Ep 64 - Avatar Fire and Ash (2025)

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Avatar Fire and Ash 2025 picking up where Waterworld left off, Jake Sully still doesn't know what he's doing, and his family proves much more interesting and capable than himself. There is also some fire and some ash to keep things a spectacle. [00:00:27] Speaker B: This episode is brought to you by Radik Audio Radiq Audio Enjoy the music. Hello everybody, and welcome back to our Rating the Movie show where I get together with two of my friends, we take a movie franchise, break it down by movie, give it a score and throw it up on the board to see where it compares to the other movie franchises. This week we were talking about the brand new Avatar Fire and Ash. This one just came out four days ago at the time of recording. We're recording this on Monday as Thursday is Christmas Day, so it's a little bit off schedule, but I appreciate everybody who's here with us hanging out, seeing what we have to say about this fire. Will, how are you doing this week? [00:01:02] Speaker A: I'm doing good beginning of the week instead of the end of the week, so I'm looking forward to the whole week. [00:01:09] Speaker B: Excellent. How about you, Brian? You all ready for Christmas? [00:01:11] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm pretty ready for Christmas. Definitely ready for a nap. It's been a long day for me, but fortunately this is the beginning of the week and I'll be able to get some sleep tonight. [00:01:20] Speaker B: Excellent. Love to hear it. Love to hear it. Now, for people who are coming in for the very first time, I like this franchise quite a bit. I'm coming at this from the premises of a fan, Will and Brian. I kind of had twist their arms to see the other movies. Will at least saw the first one and did not see the second one. Brian, you did see both of them, but you were not a fan of either one and both of you would have skipped this movie entirely if I hadn't forced you. [00:01:43] Speaker C: Correct? Yep, that's correct. [00:01:45] Speaker A: Correct. [00:01:45] Speaker B: Correct. Cool. I went into this one excited. I took my kids to it. I was looking forward to it. I would have seen this even without a movie podcast. I would have seen this one in theaters because I just enjoyed the franchise. Last week, Will, you had said that Fire and no, sorry, Way of Water was just a reprint of the first movie and I disagreed with you, although I don't know that I made my point all that well spoken. Right. This week we absolutely got a carbon copy of the movie before it and it was really hard to sit through at certain points. Not that I wasn't having a good time, but just because I was thinking in My head like, oh, they're going to roast this and I'm going to have no ammunition. [00:02:23] Speaker A: Yeah, this one more than even the last. This one seems like Water World 2.5. It feels like a con. Well, it is a continuation of the second movie, so it feels like the second movie was a setup for this movie mostly, but with a lot of the same plot points as the first and second movie. So it made it a little difficult to chew through. [00:02:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I was saying that this is basically like DLC for the last movie. Like it's not like you said like 2.5. Like it's not its full own thing. It is kind of just a little bit of an expanded version. And if this was like, it almost feels like they probably filmed this at the exact same time. Like almost like 1 and 2 or something. And just like they couldn't have a six hour movie, nor should they have. So they just split into two. But this is the first one where like not, not so much that I felt the length of it, but it just didn't justify the length of it. Like you're literally just showing us things we've seen before. Some of them looked like they were straight cut and paste from the other movies. Like, I would not have been surprised. I would have been surprised because James Cameron. But I would not have been surprised if some of the scenes that we saw were literally from the previous movies and they just like copied, pasted and maybe like updated their wardrobe or something. [00:03:31] Speaker C: So yeah, this, this is number two extended. All we got was Avatar 2 with the addition of the fire ash clan added to it. And that's, that's really all that changed. They just extended the same themes from number two into this and they fleshed them out a little bit more. They searched them a little bit deeper, but it's hard to go deep in a bucket this shallow. So it's still not amazing. But I think honestly between two and three, I kind of liked this one a little bit better overall. Unfortunately I had seen most of it already and so it just kind of felt like they added a little bit of bonus material. Like this was like the director's cut of number two. [00:04:21] Speaker B: I, I kind of agree with that. I feel like the story is a little bit different, but a lot of the imagery and the scenery and the like how we get there is very much the same. And a part of me like in in world it makes sense. So this is kind of a conflict that I'm having with myself. The movie literally takes place like seconds after the second one. Ends right. Like. Like they are still connected to the tree. And you can see that he's still having the same dream, which I want to get into later. And it just kind of goes from there. If that's the case, it makes sense that the American. Sorry, I keep saying it's the American military then. The military hasn't got new weapons. It hasn't got new things. It still just has all the same ships. The whaling process would be the exact same because it's the next day. Like they wouldn't have brand new technology or things to bring out. [00:05:01] Speaker A: So that makes sense. [00:05:02] Speaker B: Sense in world that it all is the exact same thing. You're going to keep whaling the way you know how to whale. But I've seen it like. Like at least the difference between like the first avatar introduces you to the Navi and Pandora and all these incredible things. The second one introduces you to the water tribe and the oceans and all these incredible things. This one introduces you to. Oh, shoot, I forgot Varang. Like that one shrine kind of it. Like that most of what you see is stuff you've seen before. [00:05:31] Speaker A: And I also think they. They actually. They kind of cut out the. Cut the legs out from the. The Fire tribe because they bring them in and they're really cool. They're like really deadly. They give zero Fs and then military man just kind of takes over the whole thing. And then it's just back to the Jake Sully fighting the military guy all over again. And instead of like this cool tribe that could have been more and should have been more, they just kind of took a back burner as his cronies. And I was just like, why? [00:06:07] Speaker C: Yeah, it's almost like they needed to get the colonel some more troops to fight with. And so they just brought in this tribe that he takes over and utilizes as his. Has his own troops. And it was a way more interesting tribe or set of characters really that we've seen. [00:06:27] Speaker A: And. [00:06:27] Speaker C: And they clearly, like, she starts to kind of discuss their backstory and why she isn't interested in their world, God and their religion. And she has separated her tribe from the rest. And it sounded like a really interesting story. And three hours and 15 minutes, we spent a total of about 120 seconds on their backstory. That was it. It was just ridiculous. The most interesting characters we've had in the franchise so far. We got 120 seconds of their backstory. [00:06:54] Speaker B: I think probably not. Probably there's a possibility that the reason they're interesting is because we don't know A lot about their backstory, right? Like, Wolverine gets less interesting when we know everything about him. It's more fun when he's wrapped in shadows. [00:07:07] Speaker C: But these. This tribe is radically different from anything we've seen on Pandora, other than they are at their base value. They are also Na', Vi, but they have completely separated themselves from their religion, from nature, from everything. And we didn't even know they existed until now. And. And out of nowhere you're like, wow, there's this radical, boring tribe and we don't get to learn anything about it other than, you know, she wants guns, he's got the hots for her, the Colonel. And they end up throwing fireballs at everybody together. And that's kind of it. Like, that. That's all we really learn about them. And. And so I was disappointed on that front. And instead we spent so much time doing the same thing we saw in the previous movie, including features. Like, I thought that Jake Sully and his. His youngest son kind of buried the hatchet in number two, but they just started that whole drama thing over again. And then at the very end of this movie, he's like, I see you. And I was just really disappointed that we had to go through all of that again for no reason. [00:08:10] Speaker B: I mean, it is the day after their son