Spider should have been a reflection of Jake. Around the Navi he is their weak little brother, around the humans he is the strong Tarzan figure. We see humanity and all its wonders through the eyes of someone who grew up without it. Jake starts Avatar 1 as weak, and chooses a beautiful world where he is strong. Spider could have done the same, and joined the humans.
Another thing that I think might have been worth mentioning, it was revealed in a prequel comic that Spider's mother was a helicopter pilot who died in the final battle of the first movie. Quaritch could have told Spider this to turn him against Jake telling him that Jake and the others didn't take him in out of love but out of guilt.
now that is a great comparison! plus it could lead to a further "father" son battle in the upcoming movies. imagine spider become more and more angry at the navi after realising what they did to his people, with the Quadric slowly planting more seeds of doubt into spiders mind. this could end off with him saving quadric and leaving him to return to his adoptive family (showing is uncertainty to which side he should be on) and give more suspense on what his further actions would be in the third movie
I had an idea of replacing the sully family story with Miles Socorro, making his story based off Far Cry 3, and the villain would be: the RDA hired mercenaries to help with their war against the Navi, not knowing that one of their leaders is say... A misanthropic psychopath who captures Miles, psychologically tortures him, showing him the lies and manipulation he's been fed, makes him kill a Navi and a soldier. An event that changes him forever, starting his own guerilla war against everyone. Just an idea of what could be an insane story for after Avatar 3
If they just changed what the whale brain juice does from "stopping aging" to like "curing cancer", it would add so much believability to that plot point and make the humans so much more "human", not just make them bad guys that are greedy.
What else is more believable given that billionaires are literally looking for ways to immortality as we speak? This also ties into the themes of living in balance with the environment vs endless material extraction, Recoms being reborn exactly as their past selves vs Kiri being a continuation of Grace or Jake visiting Nateyam in the afterlife, "all energy must be given back" vs the Amrita (whale juice) granting immortality, it is all coherent with what Cameron has been doing with these movies. And yes, "bad guys that are greedy" is exactly Cameron's point because it is true, the Holocene Extinction is happening because of humans and these movies are his response to it.
@@KoolAidManOGdon’t care, you can’t just excuse bad and lazy writing because it’s “social commentary”. If you have to go out of your way to find depth in these characters and storylines it’s just bad writing.
@KidFlash11606 it's not lazy writing, it's just writing that carries more narrative depth and works better as part of the story. What you would be sacrificing by making the humans more noble is the consistency in themes
@@e.adeloye To expand on my original comment, consistency is of course important, but constructing a narrative to critique humanity's overconsumption problems and then ignoring humanity all together and just saying "humanity bad, avatar good" is either lazy writing that doesn't understand the issues it's bringing up or just not very clever writing that treats its audience like they can't think for themselves. For a narrative to have depth, there needs to be layers of meaning, often from different sides with different complex arguments, and that is almost the exact opposite of the Avatar movies. These types of themes with some more depth has been done with the latest Dune movies, and comparing those to Avatar makes it much harder to ignore Cameron's shortcomings as a writer.
I really like a lot of your tweaks, but one question that I have is if Jake doesn't find out about the colonel early in the movie, what is his motivation to leave his original tribe? To me the fact that it was the colonel made it personal and that's why he felt like he was being hunted and needed to leave.
Yeah, I don't think they needed to keep it as a mystery for too long. A lot of the drama of the film is better with us and everybody in the movie knowing that he's Quaritch. I do think it would have been better to keep it a mystery for a bit at the front of the film, up until the moment that both Jake and Neytiri realize that he's Quaritch, so we're with them for that revelation. And we should see Jake's moment of realization too. I actually never thought about the fact that we never see that moment with him before watching this video, but it's a good point that we should at least see that moment. I think that's all that needed to happen as far as Quaritch goes. Just get rid of those early scenes with him and keep it a mystery like this video demonstrates, but do the reveal during the forest night rain battle, show Jake realizing he's Quaritch as well as Neytiri, and that would have made it better. As far as keeping things a mystery for the rest of the movie... I agree that the revelation that Earth is dying and humanity is gonna make Pandora it's new home, would make a better third act reveal. It is thrown out as pretty casual exposition as it is, and it could have been a much more impactful piece of information to drop at a more dramatic time. Other than that, I feel like delaying the fact that it's Quaritch would only hinder a lot of the scenes behind an unnecessary air of mystery and vagueness, etc, that wouldn't work as well on rewatch. A lot of the time, prioritizing mystery too much is making the film lack rewatch value, because you might watch it a second time to see how things play once you know... but after a third or fourth rewatch, the forced mysteriousness can get in the way of actually having genuine scenes of the characters to connect with, and you end up thinking too much about what the filmmakers intended on first watch, instead of just having your head in the story, etc. Not to mention that most people would probably recognize it looks like Quaritch the second we see him, as well as some of the other guys in his squad... it's tough to hide who's playing the character, and needing to be mysterious in press and marketing before the film, etc... it probably wouldn't have been much of a mystery anyway. Just being up front with certain pieces of information can be better than a forced mystery, so that we don't think about them for too long when we should be thinking more about the drama between Quaritch and Spider, or Jake and Quaritch, Neytiri and Quaritch, etc... a lot of that just wouldn't be there if the characters were stuck still wondering who he is 2 hours into the movie, after we already know or guessed, etc... it would become frustrating as a viewer. And I personally didn't find most of the movie "boring" as Lancelotti says he did, so I guess I'm not straining to find some way to make it more interesting on the first watch. That seems to be the problem here... that the movie just wasn't for him. If you were bored by the middle of the movie, because it's not making you guess about a mystery or throwing out twists left and right... then I think that speaks to a very cliched and conventional expectation for what makes an interesting movie. Avatar is different in that it isn't afraid to just take some time and explore a world and bask in the beautiful imagery of something alien and larger-than-life that only the medium of motion pictures can currently really show us with such quality and dramatic fashion. And even then, only when an artist like James Cameron really pushes to have technical excellence and design prioritizing a cinematic experience of this level, with the kind of resouces and production time that he can demand. That's a cinematic value in and of itself. Movies don't have to just be about story and intrigue and plot twists and mysteries and surprises. A lot of good movies do have that... but not all of them have to. Avatar wants us to fall in love with Pandora as a world, because the value of that world is what is at stake in the story. Spending the middle of the story just having fun and exploring a new part of Pandora under the sea, introducing the tulkun, developing the characters with some downtime, etc... it's not boring if you're not going in expecting a conventional beat-by-beat plot-oriented twisty type of movie, and if it isn't that, then it's not good... it's still very good as it is, and trying to make it more conventional could actually spoil what makes it special.
