So, the third instalment in the Avatar movie franchise, and bigger then before...
... which is why I didn't like it.
You see, I find these movies all carbon copies of one another, except the setting always gets bigger, but the story and story sequence remains identical. Calm life is disturbed, natives gather and infiltrate, humans get revenge. Then they gather a bigger force to withstand the humans, are pushed back with some personal loss of a side character, and the world awakens to bring all the wildlife to battle and beat the humans.
The difference is that going from movie to movie we had a skrimish with a raiding force, a battle around a ship and now confronting a whole fleet. But you can put the above over each of them, and it clicks solid into place like an overlay. The first movie was awesome, because all new and stuff, but the two that came after, meh.
The story is basically the mourning Sully family, after losing their son in the second film, and Spider who stays with them but is bound to wearing masks to breathe. He must return to the humans to survive, even though he doesn't want to. Add in an aggressive fire clan, the Mangkwan led by Varang, and an attack leads to Kiri infusing Spider with fungi, resulting in him to be able to breath Pandora air... and making him a prime research target.
Jake on the other hand is captured and scheduled for execution while the RDA wants to find out what causes Spider to breathe exactly. As they escape, the RDA mobilises en masse, resulting in the Na'Vi gathering their forces as well and a huge battle ensues.
In the end, the Na'Vi are succesfull, Quaritch sacrificing himself to save Spider and leaving him in the custody of Jake, as Spider is inducted in the Na'Vi spirit tree world.
So yeah, big blockbuster, fantastic special effects, but as I said above, nothing new. Just bigger, and for that not necessarily better. There is talks there are more parts still to come, but give it a few years time to create a new hype, because like so many theatre franchises it is suffering from the streaming competition.
It was fun, but for me, the stress in that sentence is on "was"...