died. Like, the fact that they were still grieving makes sense. Like, the fact that, like, freaked out. Like, I get what you're saying. And like, the conversation between Jake and Atari where they were like, you know, I'm still human. This is who I am. Do you hate me? Do you hate your kids? And, like, you can see she's conflicted about it. I didn't. [00:08:35] Speaker C: That was good. [00:08:36] Speaker B: I didn't have a problem with that. That was all interesting to me. I didn't like that. She actually did say she hated her kids, but, I mean, that was a moment of weakness. I don't think that's actually her position on it. I think it was just a matter of, like, she's grieving, right? Like, she just. [00:08:47] Speaker C: I actually liked that. That sequence there, it showed some real depth of character, some real genuine struggles with understanding yourself, your family, where you come from, who you're, you know, who you're really angry with. And on all these kind of interesting emotional things coming together, it was messy and they were working their way through it. That was a more interesting thing for them to dive into, rather than some of the black and white versions we have of good and bad in previous films. So I was appreciative that they got their Hands dirty in some of those ideas. [00:09:21] Speaker B: I'm gonna take that one step further. Getting your hands dirty is a great little send off. Did you guys feel at all, like. I don't know, maybe. [00:09:28] Speaker C: I'm. [00:09:30] Speaker B: I thought Kittridge was, for the first time in three movies actually a fascinating character. And I actually liked him. I hated that they brought him back in the second one. I thought, just let him die. Let that be it. I actually really, really liked him in this movie. I liked his scenes with him in Varang and I found like, Jake Sully just got like, more and more pushed to the side, less and less interesting. And I was super on board with it, almost to the point where there's a scene. We are spoiling the crap of this movie. There's a scene where Jake has like a knife to Spider and I kind of wanted him to kill him. Not that I dislike Spider, but I wanted them to, like, do a flip and have like, Kittredge almost become like the good guy and Jake Sully had turned this corner and become like, irredeemable. Yeah. Kind of really disappointed when they didn't go that far. But, like, did you guys get that feeling, like, that they were just making Jake Sully? Obviously they're pushing to the side. The story is wholly narrated by his son at this point. But, like, is he just. Not that he's less interesting because he was never very interesting, but, like, he's not necessarily even a very good person in this movie. [00:10:30] Speaker A: No. [00:10:30] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:10:31] Speaker A: I mean, I think to me it felt like the corporal or whatever is going through what Jake went through in the first movie. That's the problem. The. The beauty of it is is the corporal did it better because he's a more interesting character, better actor maybe. So it's at least enjoyable to watch, but we've seen it before. Just done poor in the first movie. But it's like him finding, you know, out like that about the Na' Vi people and why this planet is so great and why. It's like he's. He's shacking up with the locals. [00:11:07] Speaker C: Right. [00:11:08] Speaker A: Like, it's the exact same story. It's just from a different kind of angle, but not really because they're both just these hardened military guys. So I don't know, it just is, like, conflicting to me because it's the same story told again, but it. At least with a better character. [00:11:24] Speaker B: I mean, it kind of. Yes, but I do like that he found his own way in. Like the. The intensely spiritual Navi. He's still just like you guys are idiots. I have nothing to do with you. And then he finds, like, War Tribe, and he's like, oh, yeah, you're an equal. Like you. I can understand, like, he doesn't look down on them in the same way. Yeah, okay. I can understand the same similarity in the Beats, but I. I liked the way they did it with his character, [00:11:51] Speaker A: and it was faster, which I like too. Right? [00:11:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:11:54] Speaker A: Like the first Avatar movie. That's the majority of the movie. This one, they're just in bed. [00:12:00] Speaker C: Yeah. There's, like, one scene, he walks out full gear, just complete native from one scene to the next, and you're like, oh, okay, we're gonna wrap this up nicely. All right. It kind of had a feel of. I want to say like an Apocalypse now feel, but that's giving it way too much credit. It was more like a platoon feel, kind of a Vietnam kind of feel, where he goes native in all the worst ways. And that was. It was interesting. And I liked that also, so that was kind of cool. They did have a pretty hard transition when he came out in, like, he walks up to the other general, Quaritch walks up to the other general, and he's just head to toe, white and red, native Indian kind of gear, where I want to say Indian tribal gear. And it was like, whoa, that was fast. She must be really good in the sack, I guess, because he is wearing her outfit. [00:12:50] Speaker B: I mean, she's essentially people, Right? Like, that's like. We're getting the tense of, like, the tail. The head. Tail thing is like a sexual experience, [00:12:59] Speaker C: I was gonna say. [00:13:01] Speaker B: Yeah, that's normally my. But, like, was that not kind of the impression you got when she's just, like, forcing people to their will? I'm like, whoa, okay. [00:13:11] Speaker C: I mean, she did say that she was going to enslave Quaritch and have him pleasure her. [00:13:17] Speaker B: Yeah, that's fair. [00:13:18] Speaker C: She said that. But you're right. When they whip out their little tail tendrils and stuff, and we've never seen them go person to person like she does. I don't know why she was able to put somebody else down on their knees and they couldn't do it to her until Kitty does it at the end, I guess. [00:13:33] Speaker B: Well, I'm pretty sure. Don't Jake and Atari do it, like, under the tree in the first movie like that? That's them legitimately, like, oh, is that like mating? [00:13:42] Speaker C: Oh, wow. I don't remember. Did they do that in the first one? I don't remember them touching tails. [00:13:46] Speaker B: I thought they did, but yeah, they [00:13:48] Speaker C: did have an air of sexuality. And it did kind of look like, hey, I'm gonna kind of rape you in front of everybody. It kind of. It kind of had that a little [00:13:54] Speaker A: bit her, like, taking power from them or something. Like, what. What. What was the reason behind it? I didn't really catch that. [00:14:02] Speaker C: It allowed her to, like, mentally control them and. And she could put them on their knees, and then later, Kitty does it to her. But Kitty has the ability to put her down on her knees. Yeah. Instead super being. For some. Yeah. Okay. Talking about super beings here in the first movie, the tree of floating flowers or whatever has its little lilies drop all over Jake, and he's like, the one right now, and he hasn't. He hasn't really been important since the first film. He's kind of been a bumbling, idiot father in 2 and 3. And other people are more important. Like, his son brings together the big whales. Right. And Jake couldn't do that even though he was flying on the big bird. His. His illegitimate daughter, Kitty is talks to God, and Jake doesn't do anything but, like, get stabbed and fall off of flying birds and stuff. That's it. [00:15:00] Speaker B: Well, Jake wins the first war, which allows those two to get born, which allows them to do their further things. So you kind of have to go the road of, like, how omnipotent is this tree that it can see? Like 3D chess. Right. [00:15:12] Speaker C: Okay, you're right. [00:15:13] Speaker B: Like, he did. He did one thing, but then it's [00:15:15] Speaker C: a matter of, like, it just. [00:15:16] Speaker B: I was just effective. [00:15:19] Speaker C: It's. It was just kind of weird that they made him so important in the first one and he is not at all important in the next two. For. For the most part, really, this is. [00:15:28] Speaker A: Here's my working theory. This is like a Walking Dead situation. If we. If we talk about, like, the Walking Dead TV series, you have Daryl Dixon, who is like a nothing character. He's not. I don't even know if he's in the comic books, but the audience loved him so much that he becomes a mainstay character to the point where people are like, if. If they. Off Daryl, I'm not watching anymore. I feel like this is the same kind of thing that Jake Sully is such a boring character that they're like, we have to. The audience doesn't like him. We have to veer. Let's. Let's. Let's go some other direction. Let's bring some other people to the forefront. And I think that's why, like, the corporal got more Screen time. And now the kids are more important, and Jake is just going to fade into oblivion because he's