@@AWSVids I agree with you, I think Quaritch could be kept a mystery up until around when he captures the kids and Neytiri figuring out who it is. We didn't need the whole upfront exposition to lay it out for us, but by that time I think people would have figured it out. And to preserve the dynamic Lancelotti set up between Quaritch and Spyder, the changes he made could stay about the same where it is not revealed to Spyder right away, but the audience would know and they wouldn't have to try and mask his voice/ appearance.
I think having the RDA out for revenge might be a good enough reason to leave. plus they could have a scene where the resistance fighters get absolutely swamped by an RDA force (showing that the RDA is a force to be reckoned with) and Jake not wanting to endanger his men and family, decide to move to where it is safe. however none want to leave and it ends up with it only being Jake and his family to make the journey to the sea tribe.
@@Shattered3582 I see where you are coming from, but isn't it sort of established that the RDA has been there for a while and Jake has been leading a counter offensive group? Its not till things escalate at the introduction of Quaritch when he feels he must leave.
I think the revelation of what appear to be more human/naavi avatars with guns and human clothes like from the first movie being back on Pandora would be a major concern for Jake and the rest of the naavi. This would raise the question of why the humans came back. Jake is worried of another large-scale attack, and with the safety of his family compromised, decides to leave with them to keep them safe. Unfortunately, the rest of the naavi don’t see the urgency and decide to stay. At this point, Jake and his family set off to stay safe and to learn more about the return of the humans. The movie continues, and we eventually learn about the whaling. Instead of being for aging, it could be revealed that the humans need it for a new drug that’s used as a sort of reverse terraforming in order for humans to adapt to be able to survive on pandora long term. This would then lead to discovering that earth is dying, and that the humans came back out of desperation. This would then lead to disagreement between some naavi who don’t like the sky people, Jake, who has been both, and spider, who cares about his own people and has mixed feelings about his father.
Easier as it is to say and make a video about the film than create the film itself, your changes are spot on. For whatever reason they decided to spoon feed the audience in the first act maybe because the director didn’t feel like writing a good twists which is sad seeing as he could have found another outlet to mess about rather than an anticipated high budget film for his benefit.
@@AuspexAstarte too busy with the visuals, got lost in the sauce basically… was visually spectacular but imagine if it was setup the way the creator reorganized the scenes.
@@slawrence6366avatar films is very expensive to make and they have to make billions to profit. I think Cameron purposely write his films the way he does for the mass audience and high revenue. Mysterious storylines just isn’t as fun as straight to the point storylines for the “Mass Audiences”.
@@josephbanks888 if that was true the incentive would’ve been to make it re- watchable from a strong story pov rather than assuming that we the audience doesn’t have basic reasoning skills so they have to spoon feed us the story, rather than taking us on a journey as described by our friend here. I’m sticking with my hypothesis “too busy with the visuals” a good story sequence ages better than good visuals and would have a better shelf life that would continually generate future profits beyond its box office debut.
I feel that’s because the last film was 15 years ago so they probably felt a recap in the first act done this way was the best way to engage old and new viewers of the series.
While I'm a die hard Avatar fan, I knew right off the bat that WAAAYYYY too much was happening too quickly and I absolutely love your ideas for making it better! Youre so right - if you just shuffle a few things around, they add so much weight to the story and the suspense, emotional conflict and immersive feeling you'd get from that would be more reminiscent of the first movie - and the kind of caliber audiences expect from films and directors like this. Thank you for sharing!!!!!
JC has talked quite openly about how challenging the first act of A2 in particular was for them to figure out, especially after so much time has passed and the need to also serve as onboarding for the uninitiated. Apparently there was even originally supposed to be some kind of massive space battle near the beginning which they ended up completely cutting out and moving to a later point in the series (baffling to me without context). Despite that it was still so unwieldy they ended up cutting it in half, pushing the rest to A3. The battle on the ship was not originally supposed to be the end of A2.
In a prequel comic it is revealed that Spider's mother was an RDA helicopter pilot who was killed in the final battle of the first move. It could have been a more believable way for Spider to help Quaritch and his team if he thinks that the people he was raised around killed his mother.
While it would certainly be THE thing that would make him help them - the ultimate prize for a kid who grew up on a hostile planet incompatible with his continued survival, surrounded by people who tolerate him at best - I don’t think the humans in this film have the emotional intelligence to put two and two together. They’re too overcome with hostility towards the na’vi to ever consider that somebody might desperately want to be one of them.
I think the revelation of what appear to be more human/naavi avatars with guns and human clothes like from the first movie being back on Pandora would be a major concern for Jake and the rest of the naavi. This would raise the question of why the humans came back. Jake is worried of another large-scale attack, and with the safety of his family compromised, decides to leave with them to keep them safe. Unfortunately, the rest of the naavi don’t see the urgency and decide to stay. At this point, Jake and his family set off to stay safe and to learn more about the return of the humans. The movie continues, and we eventually learn about the whaling. Instead of being for aging, it could be revealed that the humans need it for a new drug that’s used as a sort of reverse terraforming in order for humans to adapt to be able to survive on pandora long term. This would then lead to discovering that earth is dying, and that the humans came back out of desperation. This would then lead to disagreement between some naavi who don’t like the sky people, Jake, who has been both, and spider, who cares about his own people and has mixed feelings about his father.
These proposed changes you suggest all sound great, but wouldn't people see them coming a mile away? I mean, Avatar colonel looks so much like the colonel from the last movie that I doubt anyone paying attention would miss it. But maybe that's just me.
Even if it's obvious to most viewers, it still creates lots of questions in our minds. The idea is not just to create mystery about who he is, but how he's still alive and why humans are back there. Also him crushing the skull is a nice red herring, and many viewers might instead think he was Colonel's child inside a temporary Avatar. Sprinkling in some mentions of colonel's son could also act as a red herring, where most people assume it's the avatar only for it to be more surprising with the Spider reveal.
the reveal that Pandora is now trapped in an endless doomed cycle of war would be a great reveal, as it is it almost felt like Humanity was just trying a little harder than before and that's it
This is a really interesting structural experiment that I think sacrifices character in favor of a twist. While the movie could definitely benefit from moving the Colonel reveal to later, keeping it from Spider, leaving him as a captor rather than a father figure acting as a foil to Sully, would ultimately undermine the relationship on both their ends.
