I don't have any dislike for the first Avatar film released in 2009. It was a competent sci fi/action flick with a cool premise and a nice array of exciting action set pieces. It had many negatives however. The characters were paper thin, the dialogue veered between banal and complete cringe, the designs of the creatures and planet of Pandora felt quite derivative despite how nice everything looked and, which has been noted many times before, the story is a straight up reskin of much better films such as Dances With Wolves and Fern Gully. However, despite its many shortcomings, it still managed to rise above them and be mildly entertaining.

The same CANNOT be said of its sequel. Wow, what an utter SLOG. This film is a chore to sit through. An endurance test. 3 hours is a long time, but if the film is compelling enough, it can whizz by. Not in this case. The story, which can be written on the back of a fingernail, cannot justify the obscene bum-numbing length. From this point i'll list the pros and cons in bulletpoint form:

PROS: -The visuals look lovely as you'd expect. I wouldn't say they are a massive upgrade from the 2009 film, but they certainly dazzle. The 3D as you can expect is absolutely masterful. Not gimmicky, just completely immersive.

-Stephen Lang. I won't spoil anything regarding his purpose in this film but he's easily the most fun character in these films, easily. One dimensional to the max, but that's perhaps part of his charm.

CONS:

-The runtime. The film had no right being this long. It feels padded out and bloated with looooots of filler.

-The dialogue. Oh boy, the dialogue. I don't expect every character to speak like a Shakespeare character but come on. Sample quote 'I don't speak English to buttholes'. The bulk of the most offensively bad lines came from Sully's kids who can't go a sentence without saying 'bro' and 'cuz'. Because of course if you're born on a alien planet without access to humans, you'd talk like that(??). Sully doesn't speak like that. Baffling. James Cameron having a 'hey fellow kids' moment.

-Unlikeable/boring characters. Never found Jake Sully a particularly engaging character (perhaps a result more of Sam Worthington's pancake-flat wooden performance) and here is no different. At least he had the compelling aspect of being a paraplegic who is now put into a strange body where he has freedom to fully live and move around. Now he's a fully formed Na'avi and that interesting dynamic is all gone. His personality is basically 'i hate humans and love my family'. I was completely passive to him ever being in peril. I detested his stupid annoying children, they were aggressively irritating. Neytiri is still...there. The inhabitants of the new water location are also....there. By the way try and guess the character Kate Winslet plays because i couldn't work it out!. There's a reason Avatar gets a lot of flack for 'having no cultural importance' despite being the biggest film of all time...and it's because the characters are absolutely awful. They all speak the same, look the same, they really really love nature don't you know?? There's no real variety and that's a hindrance.

The story. The humans are back and the Na'avi have to move. No, that's it, that's the story. 13 years of writing and that's the best way they could move the story forward.

I was completely indifferent to how this film unfurled. A deeply disappointing 2nd entry in the series. Certainly not looking forward to any successive sequels after this. Might check them out on TV but certainly won't be making the effort to drive to the theatre, i don't care if they play it on a screen the size of the Grand Canyon.

I've seen people declaring the film a masterpiece and showering it with praise. They're clearly blinded by the pretty colours because there's nothing behind it all. Sorry, i'm not so easily fooled. All spectacle, no substance. Visually mindblowing, narratively braindead 4/10.