boring. He's straight boring. Nobody cares about him. [00:16:19] Speaker C: And, hey, don't. [00:16:20] Speaker B: I disagree. But I also think that's the natural progression of fatherhood. Like, you are the main character in your story until you have kids, and then they become the main character. You know what I mean? Like, I'm talking. [00:16:30] Speaker C: Like, I agree with that. But in this case, Jake's a boring character, and I think Will's gone. They're writing him out of the story because he's dumb. And I think it's the right choice because he wasn't good in the first one. He's terrible in two. He's even worse in three. And I enjoyed watching his kid, and I even watched. I even enjoyed watching Kitty this time a little bit more. And she was creepy as hell in the second one because of the voice, translation, everything. I was a little, like, I was ready for it this time. And so I was able to watch her. But also plot. Maybe not plot holes, but I don't understand the plot revolving around her. Why she's able to, like, do godlike things, but then God doesn't want to talk to her. And we thought there was a reason for that. But then it really felt like they were keeping her out. And then, like, two other people had to, like, force her in front of their God and be like, hey, no, she's really here. Stop giving her seizures and let her talk. [00:17:26] Speaker A: It just. [00:17:26] Speaker C: It didn't make sense to me. I don't understand it. [00:17:29] Speaker B: I. I didn't mind the fact that they helped her get through. Through or over the hump. The things I didn't like about that scene was like, the. The tech guy is like, oh, it's like a firewall. And these natives who have never touched a computer, like, okay, yeah. Like, why did nobody question that? Like, what are you talking about? What is a firewall? [00:17:45] Speaker C: Because he was talking to the audience, not to the characters in the story. [00:17:49] Speaker B: But that's one of those things where, like, when you're like, why they call him Spider? That was that moment for me. I'm like, they don't know what that is. They have no idea what he's talking about. [00:17:55] Speaker A: Right, right, right, right. [00:17:56] Speaker B: The other thing is, it looked like it might have been a Na' Vi face. It looked human to me. When she started turning around, I'm like, that's a person. Like, that is just straight up a person. [00:18:05] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it did. It did look human. But I mean, maybe that's us because we're human. We just recognize those human features. [00:18:12] Speaker B: That's actually a great point. A lot of different media does that exact thing. [00:18:17] Speaker C: Maybe we killed Gaia here on Earth or tried to. And so she fled Earth and went to Pandora and became the God of Pandora. And really it was humanity thousands of years ago that started all of this [00:18:31] Speaker A: stuff and now they're here to finish it. [00:18:34] Speaker C: Yeah, that's right. I like Will's explanation better, but sure, I don't know. [00:18:40] Speaker A: I do dislike just like Brian, like she's seizuring out. She can't go under to do that connection again or she's gonna die. But just push harder and you'll make it through. It's like the worst. Yeah, there was no telling you can ever do. [00:18:55] Speaker C: There's no message or reasoning for it or anything. It was brute force. This, that's it. [00:19:03] Speaker A: Not just override it. [00:19:04] Speaker B: It's the power of friendship. Okay, so I want to touch on that as well. Well, whatever. I also want to touch on this before we move on from the whole like Gaia dream sequency thing. I. I know the answer is going to be I don't care. But like, how does it work exactly? Because when Jake, like the first movie, we see them touching in and we don't see any on in that world from my understanding. We just see them connecting and having their little moment. In the second movie when Jake goes in, we see what he's seeing. He is reliving a memory because his son is now like 8 and he's fishing with him and he's showing him what he's doing. And then in this movie, multiple times they go in and they're living in the real time because like people that died that day are alive and they're welcoming in. Kind of like it reminded me of New Hope, to be honest, where like Alderaan explodes and Luke's all sad about his master and like Lee's comforting him be like, oh, my whole planet's dead. But like, your, your friend died. That's too bad. And like in this one you had Spider who's like, I'm being accepted. All these tribes people are dead and they're just like, cool. Welcome in Spider. I'm like, what is like, you died eight minutes ago. Why are you all here? It just blew me away. [00:20:09] Speaker C: Nothing. [00:20:09] Speaker B: Understand the rules of it. [00:20:11] Speaker A: Again, they undercut so many things in the, in these movies. Like they just. [00:20:16] Speaker C: The, the. [00:20:17] Speaker A: The whole idea of death is just pretty much removed. Now, aside from if Humans have their way and destroy this planet. Obviously all these people will. [00:20:24] Speaker B: Sure. [00:20:25] Speaker A: The dead people will die because the. The world is dying, right? [00:20:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:20:28] Speaker A: But right now, death doesn't really mean anything. So all the grieving doesn't really mean anything. So it really makes it tricky to. You just said it. I don't care because they don't want me to care. They're. They're giving me all these things that make me not want to care. I don't care about the son's death because you can go see him anytime. Yeah, great. [00:20:51] Speaker B: And apparently he's still living his life. [00:20:53] Speaker A: Like, the. [00:20:53] Speaker B: The one son is getting advice from him. Like, if you can just go back and relive memories, it'd be like, okay, one thing. Sure, that's one thing. But he's going back and hanging out with his brother, and he's like, I gotta go get dinner. Sorry, kid. I'll see you tomorrow. I'm like, okay, your. Your brothers became the kid next door. Weird, right? But the other thing was, I do like that Kitridge's squad stayed dead. Like, he's only got the one squad mate left now. Because it would have been way too easy for them to be like, oh, you know Project Phoenix? We got 50 of them in the back tank. And then death really doesn't matter. You're gonna kill kitchen 50 times at least. If it's like, oh, no. This was a process to get more of you. And the army's kind of pissed off at you, so we're probably not going to bring you back if you die. I don't think he's dead. I think he jumped off that rock. And he'll be just fine. But because everybody else fall from. [00:21:38] Speaker C: If you don't see the body in Hollywood, it's not dead. [00:21:41] Speaker B: Well, and we saw three other people get shot off their sky horses and like, oh, I hit like, four plants on the way down. I'm fine. You're like, oh, that's gravity. Cool. [00:21:50] Speaker A: Here's my. Here's my going through on that. He's gonna land on the Turok or the big bird, and he's gonna become the choosing one now. He's gonna literally replace Jake. And the tides will turn. The tides will turn. [00:22:01] Speaker B: Concern. You know what? After this movie, cool. Why not? Like, I'm. I'm done with Jake. And kitchen is getting more and more interesting. [00:22:09] Speaker C: He. [00:22:10] Speaker A: He's like, I don't want to do it. It turns me into a monster. It didn't do anything. He got on the bird. He got shot. Off the bird. They didn't do anything. [00:22:18] Speaker C: No. [00:22:19] Speaker A: Rally the troops, which didn't matter anyway [00:22:21] Speaker C: because he threw around a couple of airplanes with it for. For fun. Just explosions. [00:22:26] Speaker B: Which we've seen him do. Exactly. Before. [00:22:28] Speaker A: And they lost. It doesn't matter that the world God had to come in and save the day. Just like. [00:22:33] Speaker C: Just like into. [00:22:35] Speaker A: Or two. Whichever. [00:22:36] Speaker B: Doesn't matter. [00:22:36] Speaker A: They're all the same. So it's like, why? [00:22:40] Speaker B: Why did the world God step in? Or did the whales step in? [00:22:44] Speaker C: No. [00:22:45] Speaker B: Okay. [00:22:45] Speaker C: The whale started, then Jake and all the flyers and the people on the fish thing, they all swooped in. We had a full fledged battle. It was going really well. And then Quaritch comes in with the fire and ash people, turns the tide the other way. And then finally, at the 11th. Eleventh hour, we get the world God steps in with the octopus. Who. We had like a 30 minute sequence of the sun being chased by the octopus, which I thought was such a waste of time. All that was just foreshadowing. So we could have octopus going after all the submarine stuff. [00:23:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I. I think. I mean, I'm gonna. I'm gonna push back the tiniest bit on that one. I feel like as much as they showed us things we'd seen before, most of the scenes they did