Linus Volkmann’s pop column: Nine reasons why you should miss “Avatar: The Way of Water”.

The original “Avatar” from 2009 is the most successful film of all time to date. A sequel was a long time coming – it can now be seen in streaming this week. However, this pop column warns against putting on the overly long turnip with an overpowering complex. A rant.

Anyone who thought that this bloodless Tolkien curse “The Rings of Power” represents the pinnacle of cinematic chair accumulation with an AI impression is wrong. It gets worse, now you’ve dived to the bottom of the digital cesspool with no heart or story – and with that, a warm welcome to this week’s pop column.

I hope no one from Pandora or the Na’vi feels personally hurt by the following lines. However, it is my duty as “Germany’s most central fantasy critic” (self-description) not to leave anyone in the dark about what kind of kitschy computer-animated superquark will rain down on him/her in this film.

At this point, a memorial line for all those victims who watched “James Cameron’s new masterpiece” (source: Jagd & Hund) in the cinema at the beginning of the year. We can do nothing more for you, but may this text avenge you.
Since this week, “Avatar: The Way Of Water” has been available on the Disney+ streaming service and is spilling into households. Protect yourself and your family from it.

1. Discount on one’s lifetime

Without looking, what would you guess, how long is the new, the second “Avatar” movie? Probably long, very long, right?

Of course you’re right about that: The most superfluous film of the year stretches over a whopping 193 minutes, that’s three hours and a quarter of an hour. Sure, the megalomania of contemporary blockbusters demands extra length. A Marvel flick in 90 minutes? Nobody would take it seriously anymore! And James “Titanic” Cameron only starts at two hours. But with weak fabrics and thin stories, the ubiquitous stretching strokes with their hairy ass are directed completely against the viewer: inside and – to stay with the image – sits on his face for hours. This is the case with the new “Avatar” part more extensively than with almost any other cinema project with no time limit in recent times. Because – who would have thought it – the plot and characters of “Avatar – The Way Of Water” turn out to be so thin, in comparison, even homeopathic tinctures seem hearty like cream sauce.

2. We are not to blame

Of course, you might think, who even watches a movie like this? Mainly people who get artist ribbons for going to the zoo, right? Not at all. Because the first film (from 2009 and after all “only” 163 minutes long) definitely had qualities, implemented a homogeneous connection between real actors and subsequently staged fantasy figures – a combination that was already used in the serial filming of “Meister Eder und sein Pumuckl” knew how to please. After the first “Avatar” there was nothing for a long time and its elaborate new version rightly aroused hopes for “hot popcorn entertainment” (source: private newsletter from Olaf Scholz).

3. Ripped off by the AI

So why did the original from almost 15 years ago have its charm? Not only because of the digital overkill, but above all because of the actors. As I said, in that first film, such were opposed to the high-resolution blue men. This aspect is omitted this time. Yes, not only that, but the “real person” is bizarrely reassembled in the blockbuster cinema of this decade: If Sigourney Weaver actually appears again in the current part, there is no aha experience, just the serious confusion as to why she is now over seventy looks so strangely young and artificial? Ah, this is a digital adaptation of the image, an image so beauty-filtered that the result is beyond the limits of re-creation. It no longer seems to be about making computer-animated characters look like real people, but rather the other way around. Man as his own – watch out for goose bumps in this text – “avatar”. Sounds futuristic, but the bottom line is that this film looks just as lifeless as it is tried and trashy in digital reality.

4. Puked up by the AI

So, in addition to the big blue men, we’re dealing with figures rendered from people with a Pixar vibe. But that is only half of the grotesque overpowering impertinence. The plot also looks as if a self-overestimating AI had opened it up after the “analysis” (actually: statistical evaluation) of successful big player movies.

