states for we in this corner of the world though he shows us what we already know to Hayden despise he provides a reminder to be vigilant but it's not necessarily the most useful one Huxley by contrast he identifies the threat as belonging with the things we actually like he gives us a more Insidious form of totalitarianism precisely because the origin of that arianism is found in things we today consider to be the height of Liberty drug use free love freedom from religion and family sensory Joy over moral duty and obligation we're all well taught us to fear control and depression and brutality Huxley and joins us to fear our own Bland and lazy Hedonism or to put it more simply he thought just to fear our own desires there's nothing necessarily prophetic about being a reactionary and a crank but the modern world does seem to insist on proving them right The Cult of safetyism used to justify canceling unpopular speakers the invocation of words like unsafe dangerous harmful in the context of Art and opinions are huxleyheit more than they are obedient when you live in a world that panics more about the hurt feelings of trans people than the government confining you to your homes in the name of Public Health you live in huxley's world huxley's world because the real question of lockdown was never does this control the spread of a virus but rather what if anything gives them the right to do it and this question was never asked by the bulk of the population because the bulk of the population like the subjects of Brave New World Wanted only to feel good like goth kids who assert their counter-cultural individuality by all dressing in the same way hedonistic Freedom the right to feel good protection against feeling bad masquerades as individualism but lends itself toward the collectivism of the herd and the herd as Huxley was fond of pointing out is easy to poison now you might be wondering what the [ __ ] is all of this got to do with Avatar well here's the thing Brave New World Has Its equivalent of the cinema Huxley called it the feelies a dystopic extrapolation from the talkies that emerged in and around the 1920s films with sound with talking with singing They sent Huxley into paroxysms of curmudgeonly Rage ranting against the debasement of the human psyche and the human intellect unavoidably inflicted on the Audience by modern entertainment indecency decadence Decay and the spiritual void the demand that you see e solely in order that you'd be considered up to date with the modern fad the talkies offered to use a sentence of his nothing but disembodied entertainers gesticulating flatly on the screen and making gramophone-like noises as they did so and perhaps you see where I'm going with this so in Brave New World we get the feelies the feelies convey no meaning they contain no real message they aren't designed to challenge you or to make you think they aren't really a narrative art form at all they are all designed to Delight the base senses touch sight sound and smell they tell no stories because Brave New World doesn't allow stories to be told it's all about keeping people comfortable John the Savage's argument with the world controller Mustafa Monde is over his right to feel sorrow lost heartbreak and tragedy I want God he says I want poetry I want real danger I want freedom I want goodness I want sin in fact Mustafa man says you're claiming the right to be unhappy all right then says the Savage defiantly I I'm claiming the right to be unhappy I think that's enough [ __ ] teasing so I'll get straight to the point the first avatar is one of my least favorite films ever and I watch a lot of [ __ ] media I've got a strong stomach for it yet the first avatar is one of the few films I struggled to digest I hate it with something approaching a passion it makes me physically angry to sit through it I feel like Huxley in the cinema watching the talkies watching those disembodied entertainers gesticulating flatly on the screen making gramophone-like noises as they do so the first avatar marks one giant leap toward the huxley-eyed future the Brave New World Avatar wasn't Cinema Avatar was the feelies how so well what does everyone remember about Avatar to the extent they remember Avatar at all the visuals the sensory pleasure the colors the computer generated facade good films that tell good stories are remembered for many more reasons than how they looked they add something to the culture they provide common reference points ideals aspirations Paragons of Courage and villainy the meaning of which we all understand simply by invoking them as references they add beats to the human story but Avatar Avatar added nothing it wasn't at all interested in adding anything of the sort nobody remembers Jake [ __ ] Sully or whatever his blue bint's name is if I were to be uncharacteristically polite about it I'd compare the film to a concept car at an auto show it looks lovely it sounds fantastic but that is the extent of it there's nothing inside of it there was never meant to be it was never supposed to be made it's an advert for technological skills that will be applied elsewhere later Avatar probably did add something to the craft of cinematography it set a new industry standard for special effects but it was clearly never meant to do anything other than that it's astounding and undeniable success is indicative of a trend in society a trend away from story and toward content a trend away from questions and answers and toward filler we live in a world that is profoundly uncomfortable being challenged and so Avatar presents us with no challenge we're an audience that resents having to pay attention and so Avatar does not require us to we demand Comfort safety reassurance and superficial Splendor bread and circuses and that's what Avatar gives us we are in essence uncomfortable with emotion which is why Avatar doesn't contain any Mustafa modern in Brave New World like both Aristotle and Plato before him recognized Art's profound ability to incite and to evoke Mund in exiling art sided with Plato in his condemnation of artistic catharsis the bloodletting of emotions you cannot negate negative emotion while maintaining positive motion you must have one to have the other or you must have neither and Avatar provides us with neither and its success suggests that we as an audience are not so much happy about that because how could we be as we are content about it in short avatars made a virtue of nothingness and it's been championed for it because well look how pretty it is people with stories to tell don't treat stories as an afterthought if on the other hand you only need a story as an excuse to show off your technological Brilliance you are highly likely to lapse into simple derivation and that is exactly what James Cameron did with the first film it was beatford Dances with Wolves perhaps with a little bit of Pocahontas thrown into the mix an entirely soulless retelling packed with stock characters and cliches with a gloss of modern and equivalently soulless messaging on the environment on capitalism the orientalist elevation of the noble savage over the lazy caricature of our own Industrial Age even the soundscape was derivative our first glance at the creatures of Pandora present us with the T-Rex Roar from Jurassic Park and several Velociraptor sound effects lifted from same [Music] the soundtrack was also a derivative James Horner presenting us with a note for note transposition of his recurring Motif from Troy and Willow [Music] the dialogue was of course derivative making for derivative characters cliche evil army man who looks like a live-action version of the villain from Small Soldiers cliche corporate goon cliche good guy scientists cliche beautiful and spiritually pure native Savages and well Jake's sorry doesn't even have enough of a personality to be considered a cliche it was without doubt the laziest most expensive big budget cheap production in modern cinematic history to call it half-assed would be an insult to anyone who would accidentally sat on a landmine and yet it Remains the highest grossing film of all time people flocked to see it people came out of it very impressed but almost entirely unmoved which is precisely the point of the Phillies style entertainment you aren't supposed to feel anything about it on an emotional level you are just supposed to have your senses simulated by the pretty lights and the lush's visual Feast of Pandora masquerade anti-capitalism is the safest most unthinking use for a message you can possibly insert in a film it's fashionable all your influential Idiot Friends already believe in it it's neatly condensed into Twitter hashtags it's the trick affluent people use to excuse their own affluence to pretend that being radical even as they espouse the same talking points and buzzword not thoughts as you would hear in any High status Art Gallery concert hall or fancy New York dinner party it is in short a substitute for Thought which is why it never seems odd to the radical Chic set that they should be nodding along sagely through the messaging of the biggest Hollywood Studios and it is on such substitutes for thought that Brave New World was constructed and maintained when radicalism becomes fashion it ceases to be radical true radicalism is the enemy of the harmonious Society fashion by contrast is the Midwife and nurse made of a safe and ordered unreality it is in short conservatism in an anarchist t-shirt everyone went to see the first avatar because everyone went to see it calling back to huxley's complaints about the session with seeming up to date and then people moved on and forgot everything saved the fact that they had seen it once long ago and they kind of remembered it looked a bit pretty this this is a death knell for narrative storytelling in cinema before phase four before the Star Wars sequels before the dceu before all those franchises that are now a buyer word for empty artistic decadence for fashionist morality we had Avatar it is the epitome of a pretty abysmal film very pretty and entirely abysmal and now we have another one and once again we're being told that this is the Cinematic event not only of the Year mind you no the Cinematic event of a generation a choice of words that reveals the concede if you bother to look for it to say something is a cinematic event is another way of saying current thing that which you must watch to be up to date to Brand it such an event is self-fulfilling every other major Studio has willingly used to decide and well out of the way because there's an event happening don't you know and there can only really be one event at a time no regard for the innate merits of whatever stories they themselves might have to tell of timeliness of theme and intent of import no there's an Avatar film out and there's no point getting in the way look look at all the people flocking to the cinema to see the Avatar film because there's nothing else on at the same time this proves that we were right not to put something else on at the same time don't you see Avatar has to make a billion to break even well I guess we'd better give people no choice but to go see it that's what competition means right guys the winner is predetermined everyone else applauds it from the sidelines now you might take it from all I've just said that I'm not going into Avatar the way of water with an especially hmm clear mind if I hate the first film so much you might wonder can I really be objective about the second am I not predestined to hate it whatever its qualities and look maybe you're right but I hope that you're not because everything I've said so far contains between the lines the ingredients of a good film Avatar's problem was that it had no story that it was a shallow imitation of superior Works cut and pasted in as an excuse for the visual effects Department to sell their Wares well then the alternative is quite obviously to tell a story with meaning and with purpose add depth to the world you're depicting and the characters who inhabit it prove that you have some reason to tell this story in particular that you have something to convey and if Avatar the way of water does that which is to say if it does everything the original film didn't then yeah it'll be a good film and not just the latest installment in our long decline toward entertainment as the feelies which begs now the obvious question has Avatar the way of water done that has it succeeded in any way no no it hasn't now it's been so long since the first film came out that it might be prudent to begin with summary of its plot since this is technically a sequel Avatar the first follows a man who leaves the safe confines of civilization to explore an untamed Wilderness much like Dances with Wolves he has a crippling injury specifically to his legs the use of which he has lost and he can't afford the medical bills to get them fixed a military bigwig offers him a way out much like Dances with Wolves off he goes into said Untamed Wilderness where he encounters a group of indigenous people who are oh so in touch with nature but whose existence and that of their verdant home is threatened by the very forces our hero is supposedly signed up with much much like Dances with Wolves having spent some time frolicking with the natives and learning their ways how hero is accepted as one of their tribe much much like Dances with Wolves one of them a pretty lady serves as his translator in his interactions with the tribe and he falls in love with her but their relationship is initially forbidden until he proves himself and gains acceptance much like like Dances with Wolves throughout the journey he compiles a journal that is used to fill in the narrative much yeah much like Dances with Wolves shortly after he gains acceptance into the tribe disaster strikes and the evil colonist Tito recently left turn up and invade causing much death and destruction much like Dances with Wolves faced with a choice between his old allegiances and his Newfound love our hero chooses love and he leads the brave band of natives against the evil colonialist aggressors just like Dances with Wolves they win and the evil colonizers are driven back though we know they'll come back again eventually just like Dances with Wolves and that's the plot of the first film I appreciate I've skimmed over a few details if you want a more thorough explication of the first film's plot go go watch Dances with Wolves because it is exactly the same say for the fact that that one is infinitely better incidentally I've pointed this out before anyone who pays attention to films has pointed this out before it doesn't take a tremendous amount of insight because it is so [ __ ] obvious and in response some Defenders of the first avatar have suggested that well all modern stories borrow bits and pieces from older media just look at George Lucas who combined Frank Herbert's Dune with kurosawa's Samurai the Battle of Britain type wartime epics of the 40s the Golden Age westerns of the 50s and the 60s if you criticize avatar for being derivative the argument goes you have to criticize Star Wars for the same thing this is what in the trade we call a moronic argument but it's not so moronic that it Warrens no response in that I've heard enough people repeat it that it must require some kind of response because evidently it's not sinking in it contains I suppose a grain of Truth in that much great art does indeed derive its beats its themes from older and archetypical works but it misses the profound difference between invention Innovation and derivation George Lucas derives his ideas from multiple sources but in combining them in new and exciting way that a grand epic he has innovated within the medium of film all Innovation derives from the invention of those who came before invention is in fact often quite useless in its own terms it takes Innovation for the wacky inventions of old to find a popular form and use if by contrast you simply take the entire plot of an older work and slap a new coat of paint on it your work is not Innovative it is purely derivative visual effects of course are a different matter their much innovation did occur with the film but it's probably also worth setting out at this stage the difference between the necessary and sufficient conditions for a good film a necessary condition is that which must exist for an argument to hold the argument here being Avatar or the way of water is a good film but the necessary condition cannot hold the argument alone a sufficient condition is that which must exist and which if it does exist is enough to hold the argument on its own good visuals are a necessary but not a sufficient condition for a good film a very pretty film that has no regard for character plot dialogue message or purpose is in fact a pretty [ __ ] film both pretty and [ __ ] kinda like Avatar so it's not enough to say of the way of water that it looks incredible you've met a necessary condition you have not met a sufficient one likewise themes I'm sure we'll come back to this during the plot breakdown that follows but a good theme is likewise a necessary but not a sufficient condition and it barely qualifies as a necessary one given good theme is so fundamentally subjective I've already heard people try and argue that the way of water Champions themes of family fatherhood and solidarity and that these are quote unquote good themes which makes it a better film than a modern offering that Champions so-called bad themes but this is not an argument for anything save your own semi-political bias toward the film but my themes was advanced in defense of the Last Jedi it was a [ __ ] argument then it is a [ __ ] argument now so if the way of water looks stunning and contains good theme whatever the hell that means that is still not enough for it to be a good film that by the way is not the only large Jedi comparison that can be made I've been struck by the reaction to a video on my second Channel how so many of the same old arguments have been trotted out it has good themes it's visually striking the director has a vision see also any defense you're likely to hear of the abysmal snyderverse one of these the visually striking defense is pure superficiality the holdo maneuver in The Last Jedi did indeed look beautiful but it was also staggeringly dumb and effectively broke the mechanics of space battles in a franchise that relies in large part on the Mechanics for its Space Battles it was pretty and abysmal on a writing level the other two the arguments from themes and vision are at best a defense of the intent behind the film they are not defenses of the film itself they aren't even especially good Arguments for the intent behind the film given how selective they their purveyors are about the evidence that they cite and the evidence that they ignore but we'll come back to that a bit later since we're doing a brief Roundup of arguments so dumb they're only deployed by people who'd have trouble calculating their own IQ even though it consists of most of two small numbers that the film has performed well at the box office that it has made a lot of money is not an argument for the film's quality it is at best an argument for its popularity though even then the fact the box office only accounts for those who paid to see it and not for what they thought of it makes it a sketchy argument even for that proposition most of the idiots who deploy this non-argument would not accept that argument were it to be deployed in favor of a money-making property they dislike Twilight and 50 Shades of Gray made a lot of money most of phase 4 and Disney Star Wars made a lot of money Coldplay BTS and Harry Styles make lots of money say we take off nuke decide for more of it the only way to be sure McDonald's sells more cheeseburgers than any given restaurant sells good quality steaks from which he would have to be mad to conclude that McDonald's does meat better than the proper Steakhouse popularity and quality are not the same thing this video will get many more views than any given idiot in my comment section saying but it's made squillian so you're wrong LOL but I'm morally certain that these idiots would not recount solely because of my comparative popularity oh and I guess there should be one final brief mention of the other arguments I heard frequently on my second Channel all those people flooding into the comment section to tell me that it was a good film because they left their brains at the door and thereby enjoyed it you didn't need to tell me folks that you were all a bunch of brainless morons but I guess stunning and brave well done representing the um the um I can't use the r word can I well done in short none of these things Vision Beauty themes profit is an argument for the quality of the film we're discussing they'd be terrible arguments even if their purveyors applied them consistently which they don't because the closer you get to a genuine Avatar defense the easier it becomes to have the purveyor of that defense sectioned under the mental health act on the grounds of acute mental incompetence the true sufficient condition we're looking for is that the film is Well written that is not to say that badly written films cannot be entertaining or pretty or humorous or enjoyable this is [ __ ] but enjoyable explains the long career of Arnold Schwarzenegger but for it to be good and enjoyable it requires a story that is well told characters that are well formed a world that is well built relationships that are well realized emotions that are well understood in property invokes and all of that stems from the writing so with that in mind let's break down the plot I'm going to apologize in advance the footage for this is not going to be quite so thorough as perhaps some of my more recent videos have been that's because it's Christmas and I really don't want to have to spend all Christmas and my New Year meticulously looking for Jake Sully's single facial expression in three hours of film sorry guys not gonna happen I should say that the movie cynic has already done the introduction I was planning on doing Avatar 2 is upon us and James Cameron is back to raise the bar yet again the bar has been lowered to gaps we can't even fathom if anyone can go down there and raise it back it's me his name is Link in the description folks now on with the blood we kick off with a long series of visuals the camera floating over a luscious forest and Sam Worthington sucking all the Charisma from an otherwise vibrant World by giving us a quick voiceover reminding us all how beautiful and dangerous the Beautiful Dangerous Forest is he reintroduces us to the Smurf people and what passes for their culture something about prayer beads memorializing their lives he and his woman from the first film you'll have to excuse me while I Google her name 99 tiri Smurfette he and Smurfette had a baby son then they adopted a daughter born from the Avatar of Sigourney Weaver who is still unconscious in a pod Sam Worthington here after Sully Smurf informs us that her conception was a total mystery the prayer beads he explains Mark all of these moments in their lives serving as a very convenient narrative trick because it allows for an awful lot of exposition a bead for the Sun so sorry Smurf can tell us about the Sun a bead for the daughter so he can tell us about the daughter and her unexplained birth a bead for their first communion with a tree which allows him to remind us that the Smurfs really [ __ ] love their trees it's a little bit contrived but it's not an entirely discreditable device it is though a narrative crutch if you look up anything about Avatar all the way of water online you'll likely to read some variant of the first film was much loved and the sequels were highly anticipated everyone really wants to return to Pandora but the Beards kind of um give the light to that because the basics of Pandora simply are not established in the minds of the audience hence this need for a reminder yes an awful lot of time has passed since the first film 13 years in fact but love love of places and the people isn't something we usually need to be reminded of two decades passed between Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace yet The Phantom Menace didn't require Liam Neeson to give us a monologue reintroducing us to Tatooine because Tatooine is Tatooine and you remember it even if like me you weren't alive when Return of the Jedi came out it's culturally iconic much like Pandora isn't in part it's because Pandora for all it was luscious and colorful was a substantially empty place we have to be told that the forest is dangerous because the first film didn't fix that with any special firmness in our minds toying with it a bit as it introduces to a few creature features but otherwise placing the thread on something Beyond the Forest evil Whitey colonizers we have to be reintroduced to the lore of the Smurfs in this opening passage because the film carries in so little by way of cultural content The Smurfs have the bog standard sub Pocahontas nobility of the Savage in the first film but precious little life the problem with the noble savage Motif is that it's really so hard to distinguish from base orientalism think the depiction of easterners Muslims Buddhists as enlightened spiritual gurus who meditate and talk bollocks about natural forces and folk healing it's an incredibly lazy Trope because it's actually a form of self-obsession it's deployed element is designed to hammer home a fashionable pseudo critique of our own Society not to actually portray the Savages as deep or true or individual the noble savage is distinct from us but not distinct from anyone else you could substitute the Smurfs for any other example of the Trope and all you need to do is tweak the aesthetic in order to slot them into an entirely different film that has an equivalent Reliance on that Trope that's the state of things going into the way of water part of the job of which must be to actually give the Smurfs distinct qualities a society a culture a history that is all their own prayer beads and tree communions aren't an especially promising start to this endeavor it's a bit like going to a house party and reacquainting yourself with that boring guy you met at the last one and then forgot all about as soon as you left whose name is probably Keith it doesn't improve when Sully Smurf goes on to tell us sagely that happiness is sacred one of those lines that is supposed to sound profound but that in fact has all the depth of meaning of something you smash out of a fortune cookie Smurfette keeps popping them out so there are now four children to keep track of I'm sensing a little bit of cars to bloat already we're then told what happened after the final battle in the previous film they sent the sky people back to Earth but a few stayed behind on Pandora mostly scientists and I quote loyal to the navi okay I guess the last film lifters with the strong impression that the only people loyal to the navi were one specific and very small team of science people Ellen Ripley's said but I suppose we can allow that there were many more such people around at the time and they just kind of forgot to make their loyalty known at the time there's also a young kid called spider