that in were pretty short. Like when you see Kittred burning the villages, that's like a 20 second scene. [00:23:36] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:23:37] Speaker B: When you see them wailing, that's like a minute. When you see them. Okay. The very beginning. Like, the first 20 minutes of this movie sucked when you had them, like, doing all the fun stuff, like swimming with the whales, which they did in the second movie that went on longer than it should have. And I loved that in the second movie. But I'm like, I've seen this. You've done this exact thing before. [00:23:55] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:56] Speaker B: So, like, I think the. The. The octopus sharks that. It was also a scene we saw in the second one right before, you know, two ox lines, all the boats and fish. That was relatively. [00:24:09] Speaker C: Fish. We had new octopus. That was it. But otherwise all the boats and fish, hell, even most of the birds, other than the fire and ash birds were pretty much the same. Like, but that's kind of a little bit of it got the volume turned up on it, but there wasn't anything different or new. [00:24:24] Speaker B: I agree, though, because I agree 100. But that's the conflict I'm having my brain because it's the next day. Like, if they'd had way better ships and way better equipment, then I'd Be like, well, that's stupid. Why would you have gone out with the other stuff if you had this stuff waiting at home? So the fact that they were using the same, like underwater mechanical crabs and like the boats and stuff like that, which in two I love the look of. Yeah, makes sense. But at the same time, like, I want to see something new. Like, why would you make this movie eight seconds later? Why wouldn't you do another time jump or something so that you can kind of justify making new toys for me to look at. Even in the one scene where like the, the mechanical crabs are getting out, it's got the same guy like punching his fist like he's getting ready. [00:25:05] Speaker C: I'm like, same thing. [00:25:06] Speaker B: Yeah, stupid. In the second one, you don't do that one again. There was some things in this movie that I really, really liked and there's some things maybe I really didn't. And it's. I don't know where I land on this one. [00:25:16] Speaker A: But yeah, we're gonna find out. [00:25:18] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:25:19] Speaker B: Yeah, we are. [00:25:21] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know. I. It just, to me, it just the repetition of or recycling of the same story elements over and over again with different characters or slightly different outcomes. Mostly the same outcomes. It's just, it's just becoming a pain in the ass to watch, really is what it comes down to. Because not only is it the same thing I'm watching, I have to watch it for three and a half hours every time. And it's just like, why? Why? Yeah, it looks, it looks beautiful. Great, great. I don't, I don't care enough to watch it for that long. Yeah, there's just not enough going on. [00:26:00] Speaker C: I don't know how you guys witnessed this film, but I saw it on a DXL screen with 3D glasses. I went all out on the viewing experience in my area. I could see it in the best format possible. It was beautiful. Everything looked incredible. I felt like I was in one of the best produced video games ever. It looked fantastic. Completely CGI to the point where I was like, why do we even have spider in here? Other than to remind us that this is supposed to be live action? But it looked, it looked great. But I felt every minute of that three hours and like 19 minutes or whatever it was, it was brutally long. And I need it to be shorter. I need the next ones to be closer to two, two and a half the most for me to enjoy it. Because after the two hour mark I'm like, I don't care. I just want to go home at this point I'm just seeing the same thing. And for us to see the same recycled stuff from the second film for another three hours just made it that much worse for me. Even with the best visual experience possible, [00:27:07] Speaker B: I also saw it in IMAX with 3D glasses. And I don't think there was a single. I can't remember a single scene where the visuals took me out. Like 1 and 2 both have moments where you're just like, ooh, that doesn't look great. I think, yeah, this was clean all the way through. This one, like, worked for me. Again, imagery we've seen before, but really, really well shot to the best. My memory, the scenes in this, [00:27:32] Speaker A: the [00:27:32] Speaker B: scenes in this that were new really, really, really worked for me. Like the whole, like almost everything involving the military, I actually really enjoyed everything with the Fire Tribe, I really enjoyed. I guess that's not entirely shoot. The whole like traitors coming in was kind of meh. I didn't really care for that. That was new, but who cares? But it's. It's probably like 60, 40 recycled imagery to 40 new imagery. So as much as that new imagery works really well for me, that other 60, just like you mentioned, like, it. This is the first time, I don't know, the movie dragged for me, per se. Like, I don't know if I was like waiting to get out of it, but this is the first time where I'm just like, I'm not living in this world right now. Like, I am aware that I'm in a theater now. I was also in a PAX theater with way too many small children and at least one dude who was like audibly surprised at everything that happened in this movie. And that was kind of funny and kind of really obnoxious. But, like, the kids in front of me were so bored, they were playing on their cell phone the entire time. And I'm just like, fucking phone away. [00:28:33] Speaker A: Yeah, that's. [00:28:33] Speaker B: But also, don't bring four year olds to a three hour movie. Like, what are you doing? [00:28:37] Speaker C: I had a lady next to me that was certain that they had messed up her order because they had charged her like $70 worth of food to be delivered to her seat. You know, one of those Dine in the. Which this was just an expensive theater. I knew that was probably right. But she spent a full 15 minutes with her phone's flashlight on viewing her receipt right next to me with that light blaring in my face. I was just about to say, like, I look over at her and then she turned her phone Off. I was like, we were so lucky. It was so rude to have that flashlight on. But, yeah. So I want to focus on something a little different if we can move on. Unless you guys got something more to talk about. With the look of the film, Jake Sully and his wife Natiri. Is that it? Zoe Saldana. I felt like Zoe's Saldana had a very tough role to play in this movie and did as good a job as she could, but there was zero chemistry between her as a husband and wife combo, and neither one of them came off like great parents. She always seemed like she was more of a tribes person than interested in her family, and Jake had to keep reminding her that family came first, and the two of them didn't feel like a couple to me at all. Now, Sam Worthington, still doing a terrible job in this movie. I don't like the lines he was given. I don't think he did a good job acting. I will give credit to Zoe. She did a good job and had some powerful moments. I didn't like her in this as much as I liked her in two, but they. They just have less and less chemistry as this franchise goes on. And I. I was kind of hoping that maybe one of them might die in it just so I wouldn't have to deal with that issue. What did you guys think about their relationship? [00:30:27] Speaker B: Do you mind if I take this one? [00:30:28] Speaker A: Will, please be my guest. [00:30:30] Speaker B: All right. I like Natiri a lot more on this one than in two. I feel like in one, she had a lot to do, and in this one, she had a lot to do, and in two, she was just kind of there. So I thought she actually did a pretty good performance again with what she was given. She's a mother going through grief. She's just lost a child. She's in a world that is not her own. She's taken away from, like, her people and everything, and she's living with somebody of a totally different culture. You mentioned they don't have a lot or she doesn't feel like she doesn't keep being reminded that family comes first. We don't know very much about the navi or their mating habits, their cultures, things like that. Like, we've seen a lot of stuff in the movies, but it's more like how they hunt. We don't really know how their home life is. Right. So even on Earth, you can get people from North America marrying people from Japan. And just the culture shock that you get there is my wife and I are both from North America, but, like, from what I've heard from other people, the culture shock can be ridiculous. Now you got somebody from Earth and somebody from Pandora of two separate races getting, trying to get together and make this work. Who knows? Like, who knows if they're leading this towards them having a massive fight in a divorce or a breakup or something cool. Like, let's just cut Jake Sully out of