So the computer ran through a number of emo and epic simulations and got the funnel that it would be a strong “idea” to talk about outsiders who are bullied by the new community, but then earn the respect – and finally, and above all in a never-ending final battle, the common external enemy is then defeated. N / A? Have you already pulled out your handkerchiefs with such a surprising and highly emotional story? I wish the Hollywood computer that spat out this paper cut script, which is corrupt down to the smallest detail, a painful Trojan in the system. Yes, you read that right: suffer as we suffer, AI! Maybe you’ll learn something about really good stories that way…

5. Guess what!

But just because the hero’s journey in “Avatar – That Way Of Water” turns out to be as unspectacular as a tram ride in Paderborn or Kaiserslautern, that doesn’t mean that the film isn’t completely confused in itself. Deathless, as we young people say. This is due to the premise that the material brings with it: On the one hand, there are people (aka “Sky People”) and the noble blue savages from Pandora, but there are also people who are actually in super tanks and somehow artificial via Bluetooth Avatars get involved – the new part now supplements this latently confusing inventory with Na’vi cloned from the memories of human soldiers who are supposed to be undercover somehow. The result is a character ensemble like a bad bowl dish in the city’s gentrified hipster district: random ingredients slapped into a fancy bucket – served cold and without any connecting sauce. I’ll get it.

6. Blue Barbies

Another “top-class event movie” will be released next month with the “Barbie” film adaptation (source: Apotheken Umschau). Here, too, the height of fall seems immense. Barbie figures were particularly heavily criticized in the past: Converting the body dimensions of Barbie to a human leads to the conclusion that a human being of these proportions is not viable. In particular, the abdomen does not offer enough space for all vital organs. As a result, the blond plastic beanpole with no room for a large intestine and the like had to be adapted to real body shapes over the decades. Driving force: social pressure.

However, who is finally going to tell the creature designers of “Avatar” that their blue people look like painfully elongated Barbies after the “boss transformation” (#Kollegah). Barbies that couldn’t even accommodate an appendix or a spleen? Of course, the extraterrestrial here eliminates all demands for realistic body shapes, but it certainly hurts not only me to even look at these beasts with their overtight poser bodies.

7. Heteronormative nuclear family from outer space

Another bridge to the conservative Barbie heritage can be found in the world of the main protagonist Jake, who was rescued from part one. In the new film, he now rides into trash film history with his whole family, father-mother-child-child.

The good of the planet and the general public? Free! It’s all about our little blue family! Forget Barbie, this self-centered overemphasis on one’s DNA makes you much more likely to get “Soprano” vibes. The mafia series from HBO, which shaped the zeros at the time, at least problematized the unrestricted family cult of its characters. “Avatar”, on the other hand, only uses it for clumsy kitsch and tries to fill the huge emotional gaps that surround the digital blue unsympathizers for hours.

Speaking of “Sopranos”: Edie Falco, who played Carmela Soprano, the mother of the New Jersey mobster clan, has one of the few character roles in “Avatar: The Way Of Water”. However, this fact has no meaning beyond its trivia value – which Edie Falco should not grieve. Because no:e actor:in the world could have saved this multimillion car crash of a movie.

8. The poison of others

If you bother to look behind the confused cheerleading reviews of “Avatar – The Way Of Water,” you’ll notice that it’s really no secret what a misshapen James Cameron mega-franchise fell out of the wet garbage here is. I’ve put together a few catchy quotes here:

“The fact that the children are captured and rescued three times in the course of a single film just speaks to a poorly written script.”
(Forbes)

“Cameron’s underwater world is like a trillion dollar screensaver.”
(The Guardians)

“Watching the film feels like whisking turquoise cement.”
(Daily Telegraph)

“Cameron stuns 3D audiences with so many bells and whistles that they’re more offended than impressed.”
(Mashable)

“At 193 minutes, ‘The Way of Water’ is less a movie and more a never-ending tech demo you might endure in purgatory.”
(CineVu)

9. Battlestar Pandora docks!

More parts of this phantasmagorical failure project XXL are already being planned, dear ones!

tl;dr: Enjoy a new exciting adventure on the planet Pandora.

What happened until now? Here is an overview of all pop column texts.