And people would’ve been calling him boring. Cause he would have to be hidden and bland for sake of mysteriousness. With the version we got, we actually get to see Colonel personality even more. His first scene making “Why So Blue” jokes was perfect. He was clowning he and his teams failure as humans. I think Cameron saw that Colonel in Avatar 1 was called a bland character and he wanted to immediately give him personality and complexity. Personality with letting him speak more and joke around, Complexity with Spider.
When I first watched Avatar 2, I had to leave the theater for an important call at the beginning of the movies and came back at the children an soldiers scene. I guess I can confirm from experience that it felt way better not have sat through 30-40 minutes of exposition.
2:02 This scene is awesome, what with the fireball chasing the animals, but it's also really cool symbolism. At the end of the first movie it was the animals of Pandora directed by Eywa that pushed the battle in favor of the Na'vi and allow them to win over the technologically superior humans. Now, Way of Water opens with all the animals running from the firestorm that the humans return has caused. If nothing else, this part is cool for that alone.
What I like about the Earth is dying reveal is that, it sets up for the future films. We know what happened in Avatar 2 is nothing more than a small squirmish battle for Quatrich. That’s why I like that the General want in it that much. It shows that bigger battles is on the way.
Jim has said that he likes to state the problems of each character to the audience right from the start instead of going cutesy or establishing mystery. Obviously in the writing room they had concluded that hiding Colonel’s identity wouldn’t necessarily be a smart narrative choice and might have been called cliche had they gone for these plot twist formulas that we’ve seen in other movies.
yeah it's like how even in T2, which has a twist (Arnold/the T800 has been reprogrammed to protect JC and the "normal looking human" is just a more advanced skynet terminator) is resolved in the very first action scene, and JC's own parental issues are set up around the same time in the 1st act. It may sacrifice narrative tension but the upside is greater exploration of the characters involved throughout the rest of the film.
I would’ve liked to see Spider join the humans, and fully become apart of their corporate endeavours to see the slow degradation of his wonder and beauty in the world for greed like the others, it would’ve hit so much harder
yeah, I believe the plan long-term is for Quaritch himself to somehow turn but that would've worked better if he could see the negative effect the human's exploitative and destructive society has on his son.
Interesting. However I think the way the colonel acts, looks and talks would give the twist away quickly for audience members who have seen the first film recently
Which other movies could be improved with a few tweaks? Apologies if the editing isn’t up to the usual standard, but I also uploaded a video on Inglourious Basterds yesterday (in case you missed it), and I'm happy to say I was able to put up nearly an hour of content in total.
Passangers. If they flipped the three story parts (1. Jim wakes up and is alone | 2. Jim wakes up Aurora and the honey moon phase starts 3. Aurora learns about Jim's role in her waking up 4. The finale with saving the ship and reconciliation) to 2/1/3/4 and start with the waking up of Aurora and following the slow building of the trust between them, then switching to "a year before" to show the story arc of Jim before Aurora before retuning to present time for the finale, the story would have been much more compelling, more psychological drama and less cheap romance in space.
Michael Cimino's infamous "Heaven's Gate" could be greatly improved to possibly emphatic masterpiece status with a much tighter slightly non linear structure of relational event juxtaposition in editing which keeps the narrative momentum ratcheting up with revelations - rather than just move from one seemingly pointless and deflating scene of monotonous flaccidity to the next in endless unfocused retours of respite from one another. Sprinkle in something like a Nick Cave & Warren Ellis type of oneric music score as the wistfully connective conductor. Keep the sprawling grandeur of Vilmos Zsigmond's sublime cinematography, add some lyrical meaning through an editorial romanticism more akin to Terrence Malick at his most pointed, where glimpsed moments of resonant memory pour into one another and leave an informing emotional reverberation as imagery and sound pass through the present tense (no voice over though). Snow Falling on Cedars would be the best example of this Malick influence of aesthetic fluidity done to magnificent effect. I don't think it would be terribly difficult to fix... For Hank Corwin, anyway.
The Musketeers d'artagnan. It's a movie that disappointed me by many reasons. When I saw the trailer I was excited by his production that it looked amazing but when I saw it I got disappointed by the use of the camera that it was pretentious with a sequence shot where the characters fight or a lot of subplots and they don't have an order and introduces other characters near of the final of the movie and other mistakes. In the middle of the movie I was a little bored looking the mistakes in the movie and I realized that the movie would be better with another cut or edition because the subplots were interesting but the problem is that the subplots are in disorder and with a better cut it would be a better movie.
I like this version a lot more and it’s kind of what I was expecting to see before seeing the film. Especially the part where Quaritch reveals himself to Jake Sully who becomes taken aback and has a minor freak out moment. Quaritch defeated death, planted evil ideas in his adopted child Spiders head, has his real children at gunpoint, and reveals the entirety of mankind is on their way to take over.
Don’t ever expect a complex or mysterious story from an Avatar film. Cameron has been said this after Avatar 1. These films is straight to the point story wise because honestly don’t need the story to be great like that. It don’t take a film to be great in every area to be a good film, it may take the film to be great in one area and alright in the next. Great on visuals, alright on story, ok on sound quality, ok on music.
I think if the movie had this twist it would be really cool the first watch but reduce the movies rewatch value. I like how they just let the audience know all of it.
@@seriousnesstv7902I don’t think that’s necessarily what OP meant but more so that when the twist is obvious, it can feel tedious to have all this tension and buildup for a secret that isn’t well kept. I’m not necessarily agreeing with them but I see what they mean.
Both avatar films still suffer from that. I tried recently to watch them both at home, and it took me 3 days because I kept getting bored. The stories and characters are weak, and don’t add any re watch value to these films after they leave theaters.