this entirely. I'm very okay with it, but the fact that she was acting different to what we would expect a human to act makes sense to me because she's not human. Right. And him reminding her, like, oh, you know, family comes first and whatnot. Who knows? Who knows how the Navy treat their. [00:31:53] Speaker C: Well, in three and a half hours, we should have some idea of what family structure is like in the navi. And I'm just thinking instead of watching whales swimming around again, maybe we could have dove into that a little bit. [00:32:05] Speaker B: Sure. [00:32:06] Speaker A: Well, that being said, the whales seem to be very, you know, attached to their children, and the Na' Vi call everybody brother and sister on the planet. So I. I do feel like there is strong connections and bonds how. But that being said, in the Na' Vi people, maybe everybody is the parent, right? Nature is the parent everybody helps raise. So it's not just on the two people. So maybe that is a difference compared to, like, our North American tribes. Who knows? That said, I didn't mind Natiri as much in this one. I did like that she had more to do. She got back into her badassery and really walloped some dudes, and I'm down with that. And I did think she showed the grieving really well. And I thought the grieving came from more of a place of not just losing her son, but almost losing her identity. Right. Like, she did marry this different species, really. She had children that are like half breeds somehow, some way, which is weird because his Avatar body was a mixed breed. I guess it's all messy. And then, you know, she is taken away from her tribe and in with this water tribe, and they do live differently. I. I feel like the water tribe and jungle tribe are similar in values from what we've seen, but it is still, you know, she is. She's been plucked out of her norm and, and in this place for a long time. And so I think she has a lot to mourn and a lot to grieve, and I think she really let loose to get some of that anger out and frustration, which I liked. But all that to say, there was a lot of knives to necks in this movie and not enough knives going through necks. Okay, can we just get some more knives through next people, please? [00:34:03] Speaker B: Yeah. I feel like this series needs a couple more deaths in it that don't result in people coming back the next movie. [00:34:09] Speaker C: Exactly right. There was a lot of hostage taking and child negotiations, children back and forth, just like in the second one. There was a lot of that going on in this one one, and yet it never really got anywhere. It was just moving chess pieces around on a board, never getting into any kind of a checkmate situation at all. In fact, it kind of ended in a draw by the end of the film. [00:34:34] Speaker B: I did really like the whole scene, though, where, like, Kittridge brings Jake Sully in and you can see him as, like, a war prisoner and people are, like, taking videos with their cell phones and whatnot. You know what I mean? [00:34:45] Speaker C: That was kind of cool. [00:34:46] Speaker B: That whole sequence, I actually really enjoyed. [00:34:49] Speaker C: They made it look like a terrorist, [00:34:50] Speaker B: you know, they just kind of cut that scene. And, like, I have so many questions about that scene. Like, the. The marine biologist who drove the tank, what happened to him? He just kind of runs off into the shadows. Like, do they not have cameras? Are they going to know that he's the one that set him free? Like, that guy's. There's no doubt about it. But also they've got radar equipment that saw her coming in, and then she just flies away. And, like, Kittrich and his whole crew are already on their, like, flying pterodactyls. Nobody knows where she went. Like, she just gets away instantly. I'm just like, yeah, well, they can [00:35:19] Speaker A: track the IRF thing, but can't they track where she's going? [00:35:23] Speaker B: She's on their radar. Like, they saw her coming in instantly. They're like, cool. She's there, guys. And it's not even like, oh, we were dealing with other things. Like, Kittredge is on his pterodactyl. I don't know how big this city is, but, like, yeah, I don't know. That felt like there could have been an action scene or something there. [00:35:39] Speaker C: I kind of felt that the look of the city was a choice that I didn't agree with. We're this far in the future, and apparently all you environmentalists out there have not done a damn thing because we are clearly just an industrialized mechanical smog spewing flame, dark, sinister looking, mechanized, not a tree in sight society. Because that's all. That's all the human area was, was just dark, mechanical, lifeless, evil. It was just so over the top. I'M like come on, we don't have like a park for the children to play in. There's not a tree somewhere in this city. Like come. It was, it was just too much. They didn't even have like crops that they were growing for food. Like how are they. Is everything mre I don't know is too much to understand. [00:36:33] Speaker A: This is why they had to flee Earth because they frickin destroyed. [00:36:38] Speaker C: Exactly, exactly. It's just, it seems like I would just like to believe that that far into the future humanity could come across a planet that has such wonderful items as Unobtainium and yellow brain fountain of youth matter. That we could go there and learn to trade for these items, maybe even learn to adapt to the way their societies live and learn to live like them. Or I don't know, start out small instead of just blasting the crap out of the forest and landing this giant mechanical monstrosity city right in the middle of everything. It just seems so aggressive, so over the top and it's so unrealistic to the path that humanity is actually on right now. [00:37:26] Speaker B: I just so hard on that one. I'm so hard. I seriously time in human history where we have been that benevolent when we come across. [00:37:34] Speaker C: We've always been terrible. But I would like to believe that we are coming to like we, we acknowledge that we were terrible and I think we are on the presence this, this precipice of change. And I think that most of our society going forward were you to see this planet on the news and you were to see this botanical gardens and beautiful people and all this culture and life. I think that a lot of at least Americans would be like hey, let's not burn that shit down. Let's just take our time and figure it out. Let's Star Trek this stuff and not interfere too much. I'm just saying. I just, I hate how they paint humans in such a harsh tone here. I just don't think we're gonna be like that. [00:38:16] Speaker A: I think it's kind of funny that the two Canadians and I might be speaking for Dan here a little bit drastically differ in what we view Americans to believe and think on day to day. [00:38:35] Speaker B: I don't want to make this political and I need to change the topic. Otherwise I'm gonna have to say some things so you can edit this. [00:38:41] Speaker C: Pretty aliens. [00:38:41] Speaker B: Pretty aliens. [00:38:43] Speaker A: I just, I just think that's, that's, that's one of the points of the movie though is right. [00:38:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:38:48] Speaker A: This is a cautionary tale. If we right screwing up Earth, this is what's gonna happen. And when people get desperate, and these people are desperate, they literally have no home to go home to. They have to succeed here. They're going to do anything it takes. And what's the easiest way to do that? When the, the first movie tried to talk to the Na' Vi and make some sort of leeway and that didn't work, what's the only other option? Bulldoze it all down? [00:39:15] Speaker B: Yeah, because that's true. [00:39:16] Speaker A: Like history repeating itself over and over. [00:39:18] Speaker C: Well, I just didn't feel that desperation in humanity. It felt more like commercialism. They wanted Unobtainium as a mineral and, and they wanted the fountain of youth for all the rich people. It didn't feel like we need a new home until the very end when they've got, oh, hey, wait, humans could breathe this air. And then suddenly the paradigm shifted a little bit. But I didn't feel that they wrote that well enough into the story to really hook me. And had it been that way from the start, that humans were desperate for a place to live, then I could have accepted this, let's bulldoze it all down and make it our home regardless, because we have to you then I could have accepted that a little bit. [00:39:55] Speaker B: I feel like in the first movie they were there for the Unobtainium, and then in the second movie they're talking about no Earth is cooked. Like, we need a new home, we need somewhere else to be. And that's why they're, they're like moving more en masse. Yeah, they talk about having been there for years. Right? Like, like they, they know this planet fairly well. They're not trying to conquer it per se at that point. They're not trying to, what's it called, like, take it over as their own. That's