a human baby who couldn't leave because he was too young for a cryo-casket so he's also a thing in this story I could ask why and how why does freezing people into hibernation only work above a certain age but this film is more than three hours long and if we start interrogating that kind of thing now the video will run into 2023 magical science [ __ ] is very convenient Because unless you establish rules for it it acts as a soft magic system you can pretty much contrive your way into any setup you like you can't deep freeze a baby we're fine I guess just add another character to the list despite being a human he spent all his time with the Smurfs growing up Suddenly Smurf describes him as a stray cat someone who will always be an alien one of them unlike Sally Smurf himself who's been a Smurf since um we're [ __ ] actually what the [ __ ] Sally he's only marginally more one of them than you are you plank this insult describes his character's intellect and his acting range too but anyway I get that Sully Smurf has gone full native but the film's opening only crosses the first few years since the events of the previous film it's not been an especially long time he himself has only been a Smurf for a very small fraction of his life he should be the one most likely to embrace spider no and then the film does something that's actually incredibly helpful as Sully Smurf explains it took him a few years to learn the Smurf language until this point they've been speaking with subtitles which poses a problem for me because I um um watching the film in a country where all the subtitles are in Spanish I think which I just hopped over to just for this evening to watch the film that's definitely definitely what I've done then he says that after a few years the language became as intelligible to him as the English language at which point The Smurfs themselves start speaking in English and the subtitles go away meaning I can actually follow their dialogue now thank [ __ ] for that I I suppose I'm gonna come back to regret that aren't I on we go watching as he teaches one of his kids how to shoot a bow watching as he and Smurfette go flying on their pterodactyl things amid the nonsensically floating islands of Pandora he tells us happiness is simple and then because we've had six and a half minutes to reacquaint ourselves with this world and its peoples Jimmy Cameron decides it's time for the plot to start so study Smurf ominously tells us that happiness can vanish in an instant this particular instance heralded by the appearance of a new star in the sky which he says can only mean one thing it could mean a few things actually but never mind the evil colonizes are back Dances with Wolves too dance harder now showing at a cinema near you the colonizers are not only back they're back in force and they land in a visually stunning sequence the Jets from their ships causing a big forest fire just so we know that evil has well and truly returned they emerge from the ships in those Mech suits that were absolutely stolen from The Matrix Revolutions and Smurfette seized the fire and has a cry then we jump forward in time and some distance away to where the evil army man from the first film is um back he was definitely dead never mind I guess they saved him by turning him into a navi a navi with a buzz cut just so we know that he is still evil army man in the first film he looked acted and sounded indistinguishable from Chip hazard in Small Soldiers every living thing that crawls Splash or squats in the mud wants to kill you and eat your eyes for Jujubes so that's not what your country can do for you only regrets that you have but one life to live so I think that will be his name throughout this video lest you think his return both inexplicable and nonsensical never fear because it turns out he left himself a video message for precisely this eventuality explaining that it was always the plan to bring him back for the sequel even though he was very much dead when we last saw him he was shot through the heart twice by Smurfette so I assume the film has a very good reason for not giving us a new villain whose mere existence would be much more plausible we will keep an eye on that one as we go but for now I'm afraid we have to get distracted by how do you even describe what follows well I suppose describing it would be a start the film is struggling with this particular bit of exposition because it clearly didn't write the first film with chip hazard's return in mind so besides having the video log detail all the most plot necessary details this is what happened this is what we've done this is why we've done it and this is what you'll do next it attempts to keep chip hazard's first film character consistent by having him deny the entire basis for making the video log in the first place the film unironically has him speak the line What You Won't Remember is my death because it hasn't happened yet and it ain't gonna and someone in the background says hoorah in case you'd forgotten the last film's army man bad motif this is um this is cringe making rephrased he is essentially sad I am not going to die but here's what you need to do once I'm dead to keep the next film going to be clear it is perfectly believable that he does not think he'll die remember his characterization in the previous film was in large part smoke superiority Supreme confidence in his abilities Supreme disregard for what he thought was a bunch of Primitives who he never believed could stand against the might of his troops and their technology what is supremely unbelievable is that he should have maintained this belief while also taking a spare five minutes to enact a secret Emperor Palpatine style death and rebirth contingency plan replete with information such as you're probably going to want some payback for the death I'm sure won't happen and Jake Sully's the guy you're going to want to kill for killing me even though I don't know at the time I'm speaking that Jake Sully is going to have anything to do with the death that I don't think is coming I just um how how was this green lit how is this your preferred setup for your sequel this dialogue makes Duke Nukem sound like Shakespeare it's absurd it's like the cut scene from an entirely forgettable action game from the late 90s you had so many options for a new villain with new motives a new character countless possibilities almost every single one of which making so much more sense than this but this is the thing you go with with James Cameron really killed long ago is the person now in his place actually in Avatar with roughly the same looks and personality but none of the talent I've been writing since I was about six years old tiny me writing 700 page Pokemon novels yes it's a thing no you will never get to see it I would have been ashamed to have come up with this it is I mean just just just play that back over play that back over your villain in this film is the Smurf clone of the evil army man in the first film who made a Smurf clone for himself and left a voice message for himself in the future telling him to go and take revenge on a man who hadn't killed him yet and that he didn't know would kill him because he didn't believe he was going to die and then and then he closes with the line Marines can't be defeated you may kill us but we'll just regroup in Hell Semper Fi we have lost the battle we will not lose the war just just [ __ ] off chip then we're back with a navi war party attacking a monorail train on bird and horseback and you might be thinking well maybe Jimmy Cameron's become a complete hack with dialogue and character but hey at least we know what he's good at action except that no not really because we see Sally Smurf diving at a helicopter shooting a rifle from the back of his pterodactyl and apparently these helicopters are so pathetically armored that a single burst of small arms fire just goes straight through them are they made of paper James why would the super high-tech colonizers who can build ships that travel through space use military aircraft that can't withstand a quick burst of machine gun fire hell there are sometimes of wood that can provide minimal protection against gunfire I guarantee you that a civilization capable of interplanetary flight has materials harder than wood why the [ __ ] are they using them why are these people to be feared if their military Vehicles can be taken out so easily and then [ __ ] Smurfette takes another one out with a bow and arrow the train was transporting weapons which The Smurfs land and steal I think the ones we're going to spend a lot of time with here are the kids we were introduced to earlier but it is very hard to tell because the Smurfs all really look alike another useless helicopter turns up to interrupt them but once again it is taken out without much fuss though not before it fires some missiles that hit very near the presumed children one of whom gets a bit injured up in space Smurf chip Hazard gives his reanimated Smurf Marines because there's lots of them now their mission kill Jake Sully while back on Pandora the war party returns and we have some family Strife between Sully and his kids who disobeyed his orders in going down to the crash train Smurfette tells Sonny he's too hard on them and he says it's his job to be hard on them because he is a father well [ __ ] me look at the lovely theme I now adore this film all that nonsense we just shot through now the theme it's family it's fatherhood that's lovely that's really nice that makes the film good I'm told reliably by by really unreliable people now look joking aside I understand why some people are Keen to Champion this a media landscape defined by themes and ideas that are but charitably Progressive has left large parts of the audience frustrated once common values and stresses family fatherhood masculine traits and virtues and whatever else have been very consciously de-prioritized and quite often stigmatized in their place we get the balkanizing fads of quote-unquote progressivism an emphasis on group identity against the whole the elevation of supposedly marginalized peoples against the lazily presumed depression of modern society the demonization of anything to the right of gramshi as conservative and reactionary and even fascist everything from kids cartoons to rom-coms elevating this or that tiny part of the population is recompensed for some perceived historic Injustice now I should say I am part of one such tiny population and though I think some aspects of the right-wing response to Modern media are overblown to the point of hysterics I do broadly agree with their complaints but here's the thing I've already said that I do not consider good themes a sufficient condition for a good movie this film has already undercut those so-called good themes with its recapitulation of other and at least equivalently damaging and less desirable ones the first film was an unthinking hyper fashionable Lampoon of everything from the military ethos to capitalism an unveiled rebuke of allegedly exploitative and corrupting an environment busting Western life all of that has already re-emerged in this film and that drum will only be beaten harder and louder as we progress through it but even ignoring all of that we have the self-same problem as gay people and women have in modern media [ __ ] writing has anything done more damage to Gay and female representation in film than the abysmal quality of the movies they represent presented by do you think that representing women in the ludicrous characters of Ray Palpatine and Captain Marvel has made people fonder of women generally is portraying all gay people as hyper Camp Pride Parade prancing bundles of sticks actually helping gays guys and lesbians by normalizing us in the eyes of society do you not think they're going out of your way to unnaturally big up the gay in children's cartoons might make the groomer accusations seem more plausible it's like those wacko Christian films occasionally come out and simply reconfirm the prejudices of the sane audience a theme attached to an abysmal product will fall with that product it will not Elevate the product if you decide to make a trans-inclusive musical about the Childhood Days of Adolf Hitler you are still depicting the Childhood Days of Adolf Hitler it doesn't magically become a story of empowerment and if you tell people that they have to like the adaptation because of its inclusive and empowering themes you are tying those themes to Adolf [ __ ] Hitler so no this film gets no marks for remembering that families are a thing that humans sometimes form the film will get marks for its own qualities thus far though it has no marks and is doing that theme and Injustice it's attached the theme of family to something that has been so far pretty bad but we've got a very long way to go so maybe it'll improve stop laughing it might we get our first sight of Ellen Ripley's Avatar who is still unconscious we then meet grown-up spider who's hanging around the lab dressed in the loincloth he throws himself into the theme by pointing out that it's not always so great to know who your father was and Smurfette's daughter reassures spider that he's not him him it turns out is Chip Hazard so I am morally certain this film is going to play on the tried and tested sins of the father Motif my prediction at this stage spider will have dark thoughts and do dark Deeds there'll be some We're Not So Different you and I a moment involving ship who he'll meets I I really hate to suggest that they'll try and shoehorn in some weird father-son mechanic between spider and Smurf ship but then at the end spider will realize that love and friendship overcome all challenges and yeah he'll go good again in the end well we'll see speaking of Chip he and his Smurf Marines arrive on Pandora and meet a strong woman in an exosuit she gives him a tour of the new base of which she is the commander she is the world Commander woman and she explains that the Earth is dying and so their mission is to make Pandora a new home for Humanity but that they must pacify the hostiles before they can do that say remember the first film no of course you [ __ ] don't well I do because I voluntarily subjected myself to the torture of watching it last week in that film the reason that evil colonists wanted to mine Pandora harder than Ron Jeremy but with far less warmth was bullshitanium I mean unobtainium that was it this impossibly valuable metal was the reason they were there because environmentalism hadn't quite become a full-fledged death cult way back in 2009 Greta thundberg was just a baby Artist as opposed to an exploitable artist back in the before times the theme and messaging of the first film was the milk toast evil capitalist exploitation Motif but now in 2022 environmentalism is a fully-fledged death cult and the Swedish Doom Goblin is akin to one of those child prophets beloved by a wacky Christian apocalypticists so the stakes have been upped unobtainium well I actually I don't think that's even gonna get a mention in this film forget it not important anymore the real reason we're here is that the Earth is dying which given Avatar takes place in the 22nd century still serves as a rebuke to all those hyper fashionable idiots who told us that we only had 12 years to save the planet about four years ago here though here though is a problem with themes as defense Avatar as a franchise really isn't any better than any other film We complain about today sure it says nice things about the family values in this film but it otherwise serves as a mirror to James Cameron's moral imaginings and James Cameron's moral imaginings are indistinguishable from your generic woko Haram child-minded Soldier it infects this film to such a degree that the sequel is prepared to entirely ditch the premise of its progenitor unobtainium [ __ ] it the stakes are higher now because that's what my New York dinner party friends demand so now the whole earth is dying which it wasn't just a few years ago but you know that's just how this works you think by the way that this might invite some pretty important moral questions later in the film don't you I mean if the colonizers are here and they're doing bad things but ultimately they have to be here and they have to do bad things because well otherwise the entire human race will die that seems quite important I wonder if the film will discuss this at any point across the next three hours chip and the Smurf Marines go out into the forest while Smurfette's daughter frolics around in the grass with some pretty sky jellyfish to be woken up by a spider the rest of the kids turn up and they make to go home but they come across the Smurf Marine's tracks in the soil and they follow them the Smurf Marines themselves come across the site of the first film's final battle including chip hazard's old Mech and what is left of his corpse the Scooby gang spies on them and rather than making any observations about the quite dire threat a roaming bunch of hostile avatars represents they just argue about whether they'll be grounded for investigating further one of the gang radio's sodi Smurf who is flying with Smurfette and he tells them to run away from the Smurf Marines but they inevitably get captured by the Smurf Marines we learn that daughter is a half breed because she only has four fingers and Chip Hazard learns that one of the gang is sodi's kid because because he has an attitude he flips him off and then he learns that spider is his kid so he calls base and he tells them that he's bringing high value prisoners back I think it has to go down as pretty damn lucky that he and his Smith Marines on their first visit to a vast jungle on this alien world just happened to be wandering through this precise part of it at this precise time to run into just the right collection of Smurf children to move the blood along as indeed it must be considered quite lucky from the Smurf Marine's perspective that the Smurf's children just happened to find their Trail and decided to do the absolutely most stupid thing they could possibly do in following them this last has a tenuous but present grounding in character traits because the kids have already been shown to be inquisitive to the point of recklessness I suppose any grounding is better than no grounding at all so yeah this this kind of works it does constitute some kind of progress chip Hazard then finds a video log showing his own death at the hands of well he thought it was Sully Smurf that's the memory programmed into him by real Chip Hazard back before real Chip Hazard knew he'd be killed by anyone this log shows him that in fact his death came at the hands of Smurfette now you might think this would have a significant impact on chip his entire motive thus far has been revenge against the individual who killed him he's mono maniacally focused on taking Vengeance against Sully now he knows that it was in fact Smurfette who killed him will the target of his Ayah change will he now be possessed by a bitter hatred of Smurfette instead with a consequent diminishment of his ill feeling towards Sally Smurf well the answer should be yes the villain in his story is now Smurfette after all he should absolutely hate her to the exclusion of all others if he comes across Sully and Smurfette in the same place at the same time he should probably pass over Sully in order to get at her the answer is in fact no for reasons this discovery doesn't actually change anything about him at all it doesn't impact any subsequent actions because Jimmy Cameron wants the film to focus on a fight of the fathers so to hell with inconsequential things like um consequences this by the way would be spectacularly easy to fix X let's show him finding the log but instead of it playing out his death in its entirety it could show Sally Smurf hitting him and the hit broke the camera leaving aside that there was of course no camera to break in the first film this would allow him to persist in his mission seemingly with his suspicions having been confirmed but in fact with the same partial account that set him on this mission to begin with playing then on the tragedy that results from certainty absent knowledge and he picks up his own skull and dog tags then he crushes the skull as Spider watches the way he holds it up and looks at it I genuinely thought he was about to say our last poor chip Hazard I knew him spider himself is by the way just Mowgli really I think that's pretty clearly the model and the film seems to be asking what might have occurred had mowgli's father turned up and been a complete belland that at least is innovation of a Kind though if everchip has a tell spider that he should have realized the jungle was a part of him all along the film will actually be doing the second Jungle Book you know that kind of awareness would be significantly out of character for a guy who is otherwise an entirely one-dimensional bogeyman though so I doubt we're going to get that moment Sully and Smurfette catch up to the Smurf Marines before their air support arrives and Sully takes one of them out with a tomahawk the Smurf Marine obligingly doesn't make a sound to alert anyone even though Sally took no measures at all to prevent that from happening and then they give up on stealth anyway when Smurfette shoots another Marine through the head with her bow triggering a hectic escape sequence for the kids while chip Hazard tries to bait Sully into fighting him significant plot armor is then deployed in the sequence that follows as the Marines fire what must be thousands of rounds at Sully his older son and Smurfette at one point Sully and son are running away in direct line of fire at the bullets all the many hundreds if not thousands of them obligingly Fly Above and to the side but never quite out them I assume spending some time dead has made these highly trained Marines a little bit Rusty with their Aim so they try some grenade launches instead and one of them knocks spider off a log and down a small hole whereupon he is again and again inevitably captured by chip Hazard doubtless setting up some kind of argument in the near future about whether the Smurfs should risk their lives to save a human because you know stories are good when you can predict exactly what will happen several scenes in advance that's um that's sarcastic foreshadowing by the way obviously that's not an especially good sign in the story do you know what's worse though it's laying out something like that which is the bare minimum expectation for character writing and the film surprising you by not doing it which is what in fact will occur but we'll come to that presently back at the war camp Sully asks Smurfette to take the kids and leave which pisses her off because she wants to stay and help protect her people they are especially in danger Sally explains because for some reason spider knows every detail of their operation meaning he could lead chip Hazard right to them and in case you missed that the film has taken family is one of its themes it decides to go full Fast and Furious in this argument Smurfette rages that she wants to protect her family Saudi says chip Hazard is hunting his family he wanted to take the family away so the firmware can be safe he has no plan but and I quote this family wherever we go this family is our Fortress family his family I don't have friends I got family [Music] back at the Evil colonizer Base spider is being mind probed which apparently consists of him being strapped to a chair and forced to watch some strobe lights while being gently questioned by World Commander women they're scanning his brain as they do all this but the scene is pretty lifeless World Commander woman isn't especially imposing and spider isn't selling the torture scene at all she asks him something banal he shouts some variant of I don't know or let me out of here this last being placeholder dialogue that should really have been replaced by something a bit less dumb in the final script I guess they just forgot to remove all the placeholder dialogue which is why everything everyone says sounds so banal spider gets a nosebleed which is the only way we know he's been under any kind of stress at all because honestly he's not acting this particularly well you think the guy who gave us the visceral horror of aliens who's put together some pretty brutal scenes across a host of his movies might have been able to summon something a bit more than this for a torture scene but I suppose James Cameron was interested in something else at the time and the film really needed to do more than this because it has decided to pinch the evader watching Luke Get Zapped bit from Return of the Jedi chip Hazard is watching his son get tortured or you know not his son the son of the man from whom he was cloned and he's supposed to feel a bit uncomfortable about it we know this because his eye twitches and that is called acting and then he intervenes to stop the so-called punishment suggesting a more personal angle but if the film is going to pursue the familial line in this way if it is going to try the Vader and Luke moment then it needs to give us a very obvious indicator a that spider is really suffering and B the chip Hazard actually gives a damn and it doesn't do either of these things again spider is just strapped to a chair while some lights are his head and the Bland woman asks in Bland questions the scene isn't purely derivative it's an attempt to take inspiration and apply it to a new setting new characters a new scenario with new conditions and connotations but in this case it's failed in the delivery of its Innovation besides which it's narratively difficult to convey anyway because of the setup chip and spider have shared a couple of scenes together probably not amounting to more than three minutes the bulk of which was in the capture scene from earlier they've had no meaningful interaction we know chip knows spider is the son of the man from whom he was cloned are we going to acknowledge that he is his son is that is that even the situation here well I haven't decided that one yet but anyway that's the only Revelation the only Dynamic element in their relationship thus far Luke and Vader had three films Vader's doubts and his lingering goodness were trailed well in advance of his salvation that was the end point of their relationship while here we are at the beginning of one we're forced to remember because it's unnatural all to remember that this chip Hazard has all the memories of old chip Hazard though it's barely been relevant at all but that chip Hazard didn't have a son at the time of the first film it was completely absent when what passed for his character was built but now it's deployed as though contiguously despite the fact that there's been a huge break in the narrative both internally to the film and externally in the time between the films chip has it has no backstory with spider neither of them have much backstory to speak of yet here was supposed to believe that a hitherto shallow cliche of a cold-hearted Ura Marine has developed instant parental instincts for a kid who couldn't have been more than a couple of years old when the man he was cloned from died and yeah when you put it like that that's an incredibly