Biggest problem I have with this movie (and there are many, but let's focus on a big one) is the sum of the following plot points: - Humans need to take over Pandora to survive, and the natives are seen as a threat. - Sully is seen as a great strength for the natives - a general of sorts - so removing him has high value. - Sully decides to secretly leave the forest to protect both the forest and his family, since he has become a target. Hold up. Read those three sentences a few times in your head and see if you can figure out what's wrong. Ok did you find it? There are several fundamental flaws, so lets break it down: Number 1. - If Sully and his family leaves in *secret* then how does that protect the forest? This one is mindboggling. If the point is to protect the forest and it's natives, then what he actually needs to do is travel somewhere else and then shout "Hey! I'm over here!" in the face of the military. If logic is to be upheld, then him and his family sneaking out should not affect the actions of the military at all - meaning they would still attack the forest thinking he is still there. Number 2. - If the point of getting rid of Sully is that he is a strong military leader, then isn't him running away from the forest already a green light to attack? This one is even more mindboggling as it reveals that the arguments being made earlier are actually circular. Even if we fix issue Number 1 above, that Sully has run away from the battlefield - not to save his family but to distract the military away from the forest natives - then, well... why not simply attack the forest? It's the perfect time to do so since "Sully the resistance leader" just removed himself from "his troops". But wait, some of you will argue, wasn't the chase for Sully simply a personal revenge plot? Well yeah, kind of.... which leads us to the next problem: Number 3. - If taking over Pandora is completely necessary for humanity's survival, why spend precious military resources to revive a colonel for the sole reason of sending him on an unnecessary personal revenge? Yeah, the implication of the above highlights another mindboggling error in the plot - namely that humans seem to have near unlimited resources in the second movie, which is why they use them so frivolously. And no it's not just about the colonel and his crew. If you think about it, the power dynamic of the first movie was one of limited resources. The humans have already demonstrated that they have the superior weapons technology to just carpet bomb the entire forest out of existence. Think about it: they don't even need to use planes since they have space ships - they could just drop bombs from orbit and be completely unstoppable ...unless, they have too limited resources to win the war that way. In essence the idea that resources are precious is what makes the first movie work, but here is the second movie we are repeatedly treated to arbitrary spending budgets. The beginning shots of the train raid really drives this point home: Humans have reached a level of infrastructure and resource income where sending *a train* that is loaded with *weapons* through hostile territory with minimal escort is an acceptable level of risk. I highlight the word *train* because trains run on rails, meaning a completely predictable route, and the humans apparently had enough *weapons* to spare that they could afford such a massive risk to their military supply transport. (Not to mention that the very fact that they are able to establish railways on the planets surface means they have multiple cities, further establishing the lack of any resource shortage and an already pretty solid ground control and infrastructure level.) I will stop here. I think the suggestions made in your UA-cam video are great, but ultimately I would also like to add that they shouldn't have displayed such excessive human wealth in this movie, as that also severely reduces the tension. Throughout the whole movie, it always feels like the framing of "humanity's survival" falls flat, as they already seem well under way to successfully control the planet, regardless of how the plot points surrounding Sully plays out. While watching it at the cinema I could never get rid of that nagging thought in my head "but does any of this even matter" in the grand scheme of things?
@@royalreviews5270 A good point, I actually never thought about that one. Another thing that I really want to bring up because it annoyed me soo much, is how differently the natives are portrayed in the second movie: - In the first movie they are portrayed as peace-loving but fierce warriors - a force to be reckoned with. - In the second movie they are portrayed as sad and pitiful, to the point where they are getting bullied by a small fleet of fishermen. Seriously... they fended off fully equipped trained military forces in full on warfare in the first movie. And now they are portrayed as helpless against a few scientists on fishing ships with a small military escort?? Come on... if this was the first movie, they would have stalked the fishing ships back to their base, silently risen out of the water in the dead of night, and pulled off a deadly night raid in which Sully would have commanded them to destroy as many docked ships as possible. But no. Despite their previously proven strength and craftiness, they just seem to have lost all will to fight for some reason. They are completely powerless, they can't help themselves, and the humans can stroll ashore in broad daylight whenever and hold their entire tribe hostage.
@@BadgersEscapeits a terrible point. Finding a planet where you can go outside without a suit is incredibly lucky. The air is the least of your worries
@@royalreviews5270because when consider space colonization the breathabily of the atmosphere is the last thing to worry about since its pretty much assumed NO planet will have a breathable atmosphere. This ain’t star wars
Hello, I think you are wrong. Let me cover each point. Number one. Quaritch took Jake's kids and threatened them. Jake doesn't want them to die. Not only this - Quaritch took Spider, who knows about the Omaticaya's whole operation. The decision to leave was inherently selfish; your kids are in danger so you have to leave to give them a life. Jake and Neytiri will realise this was the wrong move later in the story. Number two. Spider ended up not telling Quaritch where the Omaticaya were - he didn't have to, all he had to do was ride along. Quaritch asked the general (general Ardmore) for a ship to defeat Jake because (and sorry this is in a deleted extended scene) because he 'could be raising an army among the sea people'. The humans cannot attack the forest because they don't know where the people are. But they do know where Jake is. Number three. Quaritch was revived because he was a competent military leader. If not for a literal miracle (of sorts), he would've won in the first movie. All of Jake's allies were dead. In the first movie, the RDA (people on Pandora) were a private company. Now it seems they've gone more national. They also know how to make clones so its perfectly plausible that they'd bring Quaritch back. He knows the land. Also in the next point I think you're referencing the magnetic train and track? The one introduced just after the time jump. Jake's whole thing is being unpredictable (otherwise he'd be dead) so I don't think the humans saw that attack coming. The theme isn't about humanity's survival in this one, it's about family. So why bother making scenes talking about it when... it doesn't matter to the story?
Man says "i know its pretentious but lets do it and have some fun with it" and actually build a WAY better movie. Amazing job, i couldnt figure out why that movie bored me, and you listing out all the reveals that happen in the first hour was eye opening. It's like that friend that starts explaining a book, game or movie with the twist, and then goes back to explain WHY the twist was so good
I strongly agree with your restructuring. The pacing in this movie felt off. Too much exposition. Many scenes without proper set ups or pay offs. And the mid section of the film was really going nowhere: The kids try to ride Ilu, Jake tries to ride a Skimwing, Quarritch tries to tame an Ikran, the kids learn to ride an Ilu, Jake masters to ride a Skimwing, Quarritch learns to ride an Ikran. It's just so clunky. Another gripe I have is the scene where Neteyam dies and Neytiri got hysteric. I understood her emotions, but I didn't feel it. I think the reason for this was, because we didn't get to see her interact all that much with Neteyam. In fact, Neytiri was sidelined for a big part of the movie. This makes me believe that Jaffa and Silva really are overrated in Hollywood when it comes to scripts. Also Cameron split the script into two movies which, must have led to a lot of changes. One can only hope for a Director's Cut that fixes all these issues, but I wouldn't hold my breath, since Cameron has announced that the Way of Water is his final cut.
somebody made the Hobbit Cardinal Cut. Based on the idea, that if the movie was edited, to resemble the book as much as possible it would be really good. I watched it, and it was. Please make the Avatar cut, based on your idea. I'd watch it.
