Look, this film is an absolute mess. It's an hour longer than it needs to be, the writing is absolutely abysmal at times and most of the characters are annoying as hell. But even then, I still had such a great time watching it. In some ways I love this film, it encapsulates the "blockbuster movie" experience so well that, at several moments, tricked me into believing I was actually watching something good.

When you stand back and look at the film as a whole confined experience it is just plain odd. When I walked out of the cinema the one word I kept describing it with was weird. It is weird, weird, weird. It blew me away honestly, how they could get so much bang on perfect and so much astoundingly awful. I suppose I'll start talking specifics now, refraining from any spoilers of course.

The first 15 or so minutes of the film felt like I was watching a video game cutscene, and this is a problem which plagued a lot of the film for me. A lot of the time I struggled to view the story from the perspective of any one character, greatly detaching me from the events taking place. I think most of this can be explained by the rather strange way this film is shot and edited at times. There are many sequences in the film that look beautiful, don't get me wrong. But at other times I was extremely confused over what the cinematographer's aim was. On countless occasions the camera would do this awkward zoom-in which made it feel like I was watching some kind of nature documentary, and, during many of the action set-pieces the editing was cut together so quickly when the scene would have greatly benefitted from longer takes. Overall, this contributed to the feeling that I was just watching a pure spectacle, rather than a character driven story. And yes, maybe that was intended and if so, fair enough. But if that is the case then what is the point spending so much screen time attempting to develop your characters, because I can tell you, I didn't care about a single one.

I'm not going to go into the plot at all, but wow, it is certainly nothing unique or special. Of course, I wasn't expecting it to be and I'm sure that the same can be said for Avatar 1, not that I can remember any of it. Let's just say, don't expect anything you haven't seen a hundred times before, this is just your basic action, adventure storyline, which is totally OK if they nail the visuals and the climatic set pieces, everyone knows what's going to happen so just make the journey as enjoyable as possible. So, did Avatar 2 achieve this?

For the most part yes. It almost feels stupid for me to praise the visual effects and CGI because they are so obviously fantastic. However, I think its important for me to mention that there are some sequences, particularly those that are underwater, that I thought were worth the cost of viewing alone. Some sections of this film are just jaw-droppingly beautiful to gaze at, it is a triumphant achievement in visual effects. However, saying this, they still haven't completely nailed it yet. A lot of the shots which involved an avatar and human character in the same frame really pulled me out of it. I'm not sure whether it was a lighting issue or something, but they never felt they were truly taking up the same physical space. My absolute favourite aspect of the film was the sound. They did such an outstanding job with the foley. I could feel every footstep and every drop of rain, definitely worth the cinema experience! I loved it and, as per usual, the score was fantastic. The Avatar theme is definitely one of my favourites, fits the film perfectly.

So, the most important question, should you watch it? If I had to give you a straight answer I would say yes, it is worth watching. The sound and visuals alone make this a wonderful experience in cinemas, something I'm sure most people were expecting. It's just such a shame that the film falls short in almost every other aspect of its presentation, and I've limited my rating to a 4 because of this. If I were to rate it on my pure enjoyment, I would have to give it an 8, but that's not how I rate films.