Watched Jan 16, 2023
[Update: knocking this down half a star because I just read a headline emphasizing that “Payakan the whale will return in Avatar 3” and I just audibly groaned because I don’t like these stupid movies. They leave me utterly numb inside. Also, Payakan is a dumb, made-up, “this sounds exotic!” name. You’re better than this, James Cameron.]
Story wise it’s a step up from the original, but I still just can’t bring myself to care about this world very much. And while the 3D is pretty good, I cannot stand the high frame rate, which basically feels like watching a TV with the motion smoothing effect on, which I wouldn’t voluntarily do for 5 minutes, let alone 192.
That said, there are some pretty pictures and I actually sorta cared about what going on about half the time, which is more than I can say about the original.
Hard to imagine that the same man who made the super-cool, badass classics The Terminator, Aliens, and Terminator 2: Judgment Day is behind something as impossibly dorky as this!