Being a diehard Avatar fan since I was 9, and having watched both movies at least 100000 times, I love reading these comments and seeing everyone’s in-depth suggestions as to what may make this movie better. I agree with a lot of you guys
I would have enjoyed the series more if the needed resources are far more vital. One of my favorite changes I would make is that Unobtainium is a new fuel source, this could be whats needed to find a new world. Then you can have far more complex and moderate motives, as every passing day is knowing Earth won't bounce back without it. Imagine how hard you'd fight if you were there, your communties and families are hoping you succeed in this gamble. Ultimately you are doing terrible things but they are sadly necessary evils in your eyes. It then becomes a better portrayal of Green Parties Vs Pragmatic Destruction. Countries like India and China are our biggest polluters... but they aren't doing that with outright evil intentions. They want to improve the state of their country, it's selfish but its understandable. I do look forward to the future with James Cameron, because I've sided with the humans in every instance of this story even with the bad writing and poorly motivated characters. The overall concept on paper of a humanity that has a chance to continue but at terrible costs is far better than anything potrayed in this series.
Damn dude you fixed it. Some of the early parts of the movie seemed so clumsily thrown together, like an after thought that should have been added in the first movie
Damn you’re so right but couple things I disagree with. I want Jake to figure out it’s the colonel however he goes in with confidence knowing even if another one comes back it lacks the experience of fighting with Jake, an advantage Jake will always have. Then I want Jake to find out during the battle that earth is dying. It would creating a pause in the action and being able to split the action in 2 gives more time to further split it into a 3 spaced war zone. Neytiri commanding the skys, Jake and the tribe leader commanding the naval and on boat battles with the kids narrowly escaping under the water. After Jake discovers Earths near death he immediately understands that this is no revenge from the colonel but desperation for survival from humans. In Jake’s panic he tries to flee with his family knowing it’s a war he could never win. Neytiri spots this, flys down and tries to convince to Jake that this is an easy battle to fight and an easy war to win. Jake explains it’s the colonel and tells that the rest of Earth is coming cause Earth is dead. During the Sully families retreat Neytiri realises Jake is trying to leave the clan behind and decides to encourage others to fall back. The tribes leader spots their betrayal and his lack of concentration and confusion is killed causing a full scale retreat from everyone. Similar to the first film with the same music. Multiple slow motion shots portray many na’vi being sprayed down as they flee. Neteyam is one that’s killed where we see all hope is lost as Jake and Neytiri try to save their son. However in a twist, Eywe joins, the ‘whales’ destroy the boat killing most. We see the colonel and Miles narrowly escape with the colonel drowning and in a split decision saves the colonel. The colonel with his adventure on becoming Na’vi is alone and shows a hint of a change in opinion on the war, flying off on his ikran. With the Sully family gathered mourning round their fallen brother and son, where Miles returns finding his best friend dead. This creates the suspense whether Miles will announce who is father is and forgetting his tracker. The film can then cut to the rest of the clan crying at fallen comrades. Cutting to a funeral for the members lost in battle we see the leaders wife has taken his role and leads the ceremony. With these changes it allows us to start the next film with confusion how the colonel is back despite him being dead. Miles explaining that they’re no normal Avatar remotely controlled but a human but an Avatar implanted with the memories of their previous self. This creates a split in the family as Jake and Lo’ak believes in some way this can bring Grace back and help unite all Na’vi and a last hope against the humans. Whereas Neytiri and Kiri believe Grace should stay as she is, Neytiri because she has lost a trust of humans after Jake was selfish in saving only himself and his kids rather than the people, and Kiri believes Eywe is keeping her like that on purpose. Hopefully we get to see the colonel struggle adapting to hunt without his equipment in isolation. He also struggles as he can’t communicate with other Na’vi and fears they will kill him for being an avatar. He could then find a Na’vi clan who are killing others with first war human weapons. A clan that admires the humans. This gives the colonel the opportunity to show his avatar body and convince them he is human. They capture him and take him to a human facility which is loving having him back with the humans fighting against Pandora. He has to comply to survive but toils with his decision after stalking the na’vi culture while alone.
Here's the problem with keeping the colonel return a twist, they have the same face and actor. You would have to hide his face and not have him speak until the reveal without an recast
Why make something so mysterious when Neytiri knew just from his voice it was Quaritch. It looks just like him, they would instantly know. It also made the story way more personal to Jake and gives reason on why he was so adamant on leaving the tribe. Personally i don’t think this change would’ve worked well.
00:40 it's far from harder than that : people don't realize they are commenting on the final product, "I would have added this here.". No you wouldn't because there was nothing there. The people who made it started from scratch.
Exactly, the fact that Avatar is exist with its success should be appreciated. To build this world up from scratch like this. It’s easy to “Modify”. Not that easy when your in a room with a blank white sheet and have to build this world and tell a story from scratch not just that it has to be good enough to make at least 1.5B in order to start profiting. A lot of writing decision is affected by making a product that makes money. Mysterious stories don’t make as much money as a straight to the point story. Mass audiences like to know they was a straight forward emotional other worldly ride. Cameron has been killin it 2/2 .
@josephbanks888 Exactly. There are no pre-established books or TV shows or toy line. Avatar doesnt really much of a fan base. But it's growing right before our eyes and I love it
its a bullshit logic . its their job to make movies, they are professional and get paid in millions. james cameron created Avatar of course he's genius. he dedicated decades of life and that's why its even more tragic that story is ASS.
Another problem with the film is that it is difficult to understand Jake's decision to leave his tribe. For "primitive" people, family is not only a wife and children, but also the entire tribe. Leaving them will not logically ensure their safety. Because they are ALREADY waging a guerrilla war with people. They will already be perceived as an enemy anyway. How can this be fixed? 1. Showing the peaceful life of the tribe before the return of people 2. Landing of people on Pandora, the beginning of a new war 3. A year of guerrilla war 4. After unsuccessful attempts to assault the flying mountains, people decide to solve the problem more radically 5. A new wave of ships from Earth arrives, one of the ships begins to land right on the flying mountains 6. Most of the tribe dies, Jake, Neytiri, children and several surviving members of the tribe, because of the wall of fire cannot fly deep into the continent and are forced to flee towards the islands 7. There they settle as refugees 8. Then the rest of the plot As a result, Jake no longer looks like a selfish asshole in the eyes of the audience
Totally agree with everything, I actually stopped watching after they left the village to go to the water area cause the tension and story just fell off so hard it became extremely boring, the way you put it makes me want to watch this version much much more, maybe get in touch with the director and make a new movie based on that.