convoluted setup World commanderwoman pointedly reminds chip that spider isn't his son thereby reminding us of the essential confusion of the setup you can untangle the confusion and the film is going to have to try and do that but it's given itself exceptionally difficult job chip and spider have a chat in the cell block and Chip gives spider OG chips dog tags whereupon the film starts trying to tackle that difficult job with as much competence as you'd expect blue ship says that he's not OG Chip he just has his memories because he has his memories he knows that OG chip wasn't a very good father he's not apologizing for it because he isn't him but he says that he Blue Chip can help spider get out of the cell anyway if he plays along so um so here's the thing no Blue Chip is functionally OG jib he doesn't just have OG Chip's memories he has his personality his drive his motivations why else would he wake up with a pre-established want to take revenge against Sally yet if he is function of the OG chip in terms of memory and personality and he's telling the truth about OG chip being a bad father for the few minutes he'd have actually had to be a father at all then why was he especially uncomfortable during the earlier torture scene if OG chip cared about spider that might be explicable but he doesn't or didn't it's not been established because none of this was trailed in the first film it would have been tremendously out of character for OG chip to do what he just did but then he has to be OG chip in all of his Baseline motivation to make any Dam sense at all otherwise he'd not have been here to begin with I am really not sure the writers were prepared for what they've set up they thought that they were opening just one small can of worms and if he moved on quickly enough he people would not notice and just forget about it but no no that the worms are [ __ ] everywhere it will actually take days to clean up this mess the uh is it the plausible well I don't know if it's plausible an alternative is that this really is just chips Rouge to get information and I emphasize just a Rouge to get information yet no even that doesn't work because there's every indication that the torture device he interrupted would have got that information anyway making kindness and compassion entirely unnecessary conceit that if anything just made things more complicated for them back with the navi Sully Smurf passes the torch to some nameless generic Smurf to lead the Insurgency in his place saying the leader must die so the leader can be born which which doesn't doesn't work because he's not dead he's just leaving anyway he and his family leave and he claims this means the people the jungle Smurfs generally will be safe that also doesn't work because though chip Hazard is hunting him specifically the rest of the evil colonizers are not they are here to colonize the whole planet remember remember film remember how you told us that that's what they were here for about 20 minutes ago because the Earth is dying you seem to have sort of forgotten that very important piece of information the colonizers generally are at war with the Smurfs generally Sully and the fam going somewhere else distracts chip specifically the rest of them are still [ __ ] and spider still knows where the rest of them are meaning if he does lead chip to them he will have led chip to where he thinks Sully and the fam are but instead of just LED chip to The Smurfs that Sully is leaving to protect which is another plot thread we've apparently just sort of forgotten about you know that prediction I made earlier the argument about whether they should try to rescue spider when spider isn't even really one of them yeah yeah I might have been overestimating these writers because we haven't had that at all they don't seem to care about him in the slightest daughter Smurf had a bit of a cry but that's it they've just lost their cousin they referred to him repeatedly as their cousin they've just lost a kid who grew up with them they've just lost the only person in Camp who has an experience similar to Sully Smurfs in the sense that he's an outcast human but they don't give a [ __ ] if the film doesn't care about the fate of its characters if nobody they know really cares about their fate well why should we care about them in the audience Sully and the fam fly for many hundreds of thousands of miles without sleep to the Minecraft water biome of this film The Sea Clans who live among many hundreds of islands where Sully on the farm will be able to disappear Without a Trace because I suppose the hyper-advanced colonizers who arrived in spaceships from one assumes many light years away and you currently have many ships in orbit have absolutely no way of scanning the planet's surface from space and identifying major Smurf population centers oh oh except they absolutely can do that remember it's just that they've forgotten about it the farm is received by the Sea Smurfs and Young a sexy sea Smurf as she emerges from the water now I'll Grant you this might just be me being very obtuse or it might be the dodgy quality of the Indian Cinema that I am definitely sitting in as I write all of this but I really struggle to tell most of the Smurfs apart hence not trying to give names to many of the fam besides the very important ones solians Murph that principally the two sons in particular are very alike and they are very like all the other generic Smurfs too this is perhaps due to the video quality it may in fact be me or it may be a problem with having your entire cast made by computers I made a similar point about cut Culp in She-Hulk there's a blandness to their features and expressions that make them seem a little bit less distinct the people you know in real life are instantly varied and recognizable in large part for the huge conglomeration of tiny details that you barely notice in the moment but that form a large part of someone's physical identity tiny imperfections in this skin the shape of eyebrows hairline teeth facial balance the size of nose of ears how they smile how often they blink how often they make eye contact while they're speaking lips eyelashes the shape of the inner ear all things you would never think to remark upon unless any of them are exceptionally [ __ ] ugly but all things that comprise an individual because they are so many and because they are so tiny and because nobody actually spends any time thinking about them they reflect in the biases of computer animators CGI characters will have a smaller number of more obvious differentiating characteristics but these don't achieve the same uniqueness as the Myriad little things that nobody has the time or the attention to include and in a film composed almost entirely of CGI people this does become a bit of an issue The Smurfs are proportion to be beautiful long live toned full heads of hair large and beguiling eyes but all in roughly the same ways the sea Smiths are a case in point they have bigger hands that differentiates them from the jungle Smurfs and the film takes care to point this out by having someone ask how Sully and the Sully fam can possibly hope to swim when they have such tiny hands and besides slightly thicker and stronger tails that is really their only differentiating feature we are rich people you are Forest people that's different after that this film's fairly flippant approach to character writing and you get a whole bunch of vaguely pretty creatures but few if any individuals which in turn makes it hard to really give a [ __ ] about anyone the film hasn't told you repeatedly is a main character in any case here we meet Big Chief sea Smurf as Sully continues on his dances with wolf style narration conveniently telling us all the character stuff that we would never actually pick up from the performances such as who Big Chief C Smurf actually is what his personality is and how strong he is [Music] a tough leader who wasn't on a warrior is worried about and because the Smurfs are noble Savages we get the usual noble savage motifs really a play on the plot of the first film making this segment derivative of something that was itself derivative in the first film Saudi Smurf struggles to find acceptance because he isn't really a Smurf he proves his worth then he's accepted in their meeting now with the sea Smurfs Big Chief C Smurf's wacky wife says they can't be accepted because they're not real Smurfs they have demon blood Etc Saudi Smurf casualty mentions that yes he was in fact born of the sky people but he and the fam can adapt honestly guys just give us a chance to prove it posing at least one fairly chunky well-building question how on Earth would the sea smurfs have any idea what he's on about they have no idea who he is they say as much so can they really conceptualize the origin he's relating to them the impregation is they've had few if any dealings with the sky people that's the reason Sully and the fam came here after all so they could hide so what the hell did the sea Smurfs understand when he says he was born of the sky people have they even encountered any avatars the setup would suggests the answer is no but that means his explanation would be at best entirely meaningless to them and more likely would actually feed into their suspicions Big Chief C Smurf's wacky wife has said she thinks they are demons and not real Smurfs her words had some noticeable effects on the crowd around her and now you've confirmed that you are not real Smurfs that you are in fact born of the sky people compounding the fear of the unknown with the fear of the known the film repeating the wheel earn acceptance speed from the original almost certainly means that they will go on to earn that acceptance but should they even be given the chance to is that not a little bit too convenient wacky wife insults Sully so Smurfette hisses at her but Big Chief C Smurf intervenes to calm the women down the answer is one of those questions raised above would the seasoners have any idea what Sally was talking about by saying that hey Sully's people might be at war with the sky people but the sea Smurfs aren't and they can't let them bring the their War here suggesting they've had no meaningful contact with the sky people so they couldn't possibly understand anything they've just been told and should indeed probably drive out sudden fam for being some kind of demon spawn quite besides the risk of them bringing War to this peaceful community what the film wants to do of course is to show that we are stronger together here we have one tribe of Indians who've been fighting the European colonizers fleeing to another tribe far away and struggling to persuade them that the colonizers are any kind of threat to them I wouldn't mind this kind of thing tropes from The Narrative of History are the bases of all the great stories if the film weren't so blatantly ripping off any number of superior antecedents again there's a difference between innovating on established themes to create something new and just pinching a narrative wholesale and painting it blue Innovation is essential if you were to really create anything at all rather than simply repackage not least because it's hard to be especially interested in a story you've already seen play out a hundred times or more we already know exactly where the way of water is going with the tribal Strife because we've seen it already there is no mystery of creation no unexpected turn in the story which is one of the many reasons less than a third of the way through the film that I already find myself pretty [ __ ] bored Big Chief C Smith let Sully and the fam stay provided they learn how to be useful and then we're introduced to his children as if we weren't already struggling to tell the spawn apart and they're all going to teach Sully's kids how to be sea Smurfs indistinguishable blue people in a blue environment yay I can see why everyone loves the visuals so much the sea Smurfs by the way are almost impossibly romanticized we get a quick stroll through the village and it's like a Disney World Tour happy animals happy people all wondrous and shallow there's absolutely no sense of reality here the world doesn't feel in any way inhabited all its people are there when the show demands it be so they just pop out of existence when the show closes one of the harder parts of World building is to actually give your world to life off the page or off the screen to show without telling that there's a history here that its characters have lives when we're not watching them it's often achieved in the smaller details wear and tear snapshots of background characters actually doing things they would be doing in their daily lives things that have an identifiable use the ideal is to have your principal cast new to the area looking out at the world around them not the world looking in at them think Luke's first visit to MOS Eisley the way everyone around him has something to do is going somewhere doing something that doesn't concern him at all they barely even notice him the way of water of course does the opposite but why for example would a random sea Smurf just be sitting on a fish snake Thing by the side of the road they happen to walk down they're just waiting for our main cars to walk by in order that we get one of them interacting with the fish snake wondrously what is this person doing there why are they there why aren't they going anywhere they can't just spend their life sitting beside the road on a fish snake waiting for a protagonist to walk past there is a word in the English language one of those weird slightly archaic but quite lovely words that rarely gets an outing these days that word is wonderlust spelled with an a someone possessed of wonderlust has an Impulse 2 or a longing for travel but I'd like to swap a letter here for the purposes of this review Avatar the way of water has Wanderlust wander with an o a longing four or impulse two Wonder at its magnificence wander at the visuals wander at the facade of the world that it's created everything about it has to seem wonderful but this kind of Wonder is entirely surface level it's a wonder for the Eyes First and the ears are distant second this is the Prototype of the feelies mentioned way back at the top it's why everything in the world is looking in on our characters because this isn't really a world at all it's an exhibition everything is arranged to Delight the viewing audience there's no life off screen nothing happens unless the camera is on it everyone and everything acts On Cue stands in the appointed spot acts the scripted part it's not a story it's a theme park attraction and yes it is very pretty but I've made a point of avoiding much talk of the film's Aesthetics because that's precisely what we're supposed to talk about and it's what so many idiot Defenders of the film do talk about all those professional reviewers who say variants of it looks so gorgeous I sometimes forgot to even notice the plot all those people you'll find in your YouTube comment section and there's plenty of them under the Mini review I did on my second Channel saying well it doesn't matter if the characters aren't great it doesn't matter if the plot doesn't make sense none of that's supposed to be there you're just supposed to Marvel at how brilliant it looks as though that's the point and purpose of a narrative storytelling media like Cinema there is I'd say a distinct and well at least to me a distracting unreality to the visibles though it's impossibly an impeccably beautiful it's untouched it's undes-spoiled not so much Pandora as Eden and I'd argue that this approach Aesthetics as distraction is to miss the point of Aesthetics which is a as much about application as it is to anything else not just what is beautiful but why is it beautiful and what is this beauty in service of visual storytelling demands that what is beautiful to the eye augments what is beautiful to the ear and most importantly what is beautiful to the brain If a film attempts to leverage one against the other the visual against the cognitive the eyes against the other inputs to the cerebrum it becomes less beautiful for that conflict because it's not actually conveying anything it is again the feelies it's designed for base visual stimulation the film also entirely fails to find meaningful contrast the film has two principle modes it has Beauty and it has ugliness ugliness is reserved for the colonizers smoke fire ashes dirt metal beauty is reserved for literally everything else anywhere we are that the colonizers are not is beautiful and we spend the vast majority of our time away from the colonizers I'm sure I'm not alone now watching his studies kids go through another extended Wanderlust sequence in their first exposure to their Underwater World in finding the initial effect is beginning to wear off if it hasn't worn off already I get it it looks lovely look at all the colors look at all the wonderful creatures look at the patterns in nature wonder it at all Wonder at it some more look here's another fish Wonder at it here's a pretty coral reef Wonder at that look at the Slender Smurf girl swimming Wonder at her just enough enough already and it's all accompanied by the kind of music I associate with the aquarium footage my dentist plays while you're strapped to a medieval torture chair unobtrusive unremarkable vaguely pretty and on and on and on it all goes inconveniently while underwater they speak in some kind of sign language and so the subtitles are back and I have no idea what they're saying fortunately absolutely none of the dialogue in this film has been in any way meaningful and most of it is completely unnecessary to make sense of the scene not a good thing in any other context but quite useful if you can't understand subtitles so yeah I don't think we're gonna miss much by losing whatever they're saying to each other here back in ugly town with the colonizers spider leads chip Hazard and the Smurf Marines into the jungle for some reason and then because the film has new visuals but no new ideas we're back with the sea Smurfs learning to ride the fauna remember how in the first film Sally had to learn to fly the pterodactyls remember how that was wonderful well now the kids have to learn to ride the sea creatures it looks wonderful but it is exactly the [ __ ] same what is the point of this film why does it need to exist what's its purpose in life other than to piss me off and soothe the minds of morons with its pretty visuals the first film stole all of its plot and the sequel is stealing everything from the first one but why bother what are you adding to society James what are you giving to the culture what about this story did you feel some pressing need to tell again honestly at this point the only pleasurable realization is that for as long as James Cameron is obsessing over this zombie franchise he won't have time to [ __ ] up any other much-loved franchise and in case you hadn't had enough the exact same thing plays out with Sally who's being taught how to ride a flying fish by Big Chief sea Smurf he gets the flying bit right as you'd expect but he falls off underwater though nobody told Big Chief sea Smurf to act as though he had fallen off underwater because he acts as though he saw it happen looking into the air with anticipation and then grimacing at the fall he hasn't actually seen because it happened under the [ __ ] water and in case you still hadn't had enough of it we're back with the kids who have a bit more luck riding some mini leopleurodons and then we get a nice long segment where the sea Smurfs teach them how to breathe and it goes on and it goes on and it goes on and it goes on and then they're underwater riding the leopyridons again and then they're above the water regain in the sunset being congratulated for learning how to breathe this is all to taking I've actually lost count 10 15 20 minutes this kind of self-indulgent [ __ ] is why the film is over three hours long you could condense its new story elements down to about two minutes we then jump back across the jungle where spider yeah you've actually you've got to be [ __ ] choking you no we're back in the jungle where spider is teaching chip Hazard how to ride the goddamn [ __ ] Foreigner and having complained that the previous waste of time was a waste of time because it was just repeating the first film this one is even more closely repeating the first film it's repeating it exactly and entirely this is an absolute waste of time with the added nonsense being that spider is actively helping a bunch of evil Smurf Marines who know far less about the jungle and its secrets and are far less capable of navigating it than he does and is he hasn't been tied up he's not in Chains he's not Shackled there are a myriad of ways and opportunities for him to escape them but nah he's just he's just happily going along leading them toward the Smurfs despite having no reason to do so in every incentive and not to mention opportunity to get away from them this is an unintended Trope but it's increasingly common and it's increasingly bloody irritating take for another example Wang in Multiverse of Madness Wanda captures one and tortures his friends until he agrees to lead her to the evil Doom Temple he then takes it up to the evil Doom Temple but now it's just the two of them there's no one else she can hurt he's the only one who can interpret the symbols on the walls of the Doom Temple who can tell her about the story they relate the mechanics that she needs to exploit she'd have had no way to tell if he was lying he has uncounted opportunities to lie to her to mislead her to delay her and to frustrate her and she would have no way of forcing him to tell the truth even assuming she ever spotted that he wasn't telling her the truth but because he's a captive now the film just has him do whatever she says help her in any way he can because you know that's that's what the plot needs to happen well the self same thing is occurring here spider has no incentive to help the Smurf Marines he has every incentive to delay them to frustrate them to lead them astray not to mention to escape them bearing in mind that he is leading them to a Smurf Community he grew up with and the very clear if only implicit threat is that the Smurf Marines will kill his family if they find them why is he helping them but no he just happily goes along helping them telling them everything they need to know generally being an all-round useful little line cloth chap because you know that's what the plot needs to happen absolute garbage tier writing once again I got in trouble on Twitter for suggesting that some of the writing in this film is actually worse than phase 4 of the MCU I didn't say all of the writing is I don't think all of the writing is but at its worst this film does contain elements that are worse than phase 4 of the MCU this section isn't one of them this section is just as bad as phase four of the MCU as I think I demonstrated by comparing it with a scene from phase 4 of the MCU chip Hazard eventually Masters the bird thing not that we give a [ __ ] and then we're back with the sea Smurfs where we are still still learning how to breathe and how to swim and how to [ __ ] leopleurodons or whatever they're supposed to be doing while a voiceover says pseudo-profound things about the sea being Darkness and Light and life and death the sea is always right Etc my God 2022 has been a bump a year for terrible ocean-related dialogue we've had rings of power but Candor forever now avatar the Last Smurf bender and all of them within months of each other by the way I've condensed all of that into a paragraph the film isn't anything like so generous I've never been accused of being more concise than the thing I'm reviewing but in this example I have no choice to be because the film just goes on and on and on it's like a pretty screen saver and just as deep and full of meaning I'm reliably told that even people who liked the film thought this middle act dragged if that's so then [ __ ] my God no we will survive we'll survive this we have to once we get above the water again the film decides that what we've really all been wanting all along is for Avatar the teen drama so we now get an extended angsty teenage nonsense sequence from the kids who get into a fight with the sea Smurf kids because they're picking on them meaning Saudi Smurf has to have a father-son chat with the Smurf fam because you know family Smurfette has a mother-daughter chat with daughter Smith who is upset that she can't be like everyone else because you know it's family the Smurf boys are told to make friends and they go out hunting and then this screensaver comes on again there's absolutely no point describing any of it if you want a mental image imagine James Cameron jerking off over David attenborough's Blue Planet it's just lovely visual of the lovely Visual and on and on and on it goes one of the more interesting parts of blue planet concerns sharks and the film now decides to do an extended Jaws sequence as one of the sun Smurfs gets lost out at Sea and gets attacked by a shark what is any of this doing for the story you may ask well not much I think is the answer this film has broken records for the most expensive filler ever put on film ever so slightly beating the botox budget and Keeping Up with the Kardashians Smurf boy hides from the shark in a reef but he runs out of breath and then he goes to swim to the surface but the shark attacks him again but then the shark is attacked by a bigger fish there's always a bigger fish thank you bygone and there's always a prequel meme fish boy runs out of breath again and we think he's going to drown but then he wakes up on what seems to be an island but turns out to be a whale and we like whales so he thanks it for saving his life it has a harpoon in its fin he pulls it out yay we're doing that Trope now the whale is very happy and then the screensaver turns on again this time it's the whale doing orchestral get it orcas Orchestra I'm so sorry orchestral Maneuvers in the dark taking Smurf boy for a tour of the ocean depths because you see they're making friends the film is going to try and make out that fishboy has no friends this is going to be a very important plot point for later in the film his only friend is a whale that he just met knows nothing about and just decides he can communicate with I don't think he's actually got that information beforehand either but no he just knows he can communicate with it via sign language because everything is connected in this film don't you see Back at Sea Smurf Central daughter's mouth is still sad sorry Smurf has a father-daughter chat with her there's always room for family his daughter here is the heartbeat of God she says it's mighty lest you think we might be going anywhere with that not really that's also just kind of filler that's always the way with this film it goes through the motions of character and World building but it builds neither it is just the Motions included out of some sense of obligation I suppose the film wants to make it seem as though it's much deeper than it is none of it has any real depth or meaning it is pure superficiality given the gloss of the profound in the hope that it tricks people into