conquering. That's not the word I'm looking for. Anyways, they're not trying to take it over at, in that one. They're trying to do what you're talking about. They're trying to negotiate with the Navian. Like, hey, like, do you want to move over this way so we can have the Unobtainium under your giant tree? And then when the Navy are obviously against that, then it turns into a war. So like their first instinct was negotiation, or at least the first one we hear about was negotiation. And then when that falls through and we get pushed into a corner because our home planet said then we could turn more, more war based. But also, as far as the city design goes, a, I liked it because it I don't know. Just. I thought it was cool. But also, who knows how much of the city we're seeing in that. Like, that might just be the industrial sector. Right, Right. Like, I don't know. [00:41:06] Speaker C: All the aerial shots looked like it. So I don't know. [00:41:08] Speaker B: Exactly. It would have been cool to see more of the city because that's one of the things I actually really liked because I said the new stuff in this is the stuff that really got me, including most of the stuff with the humans. It would have been cool to see, like, I don't need to see a daycare, but, like, more of a. No, we're making this world our own. We're not destroying it. We're just cultivating. [00:41:24] Speaker C: Well, I just. I guess I just don't feel that those themes were fleshed out enough for me to find believable or accurate. And that's a writing issue. I agree. What you're saying makes absolute, total sense, but they just didn't flesh that theme out enough for me to enjoy it that way. [00:41:39] Speaker A: I think major reasons why, Brian, you're having a little bit of this issue. And again, this is me just throwing crap to a wall to see if it sticks. Is the first movie again. [00:41:49] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:41:49] Speaker A: They're there for the autanium because they need that to fuel their planet. [00:41:54] Speaker C: Right. [00:41:54] Speaker A: Like to keep them alive. So that's why they're there. They're trying to do it peacefully. It doesn't work. Whatever war breaks out now, they're here. They are desperate to make this their home. And yet they're more interested in brain juice life longevity than securing a homestead and fleshing out their existence on this planet. They're still so greedy that they're going for brain juice because it sells for big bucks. And that's the focus. It's not this. We need to expand and live on this planet peacefully or otherwise. And so it's, again, poor writing in my mind, because the humans greed is the front and foremost, not that their need to survive is on the brink. Right. [00:42:42] Speaker C: Like, yeah. And it feels like it doesn't come [00:42:44] Speaker A: across properly because of the. [00:42:47] Speaker C: And it feels like they're dehumanizing them and just making us all greedy monsters. [00:42:52] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:42:53] Speaker C: And I'm like, it's not like that. It's not black and white like that. It's a very complex situation, and they didn't have the writing to discover those nuances and make it a believable story for me. Same problem we had in two extends into three. And they did do a line where he says, you know, this brain juice is funding the operation and that's why we're wailing. But it, it really felt like the movie was focused on the commercialism of this brain juice and rather than the humans need desperation to find a new home, which would have been more interesting. [00:43:26] Speaker A: Does that even make sense? How is the brain juice funding this thing? Human existence? [00:43:32] Speaker C: Why would you want to live forever on a dead planet? Like let's. [00:43:35] Speaker A: Human existence depends on them. [00:43:37] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Colonizing on it doesn't make sense. Yeah, so, so like people are putting [00:43:44] Speaker A: money, I want to buy the brain juice so you can colonize. Well, you have to colonize whether, well you get the brain juice or not. You have, you need to live somewhere. Like, it just doesn't add up to me in my, in my mind. [00:43:54] Speaker B: I think humanity historically has been very short minded, short. [00:44:02] Speaker A: Short sighted. [00:44:02] Speaker B: Short sighted. Yeah, in what they're looking for. So the idea of like, oh, I could die soon, that's terrifying. I'd better have this and that will make me live forever and we'll figure out the problems down. [00:44:12] Speaker C: All of these ideas by themselves are totally normal. Like these are all ideas that humanity has encountered throughout history. Right? We know how bad humans can be. We've witnessed the world wars, we've witnessed the atrocities that humans can do. We know the depths of depravity that we can achieve. Unfortunately, you know, I would like to believe that we're a better society now, that we're at least aware of how bad it gets or we're becoming aware of how bad it gets through communication. You guys say no? I sure feel like us Americans have come a long ways, have a long ways to go, but at least we're becoming aware of things. [00:44:52] Speaker B: So how's AI doing? [00:44:54] Speaker C: What do you mean? [00:44:55] Speaker B: I mean AI is using massive amounts of resources to do it, is taking up all kinds of things, it is destroying jobs, it is incredibly short sighted and we are running fucking headfirst into that wall. No problems whatsoever, let's do it. And it just drives me insane. And we're watching it in real time and you're like, humans are better than this. I'm like, I don't see what you're talking about. I would love it if we were true. [00:45:18] Speaker C: Chat GPT. Chat GPT helped me solve wordle this morning, so I'm all for it. [00:45:23] Speaker B: Worth it. [00:45:26] Speaker C: So. That's right. Five letter word, ends in T. Nailed it, nailed it. So burn baby, burn. Give me my AI. No. You know what? AI is a bigger question than I Can handle in an Avatar review so. [00:45:40] Speaker B: Well, Exactly. And that's why I'm like, I don't want to get super political in this, but like, you keep going down the well, where I'm like, ah, what do I say? [00:45:48] Speaker C: That's a new technology that we don't understand yet. But a lot of people are comparing that to the nuclear bomb. Right. Could be used for nuclear energy. Could be a great, wonderful thing. We use it to blow stuff up. But that was because we were creating something intentionally to do damage. People are intending to make AI to help us in some way or make money. That's right. But no one's. Well, I guess actually that's not true. They're using AI for cyber attacks and as weaponry. So I guess same thing, same thing all over again. Just new technology. We'll see. Is it going to destroy us like nuclear energy destroyed us? I don't know. [00:46:25] Speaker B: When they were making the nuclear bomb, it's also worth noting they had no idea what was going to happen. And there was a. They were talking about there was a chance this is going to light the atmosphere on fire and we're all going to die instantly. Let's try it anyways. Like, it's also the people who run these things have no imagination of, like, what could go wrong. [00:46:39] Speaker C: There's a lot of people saying it's going to be Skynet all over with AI. So I kind of think this is a sense of history repeating itself, just with a different format. [00:46:47] Speaker A: All I can hope is that we find a Pandora to ravage soon. Okay, [00:46:54] Speaker C: here we go. Here we go. [00:46:58] Speaker B: I. I don't know how much of that is going to make you. [00:47:01] Speaker C: Fascinated me. [00:47:04] Speaker B: Also, I'm having a good time, so who cares? Is there anything else about the movie itself you want to touch on before we wrap this up? [00:47:13] Speaker A: The only thing I want to touch on is I think Una Chaplin did a great job as Varang. The character was great. Her acting in it was great. She came across really well. I just recently learned she's the granddaughter of Charlie Chaplin. So that also was a nice little tidbit. And I think Stephen Lang was the most enjoyable. He's been over three movies as well. I think his character arc at least had something to it. Even though it was a re work of Jake Sully's, it was at least done better. So they were probably the highlights of the movie. And then a shout out to Natari. She's always good when she gets a chance to be on screen. Yeah, I think that was it. Those were like the highlights to me. Jermaine Clement was back as the biologist, which I thought was hilarious, and he at least had something to do. I was like, okay, well, at least there's a reason he's in here. [00:48:09] Speaker C: He even cracked a joke or two that had me chuckling, so I don't [00:48:12] Speaker A: know why, where he went. It's probably dead. But, you know, that's. That's that. [00:48:17] Speaker B: Yeah, he just disappeared. And you're just like, there's cameras everywhere. Like, that tank or the dozer that