I stopped watching the second movie 20 minutes into it. When I watched the first movie I fell in love with the world that was shown to us, I genuinely enjoyed and defended that movie. But when I sat down and decided to watch the second movie, I stopped watching immediately after the humans come back and destroy the big trees and the big bad guy is revealed to have a second chance at life. That happens so early in the movie considering its 3 hours long, I expected more focus on the family Jake had created and what had changed since the humans were banished in the first movie. I sensed the plot was going to be exact same as the first movie and it sure seemed that way, aliens peaceful, humans attack, humans defeated. The way the giant trees and the forest is just immediately annihilated was so uninteresting, I get that their technology had advanced but their return plan was to just nuke everything?? How pointless. Also the graphics, maybe I just have rose tinted glasses but the first movie was so visually pleasing that it felt real, the second movie instantly breaks that immersion with the Navi looking way more CGI than before. I felt like the movie was just a cash grab and not a loving project, so couldn't be bothered to give it the time.
If I was to do this movie, I would make it more like a Western set in space, but I'd balance out the two sides more. I'd have more sympathetic humans and less sympathetic Na'vi to balance out the story and make it less black and white that is Na'vi are all good and virtuous and the Humans are all bad. The humans are basically trying to survive, and a faction of them RDA seems to think the end justifies the means. The humans built a city, so what I'd do is have some more sympathetic human characters, some new arrivals, perhaps a family of pioneers, comparable to the Ingles Family from Little House on the Prairie, have some ruthless Na'vi that just wants to get revenge on the humans for despoiling their wilderness, and who aren't particular about who they get revenge on as to them all humans are the same. So, a human centric story would be good to balance out the Na'vi point of view.
Bravo 👏 👏👏👏👏 Great work!!! Not as pretentious as you’d think… your perspective has a lot of depth and ‘edge of seat suspense’ that would really set the stage for part 3… The first 50mins really was a informative dump that takes away all the mystery and detective work from us the audience to speculate which would be playing in the background of our minds as we look for more clues and pieces of the puzzle as we navigate the unknown terrain of the plot as it unravels. I really see where it would’ve been mind blowing if it was reorganized the way you described.
It's much better written in Marvel Studios. Bringing back Robert Downey Jr to play Doctor Doom is desperation who is actually Tony Stark gone bad spoiler Avatar fire and ash with outperform Avengers Doomsday big time😂
I just finished watching your video on the underground bar scene from Inglorious Basterds, and I just wanted to say you're videos are great and I appreciate them. You earned my sub brother
Wow this was amazing!! 👏🏻👏🏻this would have made the film as good of a sequel as T2 was. I want a video of how you came to this revelation and how you made this video
It’s an interesting rewrite/ restructuring. However, not everything needs to be a „mystery box“. If I ask myself why Cameron did it the way he did it, I think it is because he wants Quaritch not to be mysterious or evil, but a sort of anti-hero. Now, Quaritch starts as the same bad guy he was at the end of the first one and all the scenes add tension where we ask ourselves if he will change his ways. What is going through his head when he sees his own death? Will he be „loyal“ to spider? Is he really the same person he was before. Granted it does mean frontloading the first act a bit, but I think the idea of making Quaritch a second protagonist going on a similar journey as Jake in the first film, is not less compelling than having him as a mystery box for the first half of the film. In fact, my take is that on repeat views it’s actually more interesting. I can compare this to Star Wars „I am your father“, on repeat views prequel first and the originals is actually better as the twist is now in Episode III and it’s more consequential that the protagonist becomes the villain rather than learning the protagonist‘s idol thought to be dead is actually the villain. It also flavours Luke‘s journey in Enpire with more tension as he is exhibiting many of the same flaws we have already seen in Anakin (anger, impatience, strong attachment to his friends, recklessness), and this positions the I am Ypur father Scene as the potential breaking point for Luke that could push him over to the dark side or simply destroy him completely, leaving Leia in place to save the day. Both are different ways of telling the same story more or less, but you emphasise different things. A mystery keeps the audience engaged the first time through but on repeat viewings it can also become tiresome (doesn’t have to, rewatching a whodunnit a second time if written well can be just as intriguing as the first time).
I think they were just afraid that people have completely forgotten the plot of the first movie. That's why they dumped all the information in the very beginning
this is a really excellent idea to be honest. One last tweak you might want to do is to have a sequence early on where maybe the humans show a previously unseen recording of Miles... maybe just have him exposit about the mission they are about to go do and giving the military guys a target in Jake. This doesnt do much for the viewer but it is a way to derail anyone who was following the IMDB page and seeing that actor being listed. They would assume that the actor returned for this one little video recording and thats it. tricking them into thinking that was all he was brought back for.
I thought movie is goid once i understood family dynamics because thats what we sould prepare for third one, not all movies sould be like Arrival or casual find it super dull- i find inception boring for lack of human emotions to avoid 'cliche"
Step one. Don’t make The Human Space Racist blue. Really. I never understood that approach. If they cloned him. Why not just keep him the same. He could have struggled with survivors guilt of himself. Then found out he had son on top of that. Without being blue…. Making him an avatar destroyed a huge part of his character from the first movie
I think part of the problem is that it was not originally intended to be a quadrilogy. What was supposed to be Avatar 2 ended up getting split in half with the rest of the storyline becoming Avatar 3. This created some narrative challenges and James Cameron along with his cowriters talked quite candidly about it on a long form Q&A writing panel last year. One of the funnier details was that since A2, A3, and the first half of A4 were all shot together as one continuous production, people internally were referring to the Sea Dragon battle at the end of A2 as a "minor skirmish" because early on they didn't realize at the time it was going to be the end of the movie. 😂
2:56 correction: People can be COPIED, brought back to life implies they're the same person, even if you backed up your memory and uploaded it to a new body before you died, thats an entirely new you, the consciousness you are, the one that did that would still be dead
Dropping this info gives ppl some expectations. Remember Avatar is easily digestable by even dumb ppl AND at the same time hiding some more deeper stuff thats beyond the plot
I think having the colonel wear a mask along with the other members of his squad as well when he is in the field of battle would increase the mystery behind the character and not give too many clues as to who he is. Not a mask that would be for breathing cause obviosly they wouldn't need that but one to show their eliteness and something to hide the colonel's face in the first moments we see him. With his facial features and his voice especially I feel that it would be easy to predict that this is somehow the colonel but in an avatar body. Otherwise I think this reshuffling of the movie was fantastic.