thinking this is anything other than glitter on a turd the whale takes Smurf boy home he bails out Big Chief C Smurf's son Who tricked him into being attacked by a shark in the first place by taking the blame for being out at Sea to begin with and their friends now although you would be forgiven for asking why would he take the blame given Big Chief sea Smurf's son and his fishy Little Friends deliberately let him out to shark infested waters well that's not immediately clear why is the film taking time to show him making friends and earning respect when the film will go on to Pivot on his belief that he has no respect and he has no friends yeah that's not immediately clear either but in this case it won't ever be it's very much worth noting by the way because it is incredibly relevant to the way this film and his character are going that neither Sully Smurf nor Big Chief sea Smurf actually believes him when he takes the blame that isn't his he tells Sally Smurf that he was making friends as he'd been told to do hence bailing out Big Chief sea Smith's son he was lying and everybody knew it Sully Smurf knew he was lying Big Chief C Smith and his wacky wife also knew he was lying they share a knowing look with Sally Smurf and chastise their son anyway so everyone knows Smurf boy was essentially doing the politically Savvy thing and yet when he chats with Sally Smurf after the family meeting Sully criticizes him and tells him that he's bought shame on the family um but but no no no he hasn't that was the point of the knowing looks and the chastisement of Big Chief C Smurf's son the farm hasn't been Dishonored in the eyes of anyone that matters quite the opposite in fact everybody knows that Smurf boy took the blame in a bid to improve relations between the sari fan and the Sea Smurfs Sully criticizing him after the fact for something everybody knows he hasn't done serves a purpose as mentioned the film is trying to convince us that Smurf boy has no friends and he feels put upon that will be very important in explaining his subsequent actions but here this goal is at Cross purposes with the scenes preceding it and by preceding it I mean directly preceding it Sully Smurf has no in-universe reason to criticize his son he has every in-universe reason not to the film only has an out Universe reason to have Sully Smurf criticize his son James Cameron wants the story to develop in a particular direction and so that's what must happen the thing is it's all very well sitting there in front of a blank sheet of paper thinking to yourself here's where I want my story to go but you do actually have to write a reason into the story you're telling because James Cameron wanted to happen is not a reason emanating from Sully's Murphy's mind in acting as he does it cannot explain his actions in chastising his son the only reason he chastises his son is because his son has to be an Emo later in order for the plot to work the fact it contradicts the preceding scene Ah that's a mild inconvenience and then and then we get the backstory for the whale you know how when whales die and get washed ashore their corpses bloat and bloat until they explode yeah that's that's an apt metaphor for this film we're getting whale bloat the whale we learn isn't Outcast he's all alone because he's been blamed for causing many deaths for killing someone indeed but Smurf boy says the whale's his friend and he goes out to meet him again and he tells him he trusts him and then the screensaver comes on again and we get the umpteenth long pretty swimming sequence if you're bored of hearing me talk about all of this stuff just imagine what it's like to actually watch it because I'm condensing this the film did not need backstory for a [ __ ] whale but but you know what you know what I bet I bet we are gonna get some insane final battle where the whole planet Rises up against the evil colonialist I I'm sure that's where we're going I know I've been wrong before because apparently having even the most basic expectations for this plot is to demand too much of it but but no I'm reasonably certain that's where we're going because as you might recall it happened in the first film and if it happened in the first film there is a 98 chance it will happen in this one as well because that's how movie making works in the year 2022 and it goes on the Smurf kids go to some Temple of the sea Smurfs ancestors where we find an underwater Spirit tree what's uh yeah because you know because you remember there was a spirit tree in the first film and this film is just the first film but in a pretty new set so yeah it's a spirit tree again but this time it's underwater now that's different it does however trigger a vision in Smurf daughter where she meets Ellen Ripley who is her real mum remember her birth is unexplained I think she's actually voiced in this film by a de-aged Sigourney Weaver as well which is just slightly strange but this sequence is also very strange they have a dream hug Smurf daughter asked Ripley why she Smurf daughter is different from everyone else who was her father she asks but then Ripley Smurf gets yanged out of the dream and Smurf daughter has some kind of seizure so they have to rush her home back at the Village a science Smurf arrives in a helicopter and I am more than a little bit confused why given the Smurfs can fly pterodactyls Etc has the science Smurf arrived in a helicopter known the evil colonizers have a way to track stuff like that wouldn't taking a helicopter increase the risk of being discovered additionally how did cyan Smurf know that he was needed how did they communicate with each additionally how did he know where to come given the whole point of Sally Smith and his Smurf family coming out here was to go into hiding additionally why did Sally Smurf and his Smurf family come all the way out here to go into hiding because they feared the enemy had captured spider who I should mention they haven't talked about once since he was kidnapped despite him being their foster kid but you know [ __ ] it why do that though when the science Smurfs now know where you are too they can contact you and so they could give away your location if they were captured just like spider remember how the evil colonizers arrived in spaceships remember how those spaceships are still up in orbit remember how they are incredibly technologically advanced with arsenals including all kinds of fancy scan attack do you mean to tell me that they don't have anything up there that could detect the existence of the sea Smurfs or that could track the flight of birds Sally Smurf and smurfam used to get here or that could track [ __ ] helicopters used by science Smurf to come out and heal Smurf daughter from her epileptic seizure they can't do any of that meanwhile spider who's captured hesitated there going into hiding but whom they apparently don't care enough about to so much as mentioned never mind fear for his safety while he's willingly helping out chip Hazard on a side quest in order to track sodi Smurf and fam to the place they left [ __ ] hours ago that there is quite an extraordinary amount that's wrong with all of this I think the short form explanation is that it makes precious little sense but well we're only halfway through the film so we're not going to dwell on it yet because there's more important nonsense to get onto the science Smurfs can't seem to figure out what's wrong with daughter Smurf which pisses off Smurfette Big Chief sea Smurf's wife who you might remember considered all the Smurf fam demons until pretty much this scene and who I suppose I should point out is pregnant because there's a chance that'll be relevant later while she's apparently overcome her deep-rooted religious antipathy toward the demon Smurf fam and she turns up offering to help heal daughter's math so the science Smurfs Julie get out of the way and Big Chief sees Merv's wacky wife decides to use acupuncture to heal daughter Smurf as she's doing all of this Sally Smurf is informed by the science Smurfs that his daughter has epilepsy and the non-smith science friend who came along for the ride delivers this fantastic lion if she sees us underwater again it could kill her the phrase no [ __ ] Sherlock was coined for you my friend well [ __ ] done top observation work I'm so glad you popped up in this film to tell us things that are so blinding the obvious that fans of the film might otherwise have missed them acupuncture cures daughter Smurf and then she has a cry meanwhile up in the sky chip Hazard and the Smurf Marines are flying about on the pterodactyls and Chip inspired her are becoming friendly spider who you might remember was brought up and raised by The Smurfs and who never spent any time at all with his father and who loathed even the memory of his father until right now now he's teaching chip some Smurf words and they're having a laugh together and then finally something halfway sensible happens chip is informed by radio that a radar did indeed track the science Smurfs gunships to the Sea Smurfs Islands five points to the evil colonizers for remembering that they are actually allowed to use the technology that got them to this planet to begin with almost an hour and 40 minutes into the film but Five Points deducted from Sully Smurf and science Smurfs because how the [ __ ] did they not expect that this would happen I accept that stupidity is this film's meta but characters in Universe aren't supposed to assume that their opponents are stupid the only way bringing science murfs out wasn't going to attract attention is if Sully's Murph assumed the evil colonizers will be too dense to bother tracking the skies from orbit which categorically doesn't work because because if he assumes that they are dumb and that they're useless he had no reason to take the DraStic course of action he took in abandoning his tribe and taking his family across the planet to hide with the damn sea Smurfs in the first place the only way out of this which is an imperfect way out is if you assume that Sally Smurf was so scared for the life of his daughter that he decided to take a known risk in inviting the science Smurfs over but a the film doesn't set this up at all and B the science Smurfs were totally [ __ ] useless anyway Big Chief sea Smurf's wacky wife healed the daughter and they already knew she was a Healer because that is Smurfette's justification for yeeting the science Smurfs from the tent now look I consider myself a very lucky guy not only do I get to do this for a living but I'm also privileged to have a small role as a writer for a video game at the moment and no no [ __ ] spoilers sorry but it's been a fascinating insight into how a good writer's room is supposed to work issues like this botched setups baffling contradictions unsupported conclusions things that arise from thoughtlessness and carelessness are not or should not be normal I get the sitting on writer's rooms every decision taken by a character in that writer's room no matter how big or how small every event in the plot is Thoroughly examined all of it has to make sense the chain of sense must be unbroken from first principles to end action if there is a break somewhere in that chain it has to be discussed does the break in fact exist why is it a break is the break really what we think it is can it be patched up with the insertion of a line of dialogue an action further back in the story something later in the story that can retroactively explain it perhaps this isn't just true of important characters it is true of every character and every decision that's made this is the point of having a writer's room to begin with only ones you can say with a high degree of certainty that there is no break in that chain or that the break has been repaired is that plot beat that line of dialogue that character action accepted yep it takes a good long while yep it's more expensive than just throwing [ __ ] at a wall and hoping some of its decks but that is how you get a well-rounded story and well-rounded characters that make sense in a film as big as Avatar with as much money behind it with so much time having been spent on it with such big Studio backing it there is no excuse for not taking this approach and yet we see it all the time in big budget Productions the only explanation for that is carelessness you don't make mistakes like this if you care about the story you're telling and the characters you inhabit it the prosecution would like to enter exhibit number 15 791 into the record James Cameron does not give a [ __ ] about the story he's supposed to be telling it is all an excuse for stuff to happen to hell with logic to hell with consistency and I've had some people point out in my comment section on my second channel that this is all James Cameron has ever done and that that's what makes him so good apparently you just had to switch your brain off in order to watch Terminator 2 or aliens or the abyss but no that that's not true people who say that have already turned their brains off it's the kind of thing you can only say if your brain has been switched off it's certainly true that James Cameron hasn't created thoughtful entertainment in the last God knows decade or more actually longer than that because the first avatar is 13 years old shall we say two decades perhaps but it wasn't true of his great films that everybody loves and remembers you can't simply say well because they're action films they don't have to make sense narratively no the characters actually make sense in Terminator 2 their motivations are fleshed out their relationships make sense the action that takes place on the screen has been set up and is Justified and is done with as much of a mind to realism as you can get in a science fiction story about a time traveling machine who comes back in time to murder a small child some care and attention was placed into the crafting of that story ditto with aliens Avatar is not comparable to those films you cannot say James Cameron has always done this therefore there is nothing wrong with Avatar because you're flatly wrong about that he didn't used to do that there's a reason I and many others like those old films and [ __ ] despise this one because something about what James Cameron does has changed something about what he does has been lost and then on top of all of that where exactly were the Smurf Marines going when they got the message to where were they flying where was spider leading them the film does just seem to have accepted that spider should be Leading the People he hates toward where he thinks the people he loves are for absolutely no reason whatsoever but it does rather seem as if this was not especially present in the minds of its characters they seem to have just been flying to fill time in some kind of holding pattern until the plot could catch up and send them in the right direction except they don't immediately go to where the signal was picked up because instead they teleport back to base where chip Hazard tells world commanderwoman that the signal was lost over Open Water I just why but that they could project its course and its speed and that creates a trajectory pointing toward these group of islands World Commander woman complains there are hundreds of islands gee such a shame you don't have spaceships in [ __ ] orbit a chip Hazard though tells her that Sonny Smurf must definitely be there and if she gives him enough ships and aircraft he'll bring back his scalp you might remember dear viewer or you might not because it wasn't eternity ago but you may or may not remember the world Commander woman doesn't really have much skin in this particular game chip Hazard is on a mission to kill Sully Smurf because he told himself he needed to get revenge for Sally Smurf killing him even though he hadn't killed him at the time he left the message and he never believed that he would but it [ __ ] setup isn't it wonderful world Commander woman is only interested in so far as killing Sully Smurf will and I quote pacify the natives to allow for the human colonizers to get control of the planet but as this film took care to tell us back when we were first introduced to them the sea Smurfs are not and have never been and war with the colonizers that was their reason for not wanting to take in suddy Smurf and the Smurf fam to begin with the hostiles are the tree Smurfs Sally Smurf was important because he was the leader of their Insurgency but now he is not the leader of the Insurgency he's in hiding over with the peaceful sea Smurfs so Chip Hazard is asking World Commander women to lend him an army of ships and mechs and God knows what else to go hunting for a man who just isn't in the fight anymore thereby starting a war with an entirely unrelated and peaceful tribe of sea Smurfs in order to pacify the jungle Smurfs you and I can sit here and we can do the work these writers were too damn lazy to do themselves if we want to we might venture for example that the evil colonizers do not know that Sully Smurf isn't leading the jungle Smurf Insurgency anymore they might think that he's over with the sea Smurfs to raise some kind of rebellion there the evil colonizes know of the existence of the sea Smurfs because World Commander woman complains that there are hundreds of villagers to search which makes it difficult though if they know the sea Smurfs are over there then they will probably have noticed that they are not at war with them which weighs against any decision to invade them but let's continue this hypothetical train of thought that they might have had the writers not been hacks they think study Smurf is actually over there to incite the Sea Smurfs to join his Insurgency in which case it might be reasonable for them to take an interest in that part of the world to pursue Sally Smurf over there to stop his plan before it bears fruit and he gains more soldiers for his cause that I think would be a tenable explanation he might still say that invading sea Smurfs on the back of this complete lack of information would still be a gross overreaction on the part of the Marines but against that I'd wager every war the US has fought since Vietnam no overreaction isn't the problem with that hypothetical explanation however the problem with the explanation is that none of it is in the film the film hasn't considered any of it the film doesn't care about the where the What the how and the why of it the film is only concerned that it happens even if it happening leads to an expansion of a war that the Marines are already struggling to fight and so because that's what Jimmy Cameron wants that's what Jimmy Cameron gets if you ever find yourself defending a film by saying okay but the characters could be thinking X or the character could have concluded why check thyself [ __ ] you are not being paid tens of thousands of dollars to write the screenplay for them you are watching a finished product do the characters think this and conclude this in the script as it is written no no they don't that is as far as you need to go and just like that chip Hazard gets his Armada or rather he doesn't he has to commandeer an armada there is already a big hovercraft thing and a bunch of useless helicopters heading out to sea chip spider and the Smurf Marines fly over to it the crew of the ship apparently haven't been told of his arrival though because they see some Smurfs riding pterodactyls toward them and one of the hovercraft crew says Bogey's inbound luckily though they are incredibly LAX and their immediate response is not to open fire so they just wait around until the pterodactyls land and then they learn that the Smurf Marines are the good guys they've been told are coming they have a bit of a briefing for no very obvious reason they are just letting spider wander around during all of this overhearing all of their plans taking in all of this very valuable information despite him being a prisoner with supposedly at least obvious remaining sympathies for the enemy they're drawing their plans against wait did I say obvious No No actually they're not obvious that they are presumed because the story really demands that he should have them but the plot sort of has forgotten that hence him being so very helpful to the Smurf Marines not only has his family shown known concern whatever for him he's shown no concern whatever for them and you love me some good character writing the ship incidentally is not in fact military it is a whaling ship the captain complains that he has whale quotas to meet and he's not happy about being dragged off to search hundreds of sea Smith villages should we spend some time wondering why it is that this vast military force doesn't have a single actual military ship and crew to spare for this Mission should we ask why it is that they really need a ship at all given they could just fly there and it would all be much quicker or should we just assume that this will be necessary for some stupid action sequence later on yeah I think that's that's probably the safer bet James Cameron already has the action sequence in mind for some reason it's going to require a whaling ship and some helicopters so that's why they get the whaling ship and the helicopters even though it would have made so much more sense for them to have got something else over with the sea Smurfs some sort of horn goes off the signal that a pot of whales has returned prompting Sully Smurf to talk about endless cycles of migration everyone is very happy that the whales are back so on goes the screensaver again yep it all looks lovely there are whales and there are baby whales the whale families meet the seasma families which we know because Sally Smith tells us that all of this is happening with his trademark lack of inflection [Music] of their season apart of deaths births old friend loves in case you were wondering the film wants us to know that the natural world is one big happy family The Smurfs and the whales are quite literally best friends it's all part of Gaia don't you see unlike the evil colonizers who do evil things like rape and pillage and um try and save their civilization from Extinction remember that remember how that brand new piece of incredibly important information has made it into a grand total of one line of dialogue and how it ought to profoundly shift our view of this entire conflict but hasn't done anything of the Cayenne because it's never been mentioned again and nothing has ever been made of it yes yes I am so glad we've had so many hours of pretty screensaver stuff otherwise we might have actually had something resembling a moral dilemma to Grapple with we might have actually had to think and thought is this film's nemesis Smurf boy though is sad because he's friends with the outcast whale and this part is presumably the part from which he is Outcast remember that remember how that new piece of information made it into a granto the one scene so far not to have profoundly shifted our view of thy Society but hasn't done anything of the kind because it's never been mentioned again and nothing been made of it yeah yeah but those screensavers are really pretty though right I mean they're really something then some other sea Smurfs are sad because we hard cut over to a village where chip Hazard and the Smurf Marines have arrived and are interrogating them asking them if they've seen Sully Smurf anywhere around these parts the sea Smurfs say no they haven't seen Sally Smurf so one of the Smurf Marines shoots a Leo pluridon and all the sea Smurfs get very upset about it spider takes this opportunity to remember that he is a character with morals sometimes and he starts complaining that the Smurf Marines are doing bad things and that this is very wrong we know he thinks this because that is exactly what he says he says please please don't do this this is wrong what you're doing here is wrong spiders is honestly such a peculiar character in that he's not really a character nothing absolutely nothing about him has been done right and yet he still made it into the final draft of the script we've already gone over his bizarre non-reaction to events how he was bitterly opposed to the evil colonizers because he was brought up by The Smurfs only then to be found cheerfully helping out the evil colonizers track down the Smurf the moment he was captured because he's building a relationship with the Blue Smurf clone of a father he's never met but knew was very evil so his motivation it's not so much broken as it is non-existent now the script demands that he remember which side he's kind of on sometimes and so when ship Hazard has a gun pointed at the head of a sea Smurf woman and he demands that Spire to tell her husband to fess up if he wants his wife to live spider says no stop doing this what you're doing is wrong which is um slightly messed up because he's refusing to translate a message that would actually have saved the woman's life at least potentially but that's not really the problem with this scene the problem with this scene is die dialogue and acting the first of these actually stems from his motivation because the film hasn't taken the time to give him anything like a moral character or indeed any character at all it has no trouble lazily having him repeat convenient lines when the plot wants to pluck on this or that heartstring what did Spider think the Smurf Marines were going to do to the Smurfs once he'd LED them right to them which he was happily doing until this exact moment did he think about it at all no no he didn't because the writers weren't thinking about it at the time either so the characters they're writing couldn't be now fished with a team version of what would inevitably have been done to dismiss spiders moral imagination has been turned on again but this is entirely unformed the dialogue is shallow and surface level hello my name is spider this is exactly what I'm feeling in this moment what I'm feeling in this moment is really what I should have anticipated happening in this moment but didn't anticipate happening in this moment because the plot needed me to be doing the opposite thing earlier what you're doing is wrong though I stubbed my toe and I am in pain I prefer Cheerios to call my because Corn Flakes get soggy when you leave them in the milk for too long and that is bad so so yeah his motivation is screwed moral imagination and character Matt's non-existent meaning the dialogue is screwed also and then on top of that we have the acting range the critical Drinker once described Daisy Ridley's acting range as specific which is a brilliant line I wish I'd come up with spider though is a bit more limited even than that he doesn't really do acting at all there's no specific scene in which what he does is good or even approaching good because he doesn't really do anything he's just a teenage boy in a loincloth who's given occasional lines to say because nobody else is around to say them so motivation is screwed moral imagination and character are non-existent dialogue is screwed acting is bad can it get any worse why yes yes it can because he's also pointless he has been pointless from the moment he was captured his point was supposed to be that he could lead the Smurf Marines to the Jungle Smurfs even though he's should have had absolutely no