I don't understand this criticism. The story was amazing.
After a quick read of critic and user reviews through metacritic, the complaints seem pretty consistent regardless of how I personally feel about them. A ton of them say the plot was barebones and predictable. Even the glowing reviews from critics seem to mention that the plot only gets the job done.
Once I understood that in both cases the story is there just so Cameron can do his worldbuilding, I enjoyed both films very much.
A2 is a different beast. The conflicts in A2 can be described as:
- Quaritch captures kids.
- Quaritch: Sully, come alone and surrender, or I kill your kids.
- Sully doesn't come alone and doesn't surrender. Quaritch leaves kids alone. Quaritch's men die, kids rescued.
- Quaritch captures kids, again.
- Quaritch: Sully, come alone and surrender, or I kill your kids.
- Sully doesn't come alone and doesn't surrender. Quaritch leaves kids alone. Quaritch's men die, kids rescued, again. One dies from battle wound.
- Quaritch captures kids, again.
- Quaritch: Sully, same deal despite everything, come alone and surrender, or I kill your kids.
- Sully doesn't come alone and doesn't surrender. Quaritch leaves kids alone. Quaritch's men die, kids rescued, again.
If you can stomach Quarich being okay with being reborn into the thing he hates the most, or everyone important that died in A1 being reborn, or the fact humans don't simply nuke the Navi from the orbit, or the fact that unobtanium is not as important as miracle whale oil, .... then Quarich bluffing and being called on it and then trying to repeat the bluff is not SO far fetched.
It's a story about spirituality and nature and community and family that explicitly advocates for eco-terrorism against the American government.
But none of that matters because they are blue, lol. People aren't blue. How silly.
It’s a _clichéd_ story about all those aspects. “We are a family” or a variation thereof is the most repeated sentence in the movie. The evil guys are evil, 100%, no nuance.
My humble opinion is that the movie is visually stunning but too predictable, but I’m not a fan of most movie where “things go boom” or “fighting to death” is a substantial component of the plot… so there’s that.
I explained why to me it was a boring three hours in a very comfortable movie theatre armchair, so that you see why some people didn’t actually enjoy it as much as you did. On the masterpiece part, I’ll agree to disagree :)
You seem like a very shallow person if you think these films are any good.