Though Spider always knew he was his father, it was no shocking revelation to him as it was to Luke, after all he grew up among a bunch of blue aliens and always knew he was not one of them.
A way better story would have been them traveling to the water tribe so we the audience can experience pandora... Wich should be the main focus/character in the story. The war could come in the third act when they arrive and realize that humans already started their attack here aswell. I hope the third movie is not a war movie...
There's still one answer, one thing that always bugged me and I kinda wish this movie would've at least made one self-referential joke about: How in the name of magical blue cat power do the female bikini's stay on and covering the bits? Most of the time it's just a loose necklace. Like what? It's the weirdest design element, it makes no sense. Do they use tree sap to glue them in place? If they do that, why not do that with the loincloths? Why doesn't Jake Sully just wear a leaf over his pecker like statue of David?
I commend the amount of work you put into this, however, from your pov it seems that the only way a movie can be good/great is if it has a mystery plot twist. That's only one type of thematic storytelling plot device - usually found in thriller/horror genre, etc. This movie TWOW since before launch was heavily promoted / pointed out to have a theme focused on the aspect of family, which places it into a drama category. The conflict is tied to Jake and Neytiri being parents and that familial bond being tested. Also, you overlook the known fact that the Avatar movies are part of a 5-movie long narrative arc. These aren't just individual films. Yes, each film will have their own conflict resolution, however there's more to them than just that. In Cameron's movies (Titanic, Aliens, Terminator 2 Judgement Day), the audience already knows before even seeing the film that there's going to be a disaster/fight that's been built up. There's nothing wrong with giving the audience exposition at the start, as it gets all of that needless questioning mystery of why/how something is happening out of the way, so the viewers can enjoy the wonderous world around them (being in the environments on Pandora is something the audience craves more of). In the back of people's minds, they don't have to constantly carry all of these questions throughout the film, and just focus on how the characters going to adapt to this knowledge and the one question that actually matters, how are these adversaries going to eventually collide and survive.
despite the amazing visuals of the film, i felt that the seaquel was too underwhelming. i am willing to bet that this was the original cut intended by james but was left no choice because some corporate overlords thought that the movie will become too 'difficult for audiences to understand' and that the narrative would be 'too overwhelming' for it to be 'marketable'
I don't agree with you on everything, but you're definitely right that Avatar 2 anticipates way too much information instead of using it to create suspense and twists. I thought the same thing in the movie theater. You can tell James Cameron was thinking of Empire Strikes Back with the father-son relationship, only he plays it out in a much more boring way. But I think the movie should have handled the information differently: Instead of deleting the introduction of Quaritsch, they should have deleted the first 8 minutes with all the exposition. It would be unrealistic to keep Quaritsch's identity a secret for so long anyway. You could hide his voice, but not his face. You can see which actor is playing him. But your approach is definitely right.
been release since watched, but never got why Spider saved the Colonel, but doing this to help divide or increase the build up of the reveal I could get a bit more view point of it. And putting in more doubt what the plan is going back to his navi family. I do love pushing of the earth dying reveal, drive that tension to see the next. The space ships nice but its cgi spendor not story tension. Oh actully way to much comparison with Empire strikes back 😑
I like the idea, but the main problem of this is we knew years before the movie came out that Stephen Lang was coming back to be the antagonist once again. That sucks I know, vut otherwise it would have been a great idea
Like many have said, the changes and tweaks that you suggeted in your video are phenomenal, but I feel like maybe there was a reason why Cameron decided to be a little more blunt and straight forward with all of this info, and that's precisely to avoid comparisons to other movies. Why would this matter? Well, Avatar 1 was already heavily critiqued by people saying that despite it becoming the highest grossing film of all time, it left no cultural mark on cinema and society as a whole. So, if Cameron would've gone by the route of making a revelation like that of the iconic Vader-Luke scene, people would've also found ways to critique the movie by saying that Cameron lost all creativity (story telling wise) and now he's trying to copy iconic moments from movie history in order to try and make his movies relevant. And with the Vader-Luke scene being such an integral part of the collective unconscious, people would've immediately made the connection to the scenes and oh boy... And I mean, it's not like a father son relevation can't be done without it being reminiscent of Star Wars, and it's not like that franchise owns those kinds of revelations. But I feel like yeah, Cameron decided to avoid such comparison on purpose, so as to not get any more slack by movie critics and audiences alike.
Brilliant suggestion. I fell asleep in theaters when I originally saw this, and virtually forgot the plot and exposition scenes. I had not realized that what made me so bored with the movie was how egregious of an expo dump they do at the beginning
Spider should have been a reflection of Jake.
Around the Navi he is their weak little brother, around the humans he is the strong Tarzan figure. We see humanity and all its wonders through the eyes of someone who grew up without it.
Jake starts Avatar 1 as weak, and chooses a beautiful world where he is strong. Spider could have done the same, and joined the humans.
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Another thing that I think might have been worth mentioning, it was revealed in a prequel comic that Spider's mother was a helicopter pilot who died in the final battle of the first movie.
Quaritch could have told Spider this to turn him against Jake telling him that Jake and the others didn't take him in out of love but out of guilt.
now that is a great comparison! plus it could lead to a further "father" son battle in the upcoming movies. imagine spider become more and more angry at the navi after realising what they did to his people, with the Quadric slowly planting more seeds of doubt into spiders mind. this could end off with him saving quadric and leaving him to return to his adoptive family (showing is uncertainty to which side he should be on) and give more suspense on what his further actions would be in the third movie
I had an idea of replacing the sully family story with Miles Socorro, making his story based off Far Cry 3, and the villain would be: the RDA hired mercenaries to help with their war against the Navi, not knowing that one of their leaders is say... A misanthropic psychopath who captures Miles, psychologically tortures him, showing him the lies and manipulation he's been fed, makes him kill a Navi and a soldier. An event that changes him forever, starting his own guerilla war against everyone. Just an idea of what could be an insane story for after Avatar 3
Hoping that Spider changing sides is the only reason I kept watching
If they just changed what the whale brain juice does from "stopping aging" to like "curing cancer", it would add so much believability to that plot point and make the humans so much more "human", not just make them bad guys that are greedy.
And it would go well with the “survival” idea.