incentive to do that whatsoever but that's all gone now that entire sequence him leading them through the jungle teaching them to fly pterodactyls searching for The Smurfs well that's sort of been reckoned after a fashion or at least its purpose and meaning has been reckoned it didn't need to happen because it's affected nothing it was essentially the film placing these characters in a holding pattern until the plot popped up and said yeah we need them over here now at which point the radio message ex machina is used to point them in the right direction that means that nothing spider has done has had any effect and he has no agency at all the only thing he has left is this nonsensical father-son relationship with the Smurf clone of his dead dad who he never met and always hated because he was bought up since he was a baby believing that his dad was a villain which he was the film has been awkwardly trying to suggest that a relationship is forming which is a terrible idea that's not supported by the character work but accepting that it is an idea that the film is pursuing it's not delivered anything on it at all he goes from Heating and hissing its Smurf chip to happily leading him on a quest to find and murder his adopted family we got one scene of them together on a pterodactyl with something that might just about be called banter now he's seen how evil his not father is again which ought to remind him of what he should never have forgotten in the first place his clone daddy is a [ __ ] but the film must have something in mind for him even if it stripped him of everything save his line glove the only thing left is this father some relationship that shouldn't exist and doesn't exist despite the film thinking that it should and does so I imagine that'll be where the payoff is going to be found later which we already know will be terrible because there isn't really anything to pay off to begin with now despite my carefully cultivated reputation I don't actually like seeing people I [ __ ] it what am I saying of course I love seeing people fail it's delicious but this is a specific thing it's not a general one I don't like seeing people fail when they've done nothing to deserve it I don't like seeing people fail when they've been given a very difficult job and their best hasn't been good enough and let's be clear this is a very difficult job it's difficult because the actor Jack Champion is disarmingly Young I think he's been attached to this project since he was about 13. a huge amount of his scenes will have been filmed either entirely alone or on a sound stage with a bunch of weird looking people doing mocap it can't be easy to play off of that hell even Ian McKellen almost cry with frustration but having to do green screen scenes for The Hobbit with nobody to interact with and he's been in this game for several centuries so a young actor in a very difficult environment compounding that he's been given very little to work with the character he's playing is all but non-existent you can only cook with what you have so I feel for the guy I really do maybe he is in fact quite talented I hope he is I hope he has a long and successful career until he starts spouting the opinions of Mark Ruffalo then I'll happily ridicule him but I am a Critic and I do have to point out that with all these qualifiers and providers considered he's done a pretty nav job even with what he's been given he just doesn't emote he doesn't carry his lines he does inject any real feeling into them he had a credited role in Avengers end game when he was younger still I think he was listed as boy on bike well here he's really just boy in line cloth there's nothing more to him than that the vast majority of the fault of course lies with the writers and the director but some of the blame does have to lie with him as well he said in an interview that he was prepared for people to both love and hate his character this having to do with a certain decision he makes later that we'll get to in about five years time by the time I finish this script but I think unfortunately that that was premature and it was presumptive I don't think anybody will love his character I don't think anybody will hate his character I don't think anybody will feel anything about his character at all or even really remember him for more than a couple of weeks or a month at best because well he just doesn't have a character to which we can attach any emotion in the first place anyway he has a moan about the Smurf Marines being mean so Chip Hazard decides not to kill them instead he just burns their Village good job they all grew up surrounded by water eh and oh my God it's still [ __ ] going chip Hazard gets bored of burning Villages and decides he'll need to bait out Saudi Smurf instead how you might ask would he perhaps remember that he has spider in captivity and spider is Sally Smurfs Foster son and he might then serve as useful bait no no he doesn't instead he's going to hunt some whales why you might ask well you see because the sea Smurfs considered the whales to be part of their family so hunting the whales will piss them off and they will attack that by the way answers the question raised however long ago it was why did this vastly powerful invading Army not have any military ships to send why did they have to commandeer a whaling vessel well you see because um because this has to happen because James Cameron wanted to make sure that we know that nature is good and capitalist colonizers are bad unless we haven't been smacked so many times in the head by this Motif that our brains are leaking out of our ears because an attack on nature is an attack on us all because he wanted to have chip Hazard bait out Sully by going up the whales like a Japanese man with a temper that is why it was so vitally important to do something so nonsensical as commandeering a whaling ship for a military Mission ah but then you might point out chip Hazard didn't know that this was his plan until after he'd commandeed The Vessel which makes it very [ __ ] lucky that the vessel they commandeered even though they didn't need to just happened to be a whaling ship and you would be absolutely right to point that out but you see this bizarre pattern implausible decision giving post-hoc justification goes deeper still because chip has arrived at this whale hunting Plan before he's learned what the significance of the whales is he arrives back on the ship and he explains his plan to the captain of the ship a marine biologist guy then says he is the human Scientist by the way who came with Smurf scientists earlier he's here now and he says no you don't understand the sea Spurs really love these whales if you attack them it'll be like attacking their family to which chip Hazard says exactly so um so so wait up I'm a little bit confused I'm a little bit confused about a number of things most importantly why would it ever occur at the chip Hazard that attacking whales would bait out the sea Smurfs if we didn't yet know about the whale's significance he knew nothing about the sea Smurfs before he got here he knows very little about them now he's never encountered the whales the film they think attempted to set this up when it had one of the Marine shooter leopleurodon that clearly made the sea Smurfs very upset but it's a bit of a leap from that to therefore killing a whale will start a war that will draw out not only the sea Smurfs but this one very specific guy who happens to be hiding with them on top of all of which the marine biologist who confirmed that this would happen after he'd already concocted the plan do I think is the non-smith scientist we saw earlier when Smurf daughter had her epileptic seizure I can't believe this is all in the same film but whatever anyway he knows how sacred the whales are he's a Smurf sympathizer some of his best friends are Smurfs and yet here he is very conveniently serving on a whale ship for the purposes of exposition I mean well okay it's not impossible scientists do in fact piggyback on all sorts of commercial shipping Enterprises in the real world it's a cheaper alternative to funding entire research ships I don't know if scientists routinely travel on actual whaling vessels in the real world but let's assume that they do and let's assume that some of them are a bit morally uncomfortable with whaling as an industry as people generally are there's a big difference between going along with a whaling ship even though you find wailing distasteful and going along with a whaling ship while believing that whales are gods and we're told over and over about the interconnectedness of Pandora the boilerplate spiritualism that infuses all of its nature this knockoff Gaia in which every living thing is a connected part of a whole do you mean to tell me that a scientist who understands all of that who sympathizes with its constituents and who may even believe in it himself that he would willingly go on a god murdering wailing ship for for what data that Beggar's belief but hey if he weren't here who would be around to provide the audience with much needed exposition of this basic mechanic oh my God this film is giving me a migraine over with the sea Smurfs Smurf boy is chilling with Outcast whale for some reason the film has decided that they have a lot in common Outcast whale is an actual Outcast well Smurf boy well he feels like an outcast he says he feels all alone too just like his whale bro but why for what reason I think he's moaned about something vaguely similar before but once again why where has this character trait come from what about his character supports this conclusion and why is his only true friend a [ __ ] whale you know what the film is attempting to go here that sort of emo younger brother feeling Outcast from his family is a Trope in many films there's nothing in this film that isn't a Trope in many better films that came before it but you do actually have to work your way to that conclusion you do sort of have to do some character work to justify why the character thinks that that way nothing that I've seen in this film could justify that the film is Comfortably over three hours long yet every single one of its character beats feels rushed slapped on at the last second no time for setup or interrogation there is no reason for a film this long to have rushed its Central characters its underlying Motif is the want for family and yeah fine this is an expression of that but we don't really need this expression of it because every other character is also an expression of it if you got this far into the film without spotting what its theme is one more example is not gonna help you because you've got the intellect and awareness of an avatar fan repetition can be very helpful but there comes a time when that repetition must stop you can make a point you can stress that point but if you keep stressing that point you begin to labor that point you could have cut this entire subplot from the movie and you would have lost nothing because it adds nothing new at all he asked the whale why it's in our cast and to find out Smurf boy well he swims inside its mouth and it swallows him radio I mean I really dread to think where this Jonah and the whale skit is going inside the whale yep I'm actually I'm actually having to write this my God this film everything gets glittery and then part of its throat opens up and it has some tentacles inside of it Smurf boy plugs his USB cable into the tentacles and that gives us flashbacks to an attack on the whales by the evil colonizers at some point in the distant past I think the message here is supposed to be that he wasn't strictly speaking an outcast or rather he wasn't an outcast because he went and wantonly murdered people which is the story we've learned about him so far rather the colonizers killed his family we assume by the way that the whales and the Sea Smurfs featured in the flashback had nothing whatever to do with the sea Smurfs we now know and spend our time with because we very clearly been told that these sea Smurfs are not at war with the colonizers though we are also and inconvenient immediately told that attacking the whales would bring the sea Smurfs out to war that chip hazard's plan remember so does attacking whales only bring some sea Smurfs out to war they can't bring them all out to war because if it did they'd already be out War because we just had a flashback to an attack on the damn Wales that didn't result in our current troop of Smurf people going to war I'm sure we'll come back to this momentarily but for now that's the Wales backstory out of the way thank God so now we're back with the sea Smurfs where Big Chief C Smurf and his crazy wife are scandalized that Smurf boy should have bonded with a whale they still believe was an outcast it's unclear how much time has passed by the way since the scene of that flashback but you would think alcos well might have had some interaction with the other whales at some point and they might have a better understanding of the fate of the other whale part because as you doubtless remember we've been very clearly told that they all consider each other to be one big family however then has the myth of the outcast whales survived if you is not in fact a reckless murderer but rather someone who acted in self-defense did it just never come up in conversation with any other whale that they know I still can't believe that I'm writing this did it just not come up in conversation with any other whale they happen to know or is there more to this particular myth than we've so far been told well yeah it's the latter Big Chief sea Smurf then embarks Upon A History lesson in which he explains that bavaria's reasons too corny to relate killing among the whales is forbidden this by the way must be a point of philosophical disagreement between the sea Smurfs and the whales because again chip hazard's plan is to provoke them into war to protect the whales if the sea Smurfs are not so close as to share the whale's belief in non-violence yeah that's a tenable thing if on the other hand the film wants to portray them as being so familiarly close that they also share the same religious worldview then that's a problem with the film but we'll see momentarily for the moment you'll have to bear with me because I'm having a little bit of trouble making sense of this Smurf my he has a chat with pretty C Smurf girl from earlier who's played absolutely no role in the plot whatsoever so naturally is his love interest now he explains that Outcast whale didn't kill anyone his parents were killed in front of him so he gathered some chaps together and attacked the sky people and the sky people massacred them he was the only Survivor but then pretty sea Smurf girl replies that by whale law he is responsible for those deaths so he is a killer from a certain point of view and he must always be an outcast so yeah yeah so as best as I can make out these people live by extreme pacifism killing anyone even in self-defense is wrong it's so wrong that if you act in self-defense and your friends get killed you are the one held responsible for their deaths even though they would plausibly have died either way and you tried to protect them so far so [ __ ] but chip hazard's plan is to bait the sea Smurfs into attacking them in the name of self-defense and he's told this will work by the marine biologist chap who informs him that the whales are like family to Lucy Smurfs and the Sea Smurfs will fight to defend them meaning again if they share the whale's logic philosophy and religion that the sea Smurfs will Outcast themselves by defending the whales from Attack which they are equivalently religiously motivated to do this doesn't make very much sense though and there's still more than an hour of the film still to go [ __ ] it I've made it this far I'm turning to drink apologies in advance if the review becomes even more rambly and incoherent as it goes on let's face it it'll still be less rambrian incoherent than this god-awful excuse for a movie Little Jimmy Cameron is still for some reason besotted with the idea that he can cram a teen drama into a naturalist Sci-Fi Action epic with environmentalist messaging so when pretty Smurf girl tells Smurf boy he should tell Big Chief sea Smurf what he knows about Outcast whale for [ __ ] sake this film he says no nobody understands him and I quote the whole planet hates me I have I pointed out that absolutely none of this has been set up or established and this character has absolutely no reason to be speaking these lines or thinking these things but I think I have but in case I haven't none of this has been set up or established and this character has absolutely no reason to be speaking these lines or thinking these things you could cut this entire character out of the film and the only difference it would have made thus far is that the film would have been shorter and considerably better which is a sure sign as a filmmaker that you are doing a terrible job he says all the planet sees him as is an alien pretty Smurf girl says I see you you're one of us now and we go over to the evil colonizers who are shooting tracking darts at Wales these whales are highly intelligent by the way they're capable of holding conversations they have complex thoughts and conceptual awareness so they move in pods you'd think they might then be smart enough to notice if they have big tracking darts sticking out of them and getting their friends to help remove them but that would break the film I guess so whenever it's convenient these super whales regress to Mere whales in intelligence and inability you can't even give [ __ ] animals character consistency Jesus Christ Cameron the tracking Implement having been implanted a large team of colonizers mobilized for Action they have crab mechs robots that look like crab and that walk like crab they also have incredibly boring and modern which is to say by the standards of this film prehistoric dinghies and speed boats making for a bit of an aesthetic Clash this is I suppose the limitation to practical effects you can CG the crabs but you do actually need to film The Boat sequences and so we have to revert to existing technology I'm not at all convinced there was no way to smooth this divide the one thing this film has going for it is its visual effects they've spent more time and money on that than on anything else in fact they've spent all their time and money on it so there should really be no excuse for lingering rough edges like this the attack on the whales then begins involving some sort of Sonic depth charges that for some reason Force the whales to the surface even though they've been shot above the whales this is because whales have echo location sensors to give the film some credit the use of Sonic weapons to control the whale's movements is otherwise reasonably well realized as a strategy and the hunt sequence does make you feel for the whales and [ __ ] hate the humans the separation of the motherwell from the baby whale is another effective way of evoking tragedy and evil in roughly equal measure Cameron clearly has real life discussed it waiting in mind and to give him his due he evokes it reasonably well in this sequence yeah I mean I think it has taken two hours before I found something positive to say which I'm sure would invite any Defenders at this film to accuse me of hating it for hating sake this though is because I have very deliberately avoided commenting on the film's visuals as much as is possible because this critique is as I mentioned at the top a critique of Avatar as feelies not as movies when this much time effort and money has been spent getting the visuals right and when the film is sold on no other basis and also called The Cinematic event of a generation well then you would expect the visuals to be done right that would be the most banal observation to make that's the lowest bar for it to clear but as I also mentioned at the top visuals are but a NASA necessary and not a sufficient condition for good filmmaking and to the extent this film is met with any success at all it's done so by relying on its visuals to distract from its writing and its writing has been almost uniformly abysmal we should be demanding better that's why I'm not focusing on visuals this however is an example of where it's narratively helpful to Long out a scene and so the first example of the pacing the ideas and the delivery done mostly right part of the trauma of whale hunting is precisely that these animals are very easy to hurt but very hard to kill the amount of time it takes to fail them and the amount of pain inflicted in the felling of them means you aren't allowed ignorance as an excuse nobody embarks on this kind of hunt unless they have full knowledge of what they're doing nobody can miss the suffering they cause because it goes on and it goes on and it goes on in the case of Wales particularly which are intelligent and highly social animals you can't really miss the psychological horror of it either because you can't isolate the damage to one individual you do in fact inflict it upon a family in short wailing is the clearest sample of a practice that requires a self-inflicted psychopathic disregard for basic empathy decency and dignity and killing the animal you are dehumanizing yourself one of the first things Rosa Luxembourg noticed about the character of the Nazis who imprisoned her was their callous mistreatment of animals she correctly identified that inflicting needless cruelty on animals betrays a fundamental deficit in the moral character of the abuser and pretty much all of this is evoked in the whale hunt sequence in the way of water you can criticize it as too obvious perhaps too easy for the writer's perspective the Creator plucking the lowest of the hanging fruit in a bid to clarify a moral purpose and message that is already overtly transparent you can accuse it of exploiting a grievance that's already common no one is learning anything from this scene because public perception of wailing has plummeted through the floor in the last few decades we already know that despise it but if the sequence makes you feel uncomfortable if it makes you feel sad or angry If It Moves you to despair then it's done its job reasonably well it's the first time in two hours of this film that I felt anything for what has happening on the screen which is my get out for any accusation of just being nice about it because the praise for this part is an implicit criticism of the rest you shouldn't have one scene in a three-hour film that's notable because it makes you feel something it serves to highlight the positive feeling and everything around it but given we found next to nothing else to praise so far well I figured it was important to at least highlight what it does right when it does right speaking of nothingness and emptiness though the eventual death of the mother whale is the first time I've noticed the soundtrack to the film and I've only noticed the soundtrack because it's finally got around to deploying what seems to be James Horner's one and only Motif it's the Troy Motif again this film isn't even composed by Horner but rather by his friends Simon Franklin which perhaps explains the absence of the motif until this point I don't think anywhere that it's been deployed until now or at any rate I don't remember hearing it deployed but that's because I don't remember anything about the soundtrack at all it's been Bland and an obtrusive aquarium music until this point and on a meta level if your composer sees the film striving to reach an emotive Peak if he sees a scene that is so obviously intended to be significant a climax moment what does it say about that composer that he returns to the same four note Motif that's been deployed in the first Avatar film and also in Troy and also in Willow and I'm pretty sure in a number of other films as well how profoundly unimaginative do you have to be as a composer to only have one Motif what thematically links Willow Troy and the two Avatar films I would venture next to nothing as my answer to that question it harks back to the long-ish section on music and the light Motif in particular in my last rings of Power video the light Motif is the musical phrase you remember that theme we associate with any given film John Williams with his wagnerian inspiration is a master of the light Motif which is why so many of his films are so memorable one of the earliest criticisms of its deployment in film soundtrack was that it was intellectually lazy this character is on the screen so this theme plays and to be fair that is true of a lot of film soundtracks the light Motif deployed well is deployed in variations changes in instrumentation and Pitch volume and key from the major to the minor sometimes strong sometimes weak it's supposed to convey not just this character is on the screen but this is what the character is doing this is what the character is seeing this is what the character is feeling this is what is happening to the character this is what that means and this is what the world thinks about it so to speak James Horner and by extension Franklin in this film Falls beneath even the lazy character themed form of the light Motif porno apparently has just one musical phrase which he can throw into a light-hearted 80s fantasy wheeze a grand historical epic and a grandiose sci-fi whale hunt it has no association besides something dramatic is happening on the screen now and Franklin is seeing something happening on the screen now and rather than an attempt to craft anything distinctive about his own score he's just pinched Horner's signal that is staggeringly lazy work George Lucas called John Williams the secret source of Star Wars he attributes his film's initial success to John Williams's soundtrack when asked to composed for Schindler's List Williams almost bowed out telling Spielberg you need a better composer than I am for this film to which Spielberg replied I know but they're all dead a high compliment since what Spielberg is really saying here is that John Williams is the best composer alive everyone I think including Peter Jackson has acknowledged that the Lord of the Rings trilogy cannot even Be Imagined with any other soundtrack than Howard Shores name any memorable movie of the last 20 30 40 years and there's a good chance you can instantly recall whole sections of music from them Jaws Jurassic Park Blade Runner Star Wars Lord of the Rings Indiana Jones Gladiator James Bond Pirate of the Caribbean Harry Potter etc etc at nauseum music is not an afterthought in cinema music is integral to cinema the list of reasons the Avatar franchise has added nothing of any worth that the culture is too long to repeat I think we've ventilated a fair few of its reasons during the course of this video so far there are more to come it's coderminous with the list of reasons it has no strong place in cultural memory but the one I've been trying to draw out across these last few paragraphs is because its soundtrack is of the same nature as its films thoughtless emotionless vapid empty and derivative and being a bit of a film score fan hearing this little Motif now has subtracted pretty much the entirety of whatever positive feelings I had about the whale hunt