he's driving has cameras everywhere. Like, there's no way you're not caught. And they're just like, whatever. He'll be back in the sequel. Why not? [00:48:29] Speaker A: Probably. [00:48:30] Speaker C: Hey, we got. We got the one armed pirate guy back, right? We thought he was dead. He just lost an arm, and he had that cool little robotic arm and everything. [00:48:38] Speaker A: Next move, he'll be back with robotic legs, too. He's gonna be looking like one of those crab boats. [00:48:43] Speaker C: There we go. [00:48:46] Speaker B: Avatar, kill your cast. Like, just. Just be free to kill your cast. Like. Like, it's okay. We'll. We'll find new people. That's actually one thing I do want to touch on going back a second, because in the first movie, obviously these movies are focused around Jake Sully, and so we're just seeing what is happening around Jake Sully. And so I'm curious if it's kind of like the same argument I hear with Star wars where people are like, I love the universe, but let's get away from the Skywalkers, right? If they focused on, would you have any. I know you guys don't like these movies, so bear with me. Go with the question. Would you have any interest in these movies if they didn't focus on Jake's golf? There was, like, a totally different in to this universe where you do get to see more of what's going on, because, like, they are 100 still mining unobtainium. It's just that Jake Sully's not there, so we're not seeing it. Like, the only reason we're still focusing on whaling is because they live on the ocean. Maybe I'm completely wrong, but my guess is that the humanity that we're seeing in this movie is strip mining this planet every way they can. So. Well, some are working on. [00:49:48] Speaker C: I was a little disappointed because I thought we were gonna go to the fire and ash people and they'd be out in the desert and we'd see, well, oil. Well pumps everywhere, just pumping oil out of the ground. I thought that's where we were going to go on this one. We got to get some other environmental disaster going on another land. So I was actually surprised that this was just a warring tribe. And I'm disappointed that Varang Una Chaplin's character didn't get more time on screen because I'm with. I'm with Clean. I thought she did a great job. Is very interesting character. A lot of fun to watch her work. So that was kind of disappointing. But no, Dan, to answer your question, I don't have any interest in this franchise whatsoever. I don't want to see where it goes. I don't want to see spin offs. I don't want to see number four. [00:50:30] Speaker B: Too bad if this keeps going. [00:50:33] Speaker A: I. I think it's scheduled for four years from now, so we'll see. [00:50:36] Speaker B: Oh, is it that far out? Wow. [00:50:38] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a ways out on this one. And you know, big jc, James Cameron said if it doesn't make enough money, they're not making it anyway, which I [00:50:46] Speaker B: don't know if that already made like $385 million or something. [00:50:50] Speaker A: Like, I heard somewhere that they have to, they have to break a billion for it to become profitable. [00:50:56] Speaker C: Really? Wouldn't surprise me. [00:50:57] Speaker A: I mean, I mean profitable. I mean, line enough people's, you know. Yeah, sure, yeah, yeah. [00:51:05] Speaker C: Because the, the movie, like just doubling what they spent on it isn't good enough anymore. You got to triple that number before they, they think the movie is profitable. You're still 300% profit. That's huge anywhere else, but not in Hollywood. 300% profit is just, hey, job well done. That's it. [00:51:22] Speaker A: Yeah, Yeah. I, I don't have any hope that this won't get canceled, unfortunately. I think, I think it will keep going. Do I think that they're gonna keep writing themselves in circles? [00:51:36] Speaker B: Probably. It says the budget is about 400 million and it's pretty like it's probably made that back already in one. [00:51:45] Speaker A: I would assume so, yeah. [00:51:46] Speaker B: And you still got the Christmas break coming up. There's not really. I mean, I'm hearing good things about Marty supreme, but it's not gonna be a huge blockbuster, I wouldn't think. There's no Star wars, there's no Marvel, there's no dc. Like, there's nothing else really on this spectacle level to combat this. So I could see this doing pretty well. I don't know if it's going to clear a billion or 2 billion or, or be the number one grossing or whatever. I would bet this does worse than one or Two did. Like, I bet this would be the least profitable of the three, but I bet it still does just fine. [00:52:16] Speaker A: She'll be just fine. Okay, my last question for you guys, unless you have anything else. Nope. You guys didn't care for spider in number two. Did you care for Spider in 2.5? [00:52:28] Speaker B: I liked him more because he actually had a reason to exist. Like in 2, the only reason he was there is so that Kittred had a kid and he felt so forced in and stupid, and it just wasn't enough. I. I kind of liked the aspect. Like, it was a little weird how we got there with him having, you know, Gaia inside of him or whatever you want to call it. But I liked it was like, oh, now we need to keep him alive because he is important. Well, so I like that aspect as well. [00:52:54] Speaker A: Keep him away from humans. Keep him alive. Exactly. Jake could have offed him and ended the whole thing. Yeah, Jake's up. Can't do anything right. [00:53:04] Speaker C: Well, you know what? It was kind of surprising to me that Jake even put a knife to his throat, because the planet God, whatever we're calling her. Oh, I forget the name. They had a name for it, [00:53:17] Speaker B: whatever. [00:53:18] Speaker C: She decided to give the Earth kid lungs. Right? Like, yeah. Why would you go against the will of your God, then? If. If that's your thing, why would you go against that will? So I was kind of surprised that they even really went that way. You knew he wasn't going to pull the knife across the kid's throat. You absolutely knew that. There was no tension there or anything. So that was weird. I did like how the kid became very important. I don't like the actor. He did an okay job, I guess. His lines were all right, I guess I didn't feel the depth of any relationship between him and his father or any of these really interesting things that they could have explored. They didn't do a very good job of that. I did like that they made him important and he had a reason, because in the first. In the second. Second movie, it felt like he was literally only there to remind the viewers that this was a liveaction film and not a CGI video game cutscene, because that's what it starts to look like when you don't have any humans on the scene. It just looks like a cut scene from a video game. A really goodlook video game. But that was it. [00:54:26] Speaker B: I thought he did better, the actor himself in this one than he did in the second. Or at least he bothered me less. With the exception of the scene right before he has the knife to his throat when he's at, like, the river and he's narrating everything he's doing, he's like, oh, man, I gotta take a leak. Oh, that's a good idea. I shouldn't take a leak yet. Oh, man, this is itchy. And it's just like, who are you talking to? Nobody is around you. Like, the other people are having a conversation by themselves. Like, shut up. He's just talking for the sake of the audience. Hearing something. [00:54:53] Speaker A: Yeah. You guys had mentioned that you were, like, in your theaters and it was, like, packed and whatever. I went to, like, a matinee afternoon on Friday. There was, like, maybe 30 people there and I was the obnoxious one. Because when there was lines like that happening, I'm just like. [00:55:11] Speaker B: Nobody else is making a noise. I'm just like, oh, okay. [00:55:14] Speaker A: I guess that wasn't funny. And just the stupidity makes me laugh and I can't. [00:55:21] Speaker B: I can't help it. [00:55:22] Speaker A: And. [00:55:22] Speaker B: And I admit it's almost. [00:55:24] Speaker A: If I cared, I'd be embarrassed for myself. But I just can't. I can't. It almost made the movie. It kept me awake, I'll put it that way. [00:55:34] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah. I don't know. [00:55:38] Speaker A: I. I didn't love Spider. I think a lot of his dialogue is. Is badly written. Him having a reason this time makes sense that he's there, which is nice. I. I would have had a little more skin in the game if Natiri had the knife to him because she was the one that was like, no, he's got to leave. He's not one of us. She was the one that could have actually done the deed. [00:56:04] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:56:04] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:56:05] Speaker A: Jake Sully can't do anything. So I think. I think they swapped that and that was a mistake. They should have had her do it. And they come to terms that she couldn't. [00:56:15] Speaker B: So I'm gonna disagree a little bit. I didn't think that Jake Sully