JC is making a mockery of us all by simply regurgitating past successes wrapped in beautiful bows of CGI and 'motion capture' FX.

1. The graphics were on point, in 2009. Sad to say there was really no noticeable difference 13 years later. James needs to realize what got him here, won't get him 'there'.

2. This sequel figuratively 'craps' on the entirety of the motivations that made the audience care about Pandora and everything that made the first one special. (e.g., what about unobtanium, where's the grand unity; the spirituality, why are these once great protagonists now so one dimensional?)

3. Completely unoriginal plot accompanied by a lackluster story, to say the least. No depth, no continuation of the moral principles, James just does a fantastic job at insulting the audience by simply copy-pasting climactic elements from past franchises. It's evident the only goal here was to separate money from wallets when after more than a decade of development, we get the same tired old antagonist, altercations and plot vehicles. JC should be absolutely crippled with shame after pumping this the way he has.

4. The acting was uninteresting, boring and in many scenes tedious; yes, I'm looking at you Zoe and Sam. Perhaps just a result of their characters radical change for absolutely no gain.

5. Character continuity is obviously not as important to this franchise as hectic world building. It's a shame these actors were on-board with such a dismantling of their original characters. Is the audience really to believe that self-righteous American family values just all the sudden trump generations of indigenous culture? Neytiri is reduced to an emotional basket-case of a housewife/mother, with at least half of her script being wailing in anguish or screaming in anger. Jake's character instead doubles down on the dumb jarhead persona who's only goal now is to keep his family together and safe, like a good little pack of marines, yet stumbles miserably at that. Quaritch is just a steaming pile of disappointment, I can't describe how lazy and dissatisfying it is to see them base the continuation of the franchise on this shallow, unrelatable ogre. Kiri/Grace could have had such potential, but instead the audience gets lackadaisical religious doctrine with little to no explanation nor acknowledgement by any of the other characters.

6. Character development is on par with the Hallmark channel. Now that Jake and Neytiri have been reduced to mindless nuclear parents, we get uninteresting kids who do nothing but the opposite of what they know to be right, simply for the sake of introducing dramatic affect to move the story along to the next unoriginal conflict. Entirely new populations of characters now some-how know a great deal of the English language. Their youth seems eerily in-tune with twenty-first century teen culture and similarly are inherently disrespectful, rude and demeaning for no other reason than to create cheap conflict resolution.

7. The new 'McGuffin' is pitiful and insignificant to the franchise and so forgettable that it's abandoned almost as fast as it's explained. The 'sky people' are back, but is it to terraform or is it for the elixir of life? Who knows and who cares, because no matter the reasoning the message here is clearly the same --humanity shaming.

8. The erratic filming frame rates also make this visually exhausting (seen in IMAX 3D). This movie was filmed in 48 fps, as well as in 24 fps and is nowhere near consistent. Every other shot is rapidly switching back and forth, so one scene will be established in 24 fps, then suddenly switch to 48 fps, and it happens throughout the entire movie. I was literally crying in the theatre, but certainly not due to the utterly superficial story.

Rating: 2/10 stars: Just bad movie making.

Entertaining --yet neutered-- computer aided visuals carried this 3+ hour storyline/screenplay like a donkey through the wetlands. This film was made for the dull and unimaginative.