sequence what a [ __ ] waste of airspace moving on with the plot spider has been watching all of this from aboard the whaling ship he frowns so we know that he's angry we then get to go inside the dead whale where they drill into its skull to extract mind goo hmm you will come to that in a second spider has gone into the well with them because I don't know because he just has that's his job he has to stand around in his loincloth he is an excuse for exposition I guess Science Guy from earlier is the one doing the skull drilling he tells spider that the whales are quite possibly more intelligent than humans are because they have more neurons or something from this he says that they are deeply emotional which is fine I guess he also says that they are more spiritual well I'm not sure you can get that from an MRI scan my dude and this is re-emphasizing anyway the problem I mentioned earlier here's a guy who alone of all the chaps he's hanging around with really understands the whales he understands their significance to the Sea Smurfs he understands their pseudo-religious importance he understands their deep interconnectedness with nature he understands that they are considered family by The Smurfs he is himself friends with all of which was already enough to make his presence aboard a [ __ ] whaling ship seem at the very least implausible but now now we find out that he doesn't just understand these things conceptually and from the outside he understands them from the inside literally as well as figuratively he is after all currently drilling into the brain of a dead whale from inside of its mouth but figuratively as well in the sense that he understands these whales on much the same level as the sea Smurfs do he understands their Consciousness their thoughts and their religiosity he clearly sympathizes with them and with the planet of which they are such an integral part as a thought experiment let's say you are a scientist you are intensely interested in human anatomy let's say that there's a psychopathic murderer out there who kills people Cuts them up and sells their body parts would you in the name of science volunteer to go out with said Psychopathic murderer and not only observe as he cuts up one of your own friends or family members but actually do the cutting up yourself would you in the name of science watch your mother be murdered and then extract the brain juice from inside her mouth would that not be to understate it just a little morally problematic stick to you by the way I'm not exaggerating when I say that he's extracting brain fluid that is actually what he's doing and he continues expositing to spider as they're doing it he looks at the brain scan taken during the operation he explains that they are highly emotional creatures he says they have music they have mathematics they have science and philosophy [ __ ] philosopher Wales he tells spider all of this as he helps extract the brain fluid from inside its [ __ ] mouth film what are you doing what it's doing is extracting brain fluid why though well because as the whaling ship captain help reinforms us the brain fluid stops human aging oh my goody [ __ ] nugget I just I can't remember those good quaint old days when we were just digging up Spirit trees because we wanted unobtainium hell I remember the good old days several years ago when this film started when we were on Pandora because the Earth was dying which I have to keep pointing out occasionally because the film has entirely forgotten about it but now we are also here because the Earth is dying and there's whale brain juice that can stop human aging Stakes what are what I what even our Stakes are those things that you eat I think whales make good steaks I think the film hasn't bothered interrogating these things because it just can't these questions are too big for it it's hard to make a film pondering the meaning of life when half of it is dedicated to aquarium screensavers but if you have no intention of answering questions like this it's usually a good idea not to raise them in the first place none of this makes any sense forgetting entirely the we have to save the human race bit which is exactly what the film wants us to do apparently you have whales with brain goo that stops human aging as well but do you have any idea how valuable that is why are there any whales left why isn't this a pivotal part of the colonizer's objective on the planet why did you divert a whaling ship and give it a chip Hazard to pursue his personal Vendetta against a guy who didn't even kill him when that whaling ship would otherwise have been used to harvest brain goo that stops human aging which of these two objectives is the more valuable do you think why is the business of harvesting brain growth that stops human aging apparently left to random private contractors with individual Little Whale ships how did we find out about the brain goo when did we find out about the brain goo at one point did a random person fancy killing a whale and then drilling into its skull and then injecting his brain goo into his scrotum probably only to find out that he'd accidentally unlock the secret to eternal life why are there any whales left if this is now widely known have any attempts been made to synthesize the whalebrain goo to mass produce it what happens when this stuff is widely available how does that change society whaling ship captain guy describes it as ounce founts the single most valuable substance known to man is this all not too important to have been made into a side quest in the third Act of the film I have about 3 million other questions by the way one of the most important ones being why do you even need to end human aging when your planet is dying and your goal is long-term to move Humanity over to Pandora and you have the ability to make make Smurf clones of yourself which are already perfectly adapted to an environment that your humans can't actually breathe in without assistance are you going to have people living eternally on a dying Earth or are you going to ship them all the way over here and then inject them with brain goo if they can afford it so they can live eternally when they could otherwise have spent less money getting Smurf clones for themselves living better uploading their Consciousness whenever they die doing the whole thing again do you see what I mean about how this film makes no damn sense but as I'm sure you know by now I'm very keen that I keep this video short and digestible so I think we'll just park all of those issues and move on incidentally science guy's presence is explained and I use that word with its widest possible meaning by whaling ship captain who tells us that whale brain goo is paying for everything here on Pandora including science guys research science guy quips that's why I drink so there you have it if you are ever arrested for being complicit in the murder of a demigod you can just say yeah yeah that's kind of [ __ ] that's why I drink and we'll all just move on as though it's perfectly normal you have a mild regret nothing more need saying an unknown amount of time later the sea Smurfs discover the Dead whales and have a bit of a cry Big Chief C Smurf's crazy wife is especially upset because one of the dead whales was her spirit sister and apparently a good composer there you go James you should have powered a [ __ ] whale to compose your soundtrack at least you'd have had one worth the name the dead whale had a baby and in case we weren't sufficiently aware of how sad we're supposed to be feeling it starts raining because you know pathetic fallacy that's that's how high art Works guys the Smurf Marines deliberately left evidence behind so the sea Smurfs would know they were responsible and okay then no no I'm just gonna have to explain this bit Yeah so the sea smurfs have a war meeting they said the war has now come to them you might remember that way back when the prospect of Sally Smurf's War being brought to them was Advanced as a reason not to take Saudi Smurfs fan in you might then expect some significant repercussions for Sally Smurf and fan he's brought death to this peaceful community as they feared he would but but nah then the film attempts to gloss over the fact that whales have been hunted on Pandora for ages without the sea Smurf doing anything about it how does it do this well in his big war speech Big Chief sea Smurf says and I [ __ ] you not we knew about the attacks on the whales but it happened far away now it's here and now we're pissed off proximity proximity is the issue you see if somebody kills your brother or your sister on another continent that's fine you're not really bothered you have no problem with the person who killed them you're not at war with them you don't even want to be at war with them you just want them to leave you alone in fact you're very keen that you don't risk being dragged into conflict with them but if someone kills your brother or your sister a few miles down the road well that's unacceptable now you're mad no no no no no no no no this is not how these things work film this is not how things work in the world you have yourselves created you can't tell me that every living thing on this planet is part of a symbiotic system and that the whales and the Sea Smurfs in particular are part of the same family and then tell me that the sea Smurfs are only bothered when their family are killed within a reasonable commute from where they happen to live absolutely not no you can't do that these people have just as much of an incentive to be at war with the evil colonizers as the jungle Smurfs from the last film they should already be at war with them they should absolutely not be trying to turn Sully Smurf away lest he bring the war to them these colonizers have been murdering your family for years you watery wankers how are you only now getting angry about this Sully Smurf tells the sea Smurfs that the sky people don't care about the great balance they won't stop the only solution is to tell the whales to run away and this pisses off the sea Smurfs and one of them delivers what can only be described is pure concentrated cringe [Music] I know you're made of computer code but you don't have to act like a [ __ ] just stop that please another consideration Sully Smurf acts against chip hazard's presumption in this scene you will recall that Chip's plan is to kill the whales to bring Sonny Smurf out of hiding but here Sally Smurf is the one counseling caution he's the one trying to avoid the war trying to put the sea Smurfs off of fighting because if they do the sky people will destroy them this is um shall we say clumsy because it means that whatever other problems that exist with Chip's plan we've added an extra element of luck to it the plan works but not against its Target it works against the sea Smurfs Sully Smurf could have abandoned them could have been cast out for his caution could have ended up in any number of other places and indeed since he left his own people to come here because chip Hazard got too close because he thought that leaving his people would help to protect them why wouldn't you assume that he would leave the sea Smurfs now in order to protect them if any of this had happened all chip Hazard would be left with is a pointless war with the sea Smurfs who weren't previously a threat to his evil colonizer gang it's lucky that this is not what ends up happening and ideally you do not pivot your plot on luck if you can possibly avoid it here though the film is actually chosen to Pivot its plot on luck Sully Smurf explains that if the whales get hit with tracking beacons they are Marked for Death which you'd think hyper-intelligent whales who've been hunted for years might have been able to figure out for themselves but no so if they are hit by them they have to call for Saudi Smurf and he will go out to silence the beacons he says and because it's been a few minutes he reminds us that saving their lives is all that matters because what's real his family this is enough to persuade the temporarily War hungry sea Smurfs that war isn't the answer so they all agreed to tell the whales to leave which doesn't so much jar with the vociferous objections that his plan that they raised but a few minutes ago as much as it overrides them so they just kind of forget that telling the whales to leave goes against everything they know and believe and they agreed to it after all but then Smurfette becomes War hungry and she tells Sally that they have to fight back he says correctly that it's all to trap the Smurf Marines aren't hunting the whales they're hunting them which you might remember but would be forgiven for having forgotten because several years have passed since the beginning of this film was the reason they left the jungle Smurfs to begin with following solid Smurf's logic they have no choice but to run away again now it's the right thing to do as established by Sally Smurf's own arguments and actions earlier in the film it's the reason they are here to begin with will this be their resolve a second time well we don't know yet because we have to go do more of the Teen drama stuff that I'm sure everyone has been longing to see more of Smurf boy wants to go and warn out karstvale that he needs to leave too but his older brother who has been so much of a non-entity that I don't even have a name for him yet tells him to stop making things difficult which launches Smurf boy into a passionate speech about his own imperfections everybody wants him to be the perfect little soldier you see everyone wants him to be just like his big brother but he's not gosh darn it he's not no I don't care but okay then to use the language this film is deployed several times and always to my regret you do you bro and because this entire subplot is the definition of what we might euphemistically call unwise the argument concludes with Smurf boy telling his brother that he isn't his brother the whale is his brother the [ __ ] whale is his brother oh my goodness my pubic hair is cringing Smurf boy goes off to find out cast whale and all the other Smurf kids go after him inconveniently in the whole wide ocean the Smurf Marines on their whaling ship just happen to have arrived in this exact spot at this exact time so we have a Race Against Time as they try to get the tracking Beacon off of the outcast whale before the evil colonizers arrive and kill them all the Smurf kids only now think it might be worth telling Sally Smurf where they are and what's going on that really hard hammering noise you hear in the background is James Cameron frantically trying to manufacture a fight sequence here but he's forgotten all of his tools so he's trying to bang the pieces together with his shoe The Smurfs tore up and head on out to rescue the Smurf kids again it looks very pretty the visuals are great well done film just so we're clear though Outcast whale is Outcast because he went to fight in self-defense and got people killed that's what the whales believe and that's what the sea Smurfs believe now though the sea Smurfs are going out to fight to rescue their kids who are trying to rescue al-cast Whale by the Warped morality of this film does this mean that Outkast whale is going to be blamed for all the resulting deaths here as well or are we just going to forget about it because like everything else in the film The morality only runs surface deep the colonizers arrive and we begin a repeat of the well hunt sequence only for chip Hazard to tell them not to use the depth charges instead they send in the crab robots and the submarines to try and surround the Smurf kids conveniently and like the film The Smurf kids have forgotten that you have three-dimensional movement underwater so rather than do the sensible thing and go above or below lepers Heroes they spend most of their time in a flat plane Pursuit eventually they all fall off their little leopleurodons and as a Chase slash pump sequence through some big Reeds and underwater foliage the crabs snare some of the Smurf kids in a net they are picked up by some Smurf Marine pterodactyls spider is watching all of this from aboard the ship and he decides that he doesn't like what he's seeing which for the first time occasion some faint hint of awareness on the part of the evil colonizers that you probably shouldn't be letting mostly naked body prisoners just wander around Unshackled and unguarded spider runs to try and help his friends but he fails and they all get captured recall that this is spider's Foster Family recall that he grew up with them recall that they then proceeded to not give a solitary [ __ ] about each other from the moment he was captured now the first interaction between them as spider is restrained and smurfed by his pinned down on the deck see spiders say and I quote directly you okay and Smurf boy say everybody 2 hours and 17 minutes into the film no character writing to speak of chip Hazard cuff Smurf boy daughter Smurf and pretty Smurf to the rails of the ship just in time for Sally Smurf and the Sea Smurfs to arrive so we have a standoff you will recall that Chip's sole motive in this story is to kill sodi Smurf well during this standoff Sally Smurf and the Sea Smurfs come to a Full Stop they just sit there on the water scouting the ship on the ship ship Hazard and the Sea Smurfs stand there scouting the sea Smurfs they have a direct line of sight they have rifles with Scopes they are using the rifles with the Scopes to look at Sully Smurf all of the rifles are trained on him so that's it that's the end of the film we can wrap up now pull the trigger mission accomplished Sally Smurf is dead you can fight off the rest of the sea Smurfs pretty easily you have a tremendous advantage in Firepower and in technology your mission's done well done chip you win you win except um except no no it's not the end of the film because rather than doing the thing he is here to do and just shoot Sally Smurf chip decides to radio him and tell him to stand down and come to the ship alone why why are you doing this thing chip You've Won pull the [ __ ] trigger chip that's why you're here chip why are you delaying chip why are you inviting Sully Smurf to the ship chip this film's already too long and you've now written it to such a way that the villain cannot lose so that's it well done you win just end the film now Chip pull the damn trigger Sally Smurf says fine then and off he goes incidentally Big Chief C Smurf's crazy wife chooses this moment to say you bought this upon us you which realization might have been impactful about half an hour ago but is entirely meaningless in this scene Sully Smurf has already decided that he's going her saying that and him responding so that's why it has to be me changes nothing about this scene he was already going to the ship he had already said he was going to the ship if the film had any regard for character consistency it might have used this to be much more interesting much earlier on Big Chief see Smith crazy wife might have remembered that this had always been her deep-rooted objection to taking in suddy Smurf and the Sea Smurfs might have exiled him and his family in a bit to Stave off the war they were previously very intent on staving off I'd go so far as to say that that was the most natural turn the story could have taken it would have accorded with the entire ethos of the sea Smurfs paid off their at best hesitant relationship with Sally Smurf saving it until now though when it can't actually affect the story is a waste of the previous setup that actually calls attention to the waste of the previous setup it's as though little Jimmy Cameron got to this point and somebody reminded him what he'd written an hour ago and then he said [ __ ] [ __ ] you're right what's the quickest way we can get out of this hole we didn't know we'd been digging oh oh I know and so we get Big Chief sea Smurfs crazy wife's line off goes sunnysmith up in the sky Smurfette is just flying around apparently I suppose she's waiting for her Q to enter the plot again beneath the surface the evil colonizers have entirely forgotten that there is a whale floating around and Outcast whale has a frown so we know shit's about to go down taken from above and below one would assume one of the Smurf Marines has Sally Smurf in his sights he actually tells us it's an easy shot but chip Hazard stops him he actually puts his hand on his gun and forces him to lower it his justification being if you take him now they'll attack remember how earlier studies smell from the sea Smurfs had to avoid war because they'd be wiped out by the sky people remember how chip Hazard small band of Smurf Marines has had no trouble subjugating entire Villages of sea Smurfs remember how chip Hazard has always assumed his own technological and Military superiority via VIA The Smurfs so has no inbuilt reason to fear that attack well I'm glad you remember all of that because the film doesn't however it takes Sally Smith so long to reach the ship that Outcast whale has time to work himself up into a rage and does what I can only describe as a half-free willy leaping out of the water to crash down on the deck of the whaling ship crushing a few Mech suits in the process and generally causing Havoc the whaling ship captain Hoover plot convenient reasons is off on a speedboat at this particular time reappears in shot and fires a harpoon at Outcast whale who head butts it away and then he hauls himself off the ship and back into the water wailing ship captain who I should point out is Australian says I can't with the dialogue man just just know and the Sea Smurf sees this opportunity to attack for reasons best known to themselves the speedboats from the whaling ship come equipped with Gatling guns even though the previous scene with Outcast whale on the deck of the ship clearly established that bullets can't penetrate their skin but they open fire with the Gatling guns they have anyway conveniently they miss every single one of the sea Smurfs long enough for them to dive under the water you might recall the boats have depth charges and that these have been shown to be super effective against their underwater targets but for plot convenient reasons they just kind of forget about those for a bit instead some helicopters that the script forgot they'd bought with them and that weren't in any of the previous scenes now come back into the scene and they shoot at the underwater Smurfs which needless to say is not very effective hey remember how just a couple of minutes ago you had all the sea Smurfs lined up like ducks in a shooting gallery and Sully Smurf in a clear line of your snipers and you could have just taken them out completing your mission while using your helicopters maybe to attack the scene Smurfs from above and behind thereby wiping them out quickly and easily no no I guess we shouldn't expect highly trained Smurf Marines who've lived two lifetimes by this point you have a basic grasp of military tactics just as nobody paid any attention to Outcast whales swimming angrily around beneath the ship so nobody on either the ship or the speed boats or in the helicopters notice his Smurfette flying aimlessly around in the sky so as the helicopters move into attack she dive bombs them and the helicopters are just as staggeringly useless as they were at the beginning of the film you might have thought that any even semi-competent Army would have learned from their past mistakes and given the helicopters such mind-bogglingly advanced technology as glass that can resist a bow and arrow but that would be asking far too much of this hyper Advanced futuristic human race we've been repeatedly told poses an existential threat to the Smurfs so Smurfette has no trouble shooting the pilots with her medieval ass weaponry and destroying the helicopters the sea smurfs have similarly little trouble dispatching the speedboats because as the colonizers have still not remembered they have depth charges honestly would it have been too much to ask for just a single line of dialogue explaining that they'd used them all up on the last whale hunt although there was a malfunction or something that's really all it would have taken to address this problem a complete rewrite would have been needed to solve the rest of the problems but we could have at least solved one of them then the whaling ship captain says somebody shoot something so they do decide to use their depth charges against their now Airborne opponents the ones on the Flying Fish Sally Smurf though takes them out with his rifle chip Hazard takes to the air and chases down Smurfette but study Smurf comes up behind him and shoots at him and then he runs out of ammo under the water and you are just going to have to take my word for this because just well because daughter Smurf who has dived off the whaling ship with the rest of the Smurf kids plugs her USB hair cable into some sort of coral reef and she directs it to grab hold of a submarine that's chasing them and who crashes it's like a video game you see except that instead of turrets it's coral reefs and to add some dodgy morals to the dodgy mechanics the defeated submarine is desperately try and Escape their destroyed craft and swim back to the service only for Smurf daughter to direct the coral to grab and Crush her defeated defenseless unarmed enemies there is no Geneva Convention on Pandora at least we've established that next on the list of things that did happen Outcast whale flips a speedboat onto the Wailing ship which lodges itself in one of the ship's engines this Q's spider to decide to be a good guy again for the next few minutes even though he's previously tried to escape and help the Smurfs he has still been allowed to walk around the bridge unrestrained and unguarded so he grabs a fire extinguisher he [ __ ] a pilot in the head and turns the engines on this causes a fire then he manages to smash more controls for a good little while before anybody thinks it might be worth trying to stop him this sends the ship forward to crash into some rocks and to start sinking albeit spider when some of the Smurf kids are still aboard and the latter is still chained to the railings so it's not over yet but it's worth remembering this spider has in this action just destroyed the entire Mission you might think there will be some repercussions you might yeah you might think that there won't be but you might think it sorry takes out chip hazards pterodactyl Outcast whale battles whaling ship captain speedboat and takes it out in such a way as allows him to inflict maximum vengeful Justice on the captain while allowing the nice Science Guy to survive the encounter but he's glad out Carswell doesn't know how much brain fluid he's been extracting from his brothers and sisters these last few years most of the Smurf kids have now escaped but for plot convenient reasons Smurf daughter specifically gets picked up by a Smurf Marine on a pterodactyl and returned to the ship Smurf Marine calls her Buttercup she says I am not your Buttercup perv adding yet another tally to the very long list they've got entitled occasions when it would have been better if they had said nothing at some point during this horrid mess of a fight scene I think there was a brief deliberation between the Smurf Brothers