would do it, but I wanted him to. So the. The tension was there in the sense that, like, I wanted him to do it and kind of become the villain in the story. [00:56:26] Speaker C: Yeah. And say no, just as he draws it across the kid's throat. [00:56:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Whereas if Neytiri does it, like. Like, I would rather have Jake Sully become irredeemable than material become irredeemable because I like her character. [00:56:40] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:56:40] Speaker B: And if we're building towards Jake's always an asshole, let's get rid of him. Cool. But I don't want them to get rid of teary. [00:56:46] Speaker C: So I, I. [00:56:47] Speaker A: No, and I'm not saying I wanted her to do it. I'm just saying. You believe her to do it? [00:56:52] Speaker B: Sure. It seems more likely she would, I'll give you that. Yeah. [00:56:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Just for the tension sake of that scene which had. [00:56:57] Speaker C: Yeah. Unfortunately, I would like to say that I think that it was. I feel robbed in things like the poster and the, the movie stuff that the, the commercials that we got for this. Because Varang is in everything, everywhere. She has a pretty small role in this film and it was pretty unfortunate. I mean, she's the biggest head on the poster. She's only in 20% of the film at most. And it was kind of disappointing because she was one of the more interesting characters and because we brought in this new tribe that has done something radically different from everybody else on the planet, is completely different from the humans, has its own realistic reason for being like, I, I understand why they. That tribe went the way they went in the small story that she gave us of their origin. It made them so much more interesting than the humans and they're kind of all over the place just wanting to, you know, rape the planet for all its worth. So, yeah, I was sad. I was sad. Or I got ripped off on that, but that's it. You guys ready to rate this thing? I am. [00:58:00] Speaker B: I think I said everything I wanted to say. Okay. The RA Twin 2 is the new flagship Bluetooth adapter brought to you by the fine people at Radiq Audio. 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Thank you very much to Radiq Audio for sponsoring this episode and thank you for not skipping the ad. You didn't skip the ad, right? If you like what we do and you want to help support us, consider joining our Patreon. There's a link down below. Shout out to our producers as well as our executive producers, Real Bubba, Hotep and Dino and our head writer elder JM 990 this week on our rating we are going to be doing a watch along of the Sound of Music on Sunday night. So if you want to come join us there, you have to join the discord at the producer level and you can watch that along with us. Should be a good time. [01:01:13] Speaker C: Fire and Ash is just the same thing as its predecessor, a little bit longer. And we got introduced this new character over here whom I really like. So she brought up the score a little bit. I felt like we got a little bit more depth on characters, a little bit uptick in the dialogue. The plot had just as many holes in it as they patched up. In fact, I don't feel like they patched up many of the holes. I think they just introduced a few more of them. So that wasn't so great. This is. If you liked the second one and you want to see more of it, then go watch this. But frankly I didn't need to see any more of it. So it was not as fun for me. About the same amount of fun, I guess. I'm just trying to say that this got a 65, a slight uptick I believe, from the second movie. [01:02:04] Speaker B: All right, similar. This is Avatar 2.5. Unfortunately, this is the first time in the franchise. I like the other two movies quite a bit. This is the first time where I didn't feel like this one justified that it's runtime or potentially even its existence. The new stuff in this one, the stuff we see with Kittredge and Varang, the stuff we see, the Fire Nation, the stuff we see, even the, the human, the military based stuff like that, I really liked all of that. I was all in for. But unfortunately this is the story of Jake Sully and his family and everything there we've seen before. Making Spider more important was interesting. I. I'm curious to see how far down that rabbit hole they're going to go. I think Kittridge, he's going to live through this one. Varang will say she's gonna live through this one. And that's great because they were by far the most interesting part of this film. I want to see more of them down the road. Kittredge was interesting to me because like I have not liked Kittridge in either the other two movies. The scars on his face look cool. Like with everything in this movie, it looks good, but there's not much there. This is the first time I really liked it by far. He was my favorite character in this movie. I. I don't know. It's tough to say because, like, last week, Brian asked, how many of these movies do you want to watch? I didn't have a good answer for him. This was my least favorite of the three, but I'm not like, oh, I'm done with it. Like, I'm out of this already. Because, like, every franchise stumbles a little bit. And if we cut off the Alien franchise when Alien 3 came out, then we would never have gotten, you know, Romulus or Covenant. If we cut off the Predator franchise when, you know, pray not, sorry Predators came out, then we've never got Prey or Badlands. So to say, like, oh, one stumble and you're done is too harsh. I do still want to see other ones, but if this is the direction they're going, where they're just copying, pasting their homework from previous ones, you can stop here. This got a 70 for me. This is the lowest scored of the three movies because this was the one that really felt the most or the least imaginative to me. This one just felt like it was stuff we've already seen. And that's not why I went to the movies. [01:04:01] Speaker A: All right, I'll keep this short but sweet. Yeah, it's a spectacle. We already know that it's Avatar in and out of the water. This time. It's still too long, it still says too little, and the characters are still too uninteresting. This is a slight downtick. 54 out of 100 for me. If you like them, you like them. If you don't, you're me. You don't. [01:04:25] Speaker B: And with that, Avatar goes down one point to 65, keeping it exactly where it was. Brian, your scores went up in each movie. Will your went down in each movie. I'm sure both of you would love to see his franchise much lower than it is, but is this okay for you? Can you live with it? I mean, you want it below Gremlins, and it never got close, so. [01:04:46] Speaker A: No, that's fine. I'll take any point I can get. So one point down, that's a win. [01:04:53] Speaker B: Yeah. Taking this franchise down one point at a time. [01:04:57] Speaker C: Well, I tell you what, if Avatar 4 in, you know, three, four years from now comes out and they don't drastically tell me something fresh and new, I'm going to be so much harsher on the score. I didn't impact this movie quite so much, being it's a rehash of the previous film because I was happy that they attempted to bring up some of the other writing issues in this film. They didn't do a great job, but they attempted it. And so I felt like, okay, we had and a slight uptick on this one. [01:05:34] Speaker A: I think, Dan, overall, you probably tanked this one the most. Like, you're the point difference. Probably. [01:05:40] Speaker C: Yeah, it's possible. Down. [01:05:42] Speaker B: It went down seven. Oh, sorry. My. My total score went down three points. Right. But this score went down 13 points from the movie before. It's not. The thing is it still got a pretty decent score because I still had a good time. It still looks incredible. The music is still fantastic. I I for the parts that showed me something new. I enjoyed being in this world. It just spent too much time on stuff I'd seen before that didn't spark my imagination. And that's what I go for. [01:06:15] Speaker A: No, that makes sense because, yeah, you were very clear about why you enjoy seeing these movies. So it did make sense to me that this one would drop in your eyes. [01:06:23] Speaker B: Yeah. And again, a chunk of it was also annoying. I'd have to talk about it with you guys. I'm like, I got nothing. This is exactly a carbon copy. I got no ammunition. What do you do? [01:06:33] Speaker A: Feverishly taking notes. What can I bring to the table tonight? [01:06:38] Speaker B: Writing notes from the glow of the Android phone in front of me, from the little kid, just like, all right, that is our rating of Avatar Fire and Ash. But what's your rating? I'd love to know. Leave a comment down below. We record this live over Twitch TV, the Mongolia show every Thursday night at 9pm Eastern Standard Time. So head over there and hit the follow button if you want to hang out with us live or if you made it this far in the video, make sure you hit like and subscribe so that I see you in the next one.