as you whether they should bother trying to save spider the answer to which of course should be no given the uniform lack of shits they gave about him until this precise moment but Smurf boy suggests they should probably try and save him anyway I don't think I need to reiterate why this action is unsupported by the build up other than to say that it would have been nice if the Sally Smurf fam had mentioned spider even once across the previous two hours thereby making this act of self-sacrifice seem like it has I don't know at least a little diegetic reason to be back aboard the whaling ship spider has suffered absolutely no repercussions for the active sabotage that destroyed the entire ship he is still walking around unguarded and unrestrained but now he isn't fighting the people he was fighting in the last scene they were all abandoning the ship and he's abandoning it with them one of the Marines tells him check your mask make sure it's on tight to which his response is I'm good dumbass he just he just destroyed your ship he just wrecked your mission he just enabled all of this to happen by attacking you and aiding your enemy he was fighting you in his last scene I can't decide what's annoying me more the fact he's forgotten he was fighting them or the fact they've forgotten he was fighting them it's honestly as if that entire very important scene functionally important as it enabled the middle Act of the battle and is the reason they are now all abandoning the ship well it is if none of that happened to the characters involved in it it's really quite astonishing he really should be dead at the very least he should be cuffed and frog marched out assuming they still see him as some sort of asset but but no we've just reverted to the pre-sabotage status quo I'm very annoyed that the film isn't legally downloadable yet because I really think it's one of those occasions where a side by side comparison would have really aided the review but I'm just gonna have to hope my description engenders in you darling the same shock and disbelief as it's instilled in me to call this amateur writing would be an insult to amateurs actions must have consequences you hacks there are occasions when it's useful to do little sidebars in these reviews tips for writers covering general rules things to look out for and avoid this is not one such occasion this is such an obvious oversight that nobody over the age of seven is at risk of committing it unless they are employed apparently on lucrative contracts by large movie studios in which case they have no Talent whatsoever speaking though of entirely unjustifiable resets much of what's just happened was done to move certain characters from place to place the Smurf kids were captured aboard the whaling ship the battle happened so they could Escape chip Hazard was aboard the ship the battle happened so he had to leave the ship to fight Sally Smurf Etc ideally for your action sequences to be justified they have to achieve some material change in Universe if for example you have a rescue scene that devolves into a battle the culmination of that scene should build on both the rescue and the battle if you ever find yourself writing 20 or 30 minute sequences and ending them back where you began with all the most important Dynamics not only unresolved but reset you've probably not always but probably done something wrong in your writing so if I were to tell you that the rescue mission led to a battle that saw all of the Smurf kids and Chip Hazard and spider leave the ship they were on when the sequence began you would expect that whatever the outcome you would not end up with the Smurf kids and Chip Hazard and spider backer bought that ship if the rescue sequence saw the Smurf Kids Escape chip hazardous clutches and escaped the ship you would not expect to end up with the Smurf kids in chip hazards clutches on the ship because if you do end up in that position your audience will be forgiven for thinking well just what the quivering [ __ ] was the point of the last 20 minutes at the film that we just sat through meaning I must now ask just what the quivering [ __ ] was the point of the last 20 minutes of the film we just sat through because we have somehow despite all I've just described despite the rescue mission leaper attracted and borderline nonsensical battle despite the Escape we have somehow ended up back on the ship with the Smurf kids in the clutches of Chip Hazard one of the kids actually speaks the line I can't believe I am tied up again no James no nor can I maybe you should have fixed this when you were writing the Damned script James this is the She-Hulk it's fine because we're aware it's [ __ ] defense and it's not on James it it really isn't why have you written it this way why do you take so much time and why did you achieve so little why is it left to random little YouTubers like me to ask these most fundamental questions why didn't the studio ask the same question years ago the Smurf Brothers rescue spider from the Marines as if to emphasize how deep his character is and how beautiful is his familial relationship with the Smurf Brothers he says thanks guys and that's it I mean you could have just not you had to film that you had to do several takes you had to film The mocap and the live action separately that probably cost a few hundred thousand dollars all for him to say thanks guys Cameron is so lucky he was able to make this film during the silly money decade anyway they hotkey plot armor and they escape but the buff didn't apply quickly enough to the older brother with less personality than the younger brother who has very little personality anyway so older brother is injured and they have to get him back to safety they meet up with Sally Smurf on a random ocean rock the Sun is setting Smurf head arrives Smurf boy says it's okay bro we got you but no bro they don't got you and he dies that's right the breath of the film has spent no time on the brother on whom no character work has been done the brother who's only been in a couple of scenes he's the one who dies and in response Smurfette goes all sorry Jack we are meant to feel sad about this look isn't it poetic how the sun sets just in time for a character death can't you appreciate the tragedy of it the whole universe feels it you can tell because the Sun is setting no I'm sorry film but you can [ __ ] right off you don't get to assume we care about this if you want a meaningful death you have to kill a meaningful character nobody gives a damn when an NPC dies that's why hordes of board gamers Massacre entire towns in Skyrim for a laugh if you wanted to kill anyone in this moment you should have made it the younger brother Smurf boy kill Outcast whale 2 for poetic symmetry if you want to you'd have had to do something else to excuse the non-payoff from that visible Arc have this kid who believes he's all alone in the world die have him though die in the arms of his family as proof that he was wrong have his last realization be that he is loved he has a family for tragic contrast you could have Outcast whale die alone Beneath the Sea unredeemed it's a corrupted parallel someone Outcast because his family died someone who dies in the arms of the family he believes cast him out and hell that might not even be that good it just popped into my head and I've been on the whiskey for a few hours at this point but I I'd have felt something if I'd seen that a kind of compound bitterness a multiply a tragedy emphasizing the isolation of the one by redressing the isolation of the other a double payoff if you will that would ensure we don't end up feeling that this end was Tui and Kitsch and overly romantic and fundamentally pointless if you as a writer are really invested in this scene you cannot take the cop-out approach and off somebody who is irrelevant the qualifier is that this character is supposed to be highly relevant to our other main characters he is after all the eldest brother a son a mentor an idol to be loved and to be jealous of hark back to the random and perfunctory exchange between the two Smurf Brothers a little while ago when Smurf boy tells older brother I'm not you we know what the film is trying to do the film is trying to stress that he feels the weight of expectation his brother is perfect he feels imperfect as a result of this he feels Outcast there is a huge gap between the last two sentences there but who cares but um yeah so as I say I know what the film is going for but as perfunctory and unnecessary is Smurf boy's character has been throughout the film older Smurf brother doesn't even have as much as that he is a non-entity he's like the character you come up with in the first draft of a script one with the base elements of her personality maybe a couple of notes attached to his profile who you end up dropping because he's just not necessary for the plot he's doomed to exist in that Nether world of almost people that all writers create except that in this film he's been plucked from that another world and here now thrush to the fore he he is the linchpin in a moment in a sacrifice the thing on which all motives are pinned and all emotions are hinged if you're going to do this now you need to have put in the work beforehand and this film didn't it fits a long established pattern I said way back at the top that we're a society uncomfortable with genuine emotion and the feelies are not designed to evoke genuine emotion what they give us is play acting we watch these events unfold on the screen and we are supposed to understand without feeling what their import is we may say well I understand what role this character plays and so logically I can infer what other people on screen feel about his demise what we don't say is oh my goodness I myself feel what these characters feel like sex in Brave New World emotion in this film is a mechanical artifice it's pneumatic and unfeeling it has narrative entailments but it means nothing I feel substantially less sad about his death than I did about the whale hunt earlier in the film and that's not because I prefer whales to people or rather it's not just because I prefer whales to people the most tragic aspect of this scene is spider being present and trying to emote because that's another of those entirely unearned things that just happens because the script has nothing else to do with him of course what the film should do at this point is use his death as inspiration for Smurf boy he now has to go from I'm not you to I will take up your mantle this should be his moment of moral Awakening his discovery of tragic purpose but we don't get that yet because chip Hazard radio Sully Smurf debate him with the news that he has his daughter's prisoner and as if it wasn't already irritating enough that the preceding battle's resetting of the pieces made it all Sound and Fury signifying nothing we get another I can't believe they locked me up again moment as chip says same deal as before you for them gee just like the last time because it's apparently a contractual obligation that spider be a third feel in every single scene in this act the film decides that Sally Smurf can't understand the plain meaning of words like they're inside by the moon pool amid ships so spider has to guide him there you will recall I'm sure that Sully Smurf spent all but the last few years of his life as a human speaking English recall how at the beginning of the film he detailed how it took him a few years of listening to Smurf tongue before it became as familiar to him as English these words should not have been Lost in Translation it is not an especially big ship this exchange has only occurred because the film wants spider to be aboard for the final encounter and it couldn't think of another excuse to get him back there it could have left him there for God's sake nothing was actually achieved by rescuing him saved the death of a non-entity character that could have been manufactured in a dozen different ways that wouldn't then require a fourth resetting of one particular piece on the board spider has now been leaving the ship gone back to the ship has left the ship and is now going back to the shipping even though he has no reason to because Sally Smurf shouldn't need the guidance he's offering so why is he doing this well yeah because as you may or may not recall the film has on occasion intimated that it wants a father-son dynamic in player between spider and Chip Hazard who as I've said before but have to repeat isn't the father he never knew but hated the memory of right up until their first [ __ ] meeting but the Smurf clone of that man in another of those writer's sidebars that you absolutely don't need because no sensible person would ever make this mistake if you ever find yourself with a character whose sole attachment to another character is because that character is the Smurf clone of a bad father they never knew and hated the memory of but decided they liked so much that they'd abandoned their actual family because they met him once you have made a profound mistake you should probably burn your script and resolve never to write another one for the good of humanity everyone has a book in them as christovich and said and in most cases that is exactly where it should remain spider says some version of I'll I'll show you come on four or five times like Navi and Ocarina of Time only slightly more annoying God I'll show you come on I'll show you Sully Smurf tells Smurfette to be strong and he goes to meet with Jeb Smurf boy says Dad I want to go with you and Sally's Murph says bitterly you've done enough thus finally giving Smurf boy the abandonment motive his whole character has rested on for the last two hours at least this bit almost Works in that he's the reason they were out here to begin with so he's the reason all of this happened so he's the reason his brother is dead that's that's all fine I guess accepting that Sally Smurf's whole reason for being in this film is family and Smurf boy is his only surviving son and his sole reason for telling Smurf boy to remain behind is stay with your brother and he's talking about the Dead Brother making for a degree of character confusion here since his line is delivered with the finality of I hate you yet driven by because I don't want you In Harm's Way character confusion though and unlike confused characterization which has been the film's bedevolent hither 2 is at least explicable in universe so we can forgive and even understand Sally Smurf's apparent contradiction here because his head is going to be in several places at once that is categorically different from the writer's head being in several different places as they write their characters which is the reason for among other things Smurf boy being given a motivation for his actions after his actions have occurred he has now got the abandonment motive but he needed the abandoned motive beforehand in order to get to the position which earned him that motive that's confused characterization which is something very different Sully's Smurf and spider arrive on the ship Smurf boy back on the Rock decides to follow them chip Hazard continues to bait Saudi Smurf saying your boy didn't have to die you bought that on yourself even though at least as far as I was able to detect chip had absolutely no knowledge of what occurred and no way of knowing that big brother Smurf was dead Sonny Smurf takes out a good chunk of the surprisingly large number of surviving Marines by lobbing a grenade at a helicopter that inexplicably wasn't launched during the all-out war segment earlier Smurfette also arrives and takes out a few more Smurfette has the plot armor buff activated so she manages to avoid about 3 000 rounds fired at her in the space of 30 seconds by highly trained Marines chip Hazard then runs out of ammo so he draws his knife Smurfette has a clear shot at another Smurf Marine with her bow but suddenly Smurf then appears and they get into a fist fight Sally Smurf throws him into the sea then Smurfette goes a little bit mad which we know because she screams a lot and her eyes are maniacally wide and she takes out pretty well every human left aboard which frightened spider who is watching from behind a beam they are very much on top until chip Hazard emerges from around the corner with daughter Smurf in his clutches and the knife to her throat oh no he forces Sally Smurf to put his weapons down then being a complete [ __ ] spider who has been hiding and is behind ship Hazard and is on his actual family side in this particular minute because well because he is spider who we were shown right at the beginning of the film to be resourceful and reasonably capable spider who we were shown at the beginning of the film not to be a complete irredeemable tool spider who we've seen to be able and willing to fight when the script lets him spider who has all these skills and the best possible strategic position who would have been able to sneak up on ship hazard from behind and taught him in the head just Waddles out from cover and politely asks chip to stop being evil I just look I'm I'm very tired I'm tired of this it's taken me three days to get to this point of the film yes I genuinely have spent three days in an Indian Cinema just trust me on that one this script is now dangerously close to 30 000 words long they're still around half an hour left of the film I've gone into spiders faults at some considerable length and the problems with this wacko relationship and I've detailed so many ways in which this film treats common sense as impossibly rare knowledge I think I hope anyway that I can rely on you guys to fill in for me why this is probably the worst possible decision his character could have made given his starting position abilities motive goal and whole list of potential actions I think I'm pretty sure I can rely on you to know why that's dumb and anyway there's a metric [ __ ] in of nonsense I have to cover like for example Smurfette seeing that chip Hazard has daughter Smurf who means a lot to her Smurfette appears from behind spider who appeared from behind chip but unlike spider she did something that might superficially be deemed sensible in taking spider hostage meaning the standoff is now balanced chip has daughter Smurf smurvet has spider there's a knife to the throat of each of the children except why should Smurfette have assumed spider meant anything to chip I'll admit there is a chance I missed this scene because we're nearly three hours in and there's been so much nonsense to cover but at what point did Smurfette realize that spider was in any way important to chip I genuinely don't see it I assume she knows he's Chip's son spider knows he's Chip's son so it must have been fairly common knowledge though he was the only one who made anything of it earlier in the film nobody else thought it worth remarking upon it was never a reason given by any other character for him being kept at arm's length at least as best I can recall he's still alive I guess is so is that a reason for her to make this assumption I don't I know I don't think it is what she knows if Chip comes from his past life you know the one where he never so much has mentioned having his son because the writers hadn't thought of it then she knows him as a brutal cold clinical effective killer someone who acts without remorse The Logical assumption to make from her perspective was that he kept spider alive because he believed spider mattered to The Smurfs that's it because absolutely nothing has been done with spider's character it is a little bit unclear The Smurfs didn't give a [ __ ] that he was kidnapped hence not mentioning him once after they left for the islands yet before that they were shown to be reasonably close with him to treat him as family the kids refer to him as cousin that is the probable motive behind his continued existence I can't think of a single piece of evidence that Smurfette has to believe chip Hazard value spider for his own sake there isn't any I mean I just don't get it maybe I have missed something but I really don't think I have I think this is just another of those instances where something is so clear in the writer's head that they assume it must be clear to the audience and it isn't because the work has not been done which is perhaps a more useful sidebar you might have as a writer a really powerful sense of character Place belonging relationship that is your preconception and preconceptions are pretty dangerous because you as a writer might have a really firm idea about where your story is going a really strong sense about what has to happen in the second or third act but because you have so stronger sense you run the very real risk of assuming that the way you get there is the right way and the steps you've taken to fill in your initial leap of imagination have in fact filled the void but character decisions that make sense with your foreknowledge do not necessarily make sense with the knowledge the audience has of those characters they don't know them as well as you do very few writers are so procedural that they go from A to B to C to D all the way through incrementally and in order to Z most writers in my experience jump forward and then fill in gaps later on in everything I've ever written I've had the end in mind long before the beginning beginning and certain episodes of the second and third act in mind long before the intermediate episodes of the first and the second acts It's Perfectly Natural to set a goal and to work your way toward it it can be pleasurable even you can surprise yourself with what you come up with in between I wrote a globe hopping adventure story and ended up in entire countries I never imagined I'd visit even though I visited them in real life in order to have the plot progression make sense I made my fictional world around reality but unless you're very aware of this process or you have a team of writers to whom you can contract out that kind of awareness which is more likely in an especially deep and expansive work you will slip up if there is no way to ensure that the reader the user the player understands it then the idea must be ditched no idea is so sacred that it exists irrespective of the audience's understanding of it whether you're writing a novel or making a film or a game head Canon is no substitute for actual Canon love for an idea does not make that idea good the key is in the delivery character actions must be explicable by what you have established in Universe not by what the audience would know if the audience put inside your head this is the opposite of the approach taken in avatar The Way of water as evidenced by this exact scene the knife at the neck of daughter Smurf the knife at the throat of spider you know James Cameron had this scene in mind early on he wanted this scene to happen he wanted it long before he got to it but either he was writing it alone or he was writing it with a team of sycophants who all thought well [ __ ] is James Cameron James Cameron did terminated two and aliens in Titanic anything he says must be right so nobody ever looked at this script and asked wait but why how does this make sense given the character development we've included given the plot we've written given these past interactions Cameron wanted to reach this point he wanted it a lot so how the point is reached just doesn't matter that much he said it so it's right nobody thought to tell him he'd cocked up this is no way to write a screenplay you might point to the eternal recurrence of Marvel films and say Well it happens all the time but you can at least understand the mechanics at player with the MCU Marvel is at the churn Out product after product after product it hasn't allowed time for proper scrutiny in its writer's rooms its VFX teams are famously working till their fingers bleed but with Avatar 13 years have elapsed between the first film and this one there is no such excuse entire film's worth of ideas would have been created and discarded in that time they had the time to make the fundamentals of their script make sense yet somehow the finished product is one that suggests less time was taken on the writing than On Any Given MCU phase 4 product and there is no excuse for that you were supposed to raise the bar James not leave it in darkness oh dear oh dear but we move on we're nearly there Smurfette demands chip released daughter Smurf or Shield cut spider chip tells her he doesn't care about spider which should be true but isn't because James Cameron said so spider continues to struggle with the dialogue for some reason he's coded to repeat every single one of his lines we had I'll show you come with me I'll show you come on come with me I'll show you earlier in this scene it's please don't don't hurt her please let her go please don't kill me listen to me let her go don't hurt her please don't hurt her please just let her go okay just let her go it's NPC level dialogue and not a modern NPC either we're talking like the days of Morrowind that level of dialogue son for a son Smurfette says then she scratches spider along the chest with her knife she goes to stab him properly and that causes chip Hazard to crack for no established reason whatsoever and he lets daughter Smurf go Smurfette releases spider and now the whole family remember they like and care about him and getting him off the ship safely is their priority chip Hazard having just shown a vulnerability and a moral attachment becomes evil again as the Smurf fan back off into the water he goads Sully Smurf again telling him that he'll never stop coming and when he finds them again he'll kill his whole family if the smell of thumb still retained the incredibly low level of shits they've given about spider throughout this film there would be an obvious rejoinder here they know chip cares about spider now for some reason they know that he'll give up pretty well any prize in order to keep spider safe in which case the fact spider is in their possession gives them considerable leverage unfortunately though they can't really use him as such a bargaining chip if they care about him and the film has lately remembered that they do so perhaps that possibility would never have occurred to them not that it's especially relevant anyway because this is an action film and that means we are obliged to watch a protracted fist fight between a hero and a villain it would be terrible if we accidentally did something not formulaic in an Avatar film inconveniently no sooner does the fight start then the fuel from the whaling ship which just so happens to have leaked in a perfect circle around said ship ignites and this stops the Smurf fan from leaving they too will have to watch the fight because even though we've seen that they are all incredible swimmers who can hold their breath underwater for an exceptionally long period of time they have apparently decided they cannot swim underneath the fire brilliant quite why Smurfette isn't already involved in this fight I'm not sure since there was no reason for her to leave with the kids and now well they've decided they can't leave now there's no reason for her not to rejoin the fight it will be two on one she's been shown to be strong and capable a good fighter between she and Sully Smurf they could really make Chip's life difficult the farm gets back aboard the ship but then little daughter Smurf gets sucked into a hole and Smurfette Dives in after her leaving spider and daughter's mouth to continue running away from the fire which is slowly encroaching spider's NPC lines in this scene are come on come on let's go let's go come on come on let's go let's go come on and it becomes quite funny because the film Cuts quickly between the fight scene between Smurf head and baby Smurf inside the ship and to spider and daughter Smurf running away from the fire and spider even when he's only on screen for two seconds will without fail find the time to say something like let's go come on every [ __ ] time the ship begins to tilt and he becomes one of those hand-holding characters who spoil puzzles in God of War they have to climb the ship so he says come on keep climbing and give me your hand come on Etc the ship starts to roll so he says we're rolling over come on go the Fire gets in their way and they change direction so he says come on this way this way the ship rolls over and it sinks throwing everyone under the water there are mechanical issues at play here that the film seems to have forgotten about we though well we remember because the film forced us to sit through an interminable sequence earlier where the Smurf fan were taught how to be sea Smurfs how to swim and how to breathe enabling them to spend a good dong time underwater yet for the duration of this climactic scene the film has proceeded as though none of this ever happened Smurfette and baby Smurf have been in a panicky rush to stay above the rising water they seem to hate the idea of even touching it Sully's Smurf and Chip Hazard meanwhile have been in and out of the water yet Sally Smurf has been on the breathing course he is very comfortable underwater while chip Hazard hasn't been on the course and isn't as comfortable underwater don't you think this might have ended Sully's mind even once he's shown to be very resourceful in this battle yet this incredible strategic Advantage he has doesn't occur to him so he voluntarily continues to engage chip hazard in his element while being as reluctant as everyone else is to get wet only once the ship overturns do they end up fighting underwater at all but then each chip Hazard who gains the advantage which you would think is precisely the wrong way around it's only temporary though because more convenient ship crashing happens and their positions reverse and Sully Smurf chokes him out leaving him floating down in the depths so you might be thinking well he's dead at present though only spider and daughter Smurf are above the water that's until Smurf boy shows up from somewhere I guess the fire burned out in one very specific section or else he was the only one clever enough to swim underneath it anyway we know he's arrived because he shouts bro bro [ __ ] [ __ ] bro I I detest the way the Smurf kids have been turned into [ __ ] Surfers my god he has a Leo played on with him and he takes spider and daughter Smurf underwater to rescue the rest of the farm and during their descent we see very clearly that they absolutely could have swarm under the fire earlier and only didn't because the film then wouldn't have been able to throw all of this Peril at us sodi Smurf runs out of air and starts to sink Smurf boy and spider break up to go hunting for the fam daughter Smurf meanwhile plugs herself into a jellyfish which she wears as a pretty cape and she uses it to commune with some sparkling shrimp no I am not making this up the reason is not yet apparent spider runs into a drowning chip Hazard while smurfboy finds Sully both of these two have been unconscious for some considerable time owing to lack of air which I think is one step short of the technical definition of drowning but given there are a few films left to go in this zombie franchise I think we can be quite sure that they will both survive Sully Smurf does indeed wake up once he's bought into an air pocket he tells Smurf boy to go and save himself but Smurf boy declines and instead repeats sea Smurf Mantra about the way of water having no beginning and no end water connecting all things life to death Darkness to light the sea is always right Etc nobody has found Smurfette and baby Smurf yet but then daughter Smurf sends out tendrils of magic shrimp which locate the missing parts of the fam and lead her to them she hands over her jellyfish cloak for a minute after reasons I guess she says it'll help it's not clear how or why they follow the magic shrimp trail out of the ship Sully Smurf and smurfboy do the same it looks magical the soundtrack wants us to wander at the beauty of everything again the [ __ ] Outcast whale who's been out of the script for God knows how long and who did nothing to assist them while the ship was sinking then reappears in shut and helps Smurf boy and Sally Smurf to reach the surface sorry Smurf and Smurf boy have a moment Sally Smurf says I see you and this is called a payoff I'm not really sure to watch because there wasn't much setup besides him being a watery emo but saw it payoffs are good Sally Smurf narrates for us that the Sully Smurf fan sticks together and this is their greatest weakness and also their greatest strength they all have a hug and then because we're now out of danger and hope and love have triumphed and the film is very keen that we understand this the sun rises again spider-hul's chip hazard out of the water and onto a rug you might remember that Sally Smurf who has been trained to swim ran out of air and almost drowned a fair few times in the past few minutes while chip Hazard who has received no such training and was never revived in an air pocket and has been unconscious for far longer apparently just went into a holding pattern for that whole minutes long sequence now he's out of the water having not been breathing for several minutes he's fine his pterodactyl arrives he asks spider to go with him and spider who has just saved his life because he secretly loves him now hates him again he hisses at him and he leaves chip flies off to regather his strength for the sequel meaning by the way that any death caused by a chip in the next film is at least partly on spider if he hated him why did he save him what even is their relationship at this point I don't know the film doesn't know the Only Rule governing it seems to be convenience spider rejoins the sunny Smurf fan Sully Smurf gives him a hug he brings Smurf boy into the hug and says a son for a son yay they've both found their belonging isn't it lovely even though they already had it and only forgot about it because the plot demanded it be so and we are still not [ __ ] done Smurfette is singing again Sally Smurf is narrating again he says a father protects that's what gives him meaning lovely good sentiment it's still a [ __ ] film they do a religious ritual at the underwater Spirit tree to say goodbye to other Smurfs son who died the one whose only character trait is that he died they swim him down to the tree which absorbs him the mess messages beginnings and ends you know this because the scene is intercut with the scene from the beginning of the film where they hold a baby Aloft like Simba Sully Smurf tells Big Chief sea Smurf that they have to leave again to keep his family and the Sea Smurfs safe Big Chief sea Smurf tells him he's one of the tribe now but because he used the actual name of the tribe and the film apparently thinks we're all completely he has to make sure we know what's just transpired we can't be expected to relate nouns to concept that's some big brain stuff so Sully says and I quote so there I was we are the sea people now this is our home so um in what I'm assuming is going to be pretty much its final scene or its penultimate scene the film is quite successfully managed to undercut the entire premise of the film he left his original people because he felt that getting away from them would help protect them and his family he could have chosen to stay and fight but that would have put everyone in danger now though he's been accepted by a different tribe of Smurfs and he's said I need to leave to keep you and my family safe and he's been told no you're one of us and he says fine we'll stay and fight why didn't you do that at the beginning of the film Sully Smurf and Smurfette connect their USBS to some seaflowers which gives us a flashback to the archery scene from the beginning of the film so they get to see dead Smurf boy one last time they smile the music is triumphant Sully tells us that this is their home now it's their Fortress it's where they make their stand which is a shame because quite apart from it destroying the premise of the entire film I was very much hoping that Avatar 3 would go to another different biome we've done the jungle we've done the sea we might have been able to do the Arctic next or the fire biome if you mine deep enough do you find a portal into hell Sally Smurf's eyes open defiantly and that at long last is the end of the film my God we did it we survived it's taken me four days to get to the end of this film four days under present course near enough 32 000 words I still don't think I've touched more than half the problems with this film but well I'm not taking up any more of your time or my own I think though or at any rate I hope that I've related enough of the sheer dumbfounding [ __ ] that is this plot and this writing to leave you with very little doubt as to the movie's qualities or rather it's lack thereof this video is long enough without a lengthy summation to close it but perhaps a quick few words before I leave you cinema at its best is an art form it's visual storytelling the medium has its limitations as all mediums do but a good film can be just as fulfilling meaningful evocative deep profound and valuable as a good book they are different ways of achieving the same end enriching our minds and our culture by providing a story a value set a moral we can all share in they give us our heroes and our villains they teach us not out who to look up to but the kind of people to look up to and those we should despise they teach us things about ourselves and they teach us things about our function they teach us how to combine the two they provide us with grand conflicts conflicts of visions and ideals expressions of our Timeless human tropes we though are unfortunate enough to be living through an exceptionally [ __ ] age for film and Cinema and storytelling generally we live in an age that obsesses about my truth and my story yet has absolutely no regard for truth in general or for story as an art form we live in a naval gazing Society that's far more interested in destroying than it is in creating and because we have very little interest in creating we demand little of our creators and so the culture produces nothing this is an age in which the cinema can morph into the feelies from Brave New World because while stories are supposed to challenge us to teach us to ask questions of us as well as to answer the questions that we ask so much of modern society isn't interested in any of these things this is in part responsible for the decline of true cinematic Heroes the type that the MCU could invoke in its earlier phases and the type that it cannot summon into existence now but it's also just as importantly responsible for the decline of cinematic villains indeed the two go together and they say something about us it is very difficult after all to have one without the other there are many ways to taxonomize evil the broadest categories I can use while sustaining this point are is your conception of evil preternatural or is it ideological that is to say in any given work of fiction is evil a force unto itself something both natural and Supernatural or is it the product of mind and reason something created by our own intentions examples of the former are sometimes obvious and sometimes less so naturalistic evil is to be found in for example jaws and Jurassic Park where the villains so to speak have no intent because they are embodiments of a cold and heartless nature they are predators the villain for one of better word is nature itself it's whatever exists that's above the heroes in the food chain to bring this closer to the topic of this video James Cameron inherited and did a good job with naturalistic evil when he took on Aliens the Xenomorphs have no genius they have no will they are malevolent expressions of a terrifying reality Cameron has also done serviceable work with evil of the other sort the human sword which is harder to get right because there's more to work with and it demands more subtlety key to making believable villains of this sort is the understanding that few people are villains in their own stories most people have good intentions and ill effects result either directly from those good intentions Paving the road to hell as the saying goes or because circumstance trumps intentions Cameron has given us examples of each in Terminator 2 miles Dyson is the unwitting progenitor of the film's Pretty Natural evil Skynet his work is done with the best intentions he can't fathom the hell to which he's Paving the road once he's shown it and convinced of it his fundament qualities as a good and decent man transform him from the unwitting servant of evil to wooding soldier in the battle to defeat it he's the John Hammond of Spielberg's Imagining the Hopeless Optimist injected though with a shot of self-awareness in Aliens the human villain is a career-minded opportunist a corporate stooge serving the pre to Natural evils of greed in the film's lampooning of corporatist capitalism and brutality in the Xenomorphs he wishes to preserve he does not conceive of himself as a villain he's trying to better his own life and position and he's been corrupted into evil Deeds by his greed and his ambition carterberg doesn't do what he does because he hates the colonists because he hates the Marines or because he hates Ellen Ripley he subliminally detects that what he's doing might be wrong but that isn't his motive for doing it his motive is simply self-betterment and the advancement of company interests finally in the abyss we have Lieutenant coffee coffee is a marine he's a soldier he's good at his job he follows orders he stays on Mission he takes the initiative he's resourceful and he's effective and there is nothing evil in any of that he doesn't bring evil with him he simply brings the capacity for evil Deeds which is what he's forced to commit by circumstances Beyond his control once in the underwater rig he begins suffering high pressure nervous syndrome and that produces acute paranoia and erratic and often violent Behavior he did not intend to do harm for Harm's sake in his bid to nuclear aliens he believes because of his paranoia he's doing the right thing there are other examples in Cameron's filmography but these three cover the most important types some of them are better than others I think Cameron has always been more comfortable with naturalistic or preternaturalistic evil than with human evil his excellent character work is an exception more than it is a rule but he is or he was capable of both in none of these films was the human villain evil because the human Venom was evil there were always reasons for it they were never the villains in their own tales in more intelligent works of course you have the license to to do complex villainy on a much broader scale Brave New World 1984 and Arthur kershler's Darkness at noon spring most readily to mind as stories where the villain of the piece is afforded the chance to show their workings and explain their reasons Mustafa Monde in Brave New World O'Brien in 1984 and ivanovingletkin in darkness at noon each make their case for the world they've built Mustafa Monde is the most compelling because the world he's built so evidently functions and functions harmoniously he achieves what he wants without much brutality and force and other means the reader simply cannot sympathize with but in each of the three cases the villain of the piece is allowed to argue for themselves the reader is presented with a conflict of Visions when this is done well the reader might and probably will continue to disagree with the villain but they should at least understand the villain and they may even find some of the villain's arguments compelling you have to agree with Monde that the price of emotion is instability and the price of Love is unhappiness you can see why logically he decides to do what he's done in exiling art and therefore emotion from the Brave New World and you can see that in fact it's dangerous because it works Avatar is not that sort of film but that's not necessarily a fault not every film should take this dialectic approach from the ground up the well-realized characters in well-written stories can convey that this work has already been done the villains have understandable motives hell they have motives to begin with you can see things from their point of view and you can imagine how they might justify their actions to themselves the first of these requires a fundamental questioning of the audience and the second encourages questioning by the audience but both approaches engage the audience in the question Avatar by contrast does not the first film's top tier villain is just a replay of the greedy company from Aliens its proximate villain is Chip Hazard and what is Chip Hazard why is Chip Hazard why does he do what he does he is essentially Lieutenant coffee from the abyss but without the cause that underpins coffee's villainous turn coffee went mad with an explicable scientific reason from the tension and stress and pressure of his condition Hazard is just a dick he has no real character he has no real motive which is why the way of water thought it could get away with retconing one in in the form of spider who didn't exist in the first film but spider doesn't explain the villainy he almost explains a hesitance in that villainy albeit one that doesn't actually impact proceedings in any way because the villainy simply re-emerges and reasserts itself yet Avatar does contain the potential to ask questions of its audience it introduces two very significant causes in the film stopping human aging and the death of the Earth the first is pretty well redundant for reasons previously explained which makes its inclusion contradictory and needlessly complicating but the second should give us pause for thought and if the film had a human villain as opposed to a derivative reworking of the aliens pre the natural greed it could have lent much needed character to chip Hazard and invited us to question his actions as against the actions of the Smurfs in fact somebody on 4chan did the work the film should have done in imagining a short Soliloquy by a chip that ties his character to the world gives him motive and asks the audience a challenging question here goes and no I'm not going to do the accent spare us your pity alien you gush about your connection with nature your Primal wisdom but what has it bought you where are your marvels of engineering your Voyages of Discovery your great insight into the nature of the universe even at our basis when we dressed as you do dwelt as you do hunted as you do lived as you do we did more than merely survive we built wonders we made great Journeys we forged epics you have not you speak so proudly of the plugs dangling from your skulls little realizing that they are but strings and you are puppets what little you've accomplished you attribute to the wisdom of your goddess who is nothing but the voices of your dead echoing for all eternity she Moors you to the Past serving as a leash that keeps you as little better than apes and parodies of civilization that lack that special spark to become something more we have come to your world in search of resources whether your actions drive us back or we take what we want and move on the outcome is the same we will depart from your wretched Planet leaving you behind and in a thousand years you will not have changed from this contact with another world you will remain in your trees hunting your prey communing with your goddess until your son burns out and your world dies and above your tomb the Stars will belong to us now I'm not by any means advocating a word for word transplantation here it isn't perfect by any means it doesn't really fit Chip's character but whoever made this put more thought into the story The themes the ideas the philosophy the quandary and the conflict of Visions than either of the Avatar films have Avatar aspires to be an epic but it runs away from anything approaching an epic theme or dilemma true epics deal with epic themes they ask the fundamental and profound questions and often these are the simplest questions questions of trade-offs what have we lost by industrialization but what would we never have gained had we not embarked upon industrialization Cameron though instead shows the most superficial depiction of the noble savage Motif and presented an entirely one-sided basically orientalist notion of the conflict which isn't a conflict at all it's simply an advertisement for a hollow intellectual fashion which treats all questions as settled Jake Sully isn't a hero because chip Hazard isn't a villain they simply perform those roles nothing but disembodied entertainers gesticulating flatly on the screen and making gramophone-like noises as they do so and because there are no Heroes and because there are no villains we are not truly invested in the story they are a part of Cameron was never brilliant at any of this but he used to at least be good at it which is why people like me will happily watches old films while suffering through his new ones because his sense of purpose has shifted he no longer cares about characters stories or indeed ideas I criticize Avatar not because I Hate Everything James Cameron has ever done far from it but because Avatar Falls so far beneath what was once his most mediocre offerings and it cannot be measured on the same scale as his best works the purpose of so much entertainment now is to distract us it's prettified it's gaudy it's action-packed it's designed to Delight our senses and dull our minds films like Avatar are held up as the Cinematic event the thing we have to see to be current we have to be up to date the reason is never this is a film with a brilliant and important story to tell it's the equivalent rather of look apples released a new iPhone look how shiny it is go out and buy it consume products it's consumerism infused with a kind of Pulp morality artistic messages that don't challenge us and exist not to challenge us they rather affirm our fashionable beliefs and opinions instead of making us question them there is no virtue in being an environmentalist or an anti-capitalist as these environmentally destructive and very capitalistic film studios present the concept to us because these are not really thoughts to begin with there is only fashion and fashion is the mentality of the herd you see this by the way in the defense offered by fans of the film and its director who crossed the political divide but are most curious when they come from people who fancy themselves anti-woke these are the people who would ordinarily jump on anything they perceive to be vaguely left-wing but who've demonstrated themselves so easy and so shallow with their principles that they will never actually interrogate them so it is that because Avatar has nice things to say about family and fatherhood its Defenders turn around and say well at least it's not woke let's um let's be clear about this Avatar deploys all the Enviro leftist tropes it preaches the innate superiority of native peoples over corrupt and decadent Western Society it Lampoon's capitalistic exploitation it blames Humanity for destroying the Earth it presents as its alternative a kind of Gaia Vision that wouldn't have been out of place at Woodstock in the 1960s its director says testosterone is a toxin that has to be sucked from the body in order that man be purified he rails against fetishizing guns apparently preferring to fetishize older slower and more brutal forms of warfare like tomahawks bows and Spears he claims the problem with Terminator dark fate is that it had Arnie in it and was your grandparents Terminator rather than the fact that he killed off John Connor in order to replace him with a young diverse female savior of humanity he has in short learned none of his lessons he's doubled down on them he can in short deploy almost all the typical woke tropes and all the most important ones the fundamental denunciation of Western and especially the American way of life but that's all fine because the film doesn't portray All Fathers as is that really the message you want to send to these Studios you can attack the bases of our society and indeed of our civilization but as long as you say one nice thing about it we'll give you a pass if that's your standard my friends you have no business complaining about politics and films you are if anything less credible than the wokest of the woke and infinitely more credulous at least they can create a belief system with something approaching a chain of logic with more than one sentence to it you are just as in hot to Fashion as they are you're just not as good at it or as thoughtful with it and that's really saying something because Avatar is one of the most thoughtless evocations of the so-called woke worldview that we've seen in recent years like the first film The Way of water is the example power Excellence of all the above it's the filming equivalent of cannabis or indeed Soma it's calming comforting relaxing and it's stupifying it's designed to reaffirm the base standards of a sleeping audience it has no story to tell it is a rehash it has no mess to convey it is a repeat it has no meaning to impart it is fashion it is current thing emphasizing the trendy current thing and that's all it is I said on my other channel that Avatar the way of water deserved to flop a whole flotiller of morons interpreted that as me saying that I thought that it would I didn't I am not that much of an optimist its success was pre-ordained it was preordained by the cabal of Studios who willingly stood out of its way leaving the audience with nothing else to watch it was preordained by the money spent on its marketing and its unjustified reputation and it was preordained by a movie-going audience too lazy to ask anything better of Cinema than a pretty facade and bass sensory pleasure oh Brave New World that has such people in it

Channel: The Little Platoon

Views: 758,192

Keywords: avatar the way of water, jake sully, avatar 2, Avatar 2 The Way of Water, Avatar 2 review, Avatar 2 is bad, Avatar 2 critique, The Way of Water, The Way of Water review, Avatar the Way of Water trailer, The Way of Water interview, James Cameron Avatar, James Cameron interview, Avatar, Avatar Neytiri, Avatar trailer, The Little Platoon, Neytiri Jake, The Way of Water critique, The Way of Water Spider, Avatar Quaritch, Zoe Saldana interview, Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver

Id: Ql2VVMMOsto

Length: 206min 55sec (12415 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 13 2023