What else is more believable given that billionaires are literally looking for ways to immortality as we speak?
This also ties into the themes of living in balance with the environment vs endless material extraction, Recoms being reborn exactly as their past selves vs Kiri being a continuation of Grace or Jake visiting Nateyam in the afterlife, "all energy must be given back" vs the Amrita (whale juice) granting immortality, it is all coherent with what Cameron has been doing with these movies.
And yes, "bad guys that are greedy" is exactly Cameron's point because it is true, the Holocene Extinction is happening because of humans and these movies are his response to it.
@@KoolAidManOGdon’t care, you can’t just excuse bad and lazy writing because it’s “social commentary”. If you have to go out of your way to find depth in these characters and storylines it’s just bad writing.
@KidFlash11606 it's not lazy writing, it's just writing that carries more narrative depth and works better as part of the story. What you would be sacrificing by making the humans more noble is the consistency in themes
@@e.adeloye To expand on my original comment, consistency is of course important, but constructing a narrative to critique humanity's overconsumption problems and then ignoring humanity all together and just saying "humanity bad, avatar good" is either lazy writing that doesn't understand the issues it's bringing up or just not very clever writing that treats its audience like they can't think for themselves. For a narrative to have depth, there needs to be layers of meaning, often from different sides with different complex arguments, and that is almost the exact opposite of the Avatar movies. These types of themes with some more depth has been done with the latest Dune movies, and comparing those to Avatar makes it much harder to ignore Cameron's shortcomings as a writer.
I really like a lot of your tweaks, but one question that I have is if Jake doesn't find out about the colonel early in the movie, what is his motivation to leave his original tribe? To me the fact that it was the colonel made it personal and that's why he felt like he was being hunted and needed to leave.
Yeah, I don't think they needed to keep it as a mystery for too long. A lot of the drama of the film is better with us and everybody in the movie knowing that he's Quaritch. I do think it would have been better to keep it a mystery for a bit at the front of the film, up until the moment that both Jake and Neytiri realize that he's Quaritch, so we're with them for that revelation. And we should see Jake's moment of realization too. I actually never thought about the fact that we never see that moment with him before watching this video, but it's a good point that we should at least see that moment. I think that's all that needed to happen as far as Quaritch goes. Just get rid of those early scenes with him and keep it a mystery like this video demonstrates, but do the reveal during the forest night rain battle, show Jake realizing he's Quaritch as well as Neytiri, and that would have made it better.
As far as keeping things a mystery for the rest of the movie... I agree that the revelation that Earth is dying and humanity is gonna make Pandora it's new home, would make a better third act reveal. It is thrown out as pretty casual exposition as it is, and it could have been a much more impactful piece of information to drop at a more dramatic time.
Other than that, I feel like delaying the fact that it's Quaritch would only hinder a lot of the scenes behind an unnecessary air of mystery and vagueness, etc, that wouldn't work as well on rewatch. A lot of the time, prioritizing mystery too much is making the film lack rewatch value, because you might watch it a second time to see how things play once you know... but after a third or fourth rewatch, the forced mysteriousness can get in the way of actually having genuine scenes of the characters to connect with, and you end up thinking too much about what the filmmakers intended on first watch, instead of just having your head in the story, etc. Not to mention that most people would probably recognize it looks like Quaritch the second we see him, as well as some of the other guys in his squad... it's tough to hide who's playing the character, and needing to be mysterious in press and marketing before the film, etc... it probably wouldn't have been much of a mystery anyway. Just being up front with certain pieces of information can be better than a forced mystery, so that we don't think about them for too long when we should be thinking more about the drama between Quaritch and Spider, or Jake and Quaritch, Neytiri and Quaritch, etc... a lot of that just wouldn't be there if the characters were stuck still wondering who he is 2 hours into the movie, after we already know or guessed, etc... it would become frustrating as a viewer.
And I personally didn't find most of the movie "boring" as Lancelotti says he did, so I guess I'm not straining to find some way to make it more interesting on the first watch. That seems to be the problem here... that the movie just wasn't for him. If you were bored by the middle of the movie, because it's not making you guess about a mystery or throwing out twists left and right... then I think that speaks to a very cliched and conventional expectation for what makes an interesting movie. Avatar is different in that it isn't afraid to just take some time and explore a world and bask in the beautiful imagery of something alien and larger-than-life that only the medium of motion pictures can currently really show us with such quality and dramatic fashion. And even then, only when an artist like James Cameron really pushes to have technical excellence and design prioritizing a cinematic experience of this level, with the kind of resouces and production time that he can demand. That's a cinematic value in and of itself. Movies don't have to just be about story and intrigue and plot twists and mysteries and surprises. A lot of good movies do have that... but not all of them have to. Avatar wants us to fall in love with Pandora as a world, because the value of that world is what is at stake in the story. Spending the middle of the story just having fun and exploring a new part of Pandora under the sea, introducing the tulkun, developing the characters with some downtime, etc... it's not boring if you're not going in expecting a conventional beat-by-beat plot-oriented twisty type of movie, and if it isn't that, then it's not good... it's still very good as it is, and trying to make it more conventional could actually spoil what makes it special.
@@AWSVids I agree with you, I think Quaritch could be kept a mystery up until around when he captures the kids and Neytiri figuring out who it is. We didn't need the whole upfront exposition to lay it out for us, but by that time I think people would have figured it out. And to preserve the dynamic Lancelotti set up between Quaritch and Spyder, the changes he made could stay about the same where it is not revealed to Spyder right away, but the audience would know and they wouldn't have to try and mask his voice/ appearance.
I think having the RDA out for revenge might be a good enough reason to leave. plus they could have a scene where the resistance fighters get absolutely swamped by an RDA force (showing that the RDA is a force to be reckoned with) and Jake not wanting to endanger his men and family, decide to move to where it is safe. however none want to leave and it ends up with it only being Jake and his family to make the journey to the sea tribe.
@@Shattered3582 I see where you are coming from, but isn't it sort of established that the RDA has been there for a while and Jake has been leading a counter offensive group? Its not till things escalate at the introduction of Quaritch when he feels he must leave.
I think the revelation of what appear to be more human/naavi avatars with guns and human clothes like from the first movie being back on Pandora would be a major concern for Jake and the rest of the naavi. This would raise the question of why the humans came back. Jake is worried of another large-scale attack, and with the safety of his family compromised, decides to leave with them to keep them safe. Unfortunately, the rest of the naavi don’t see the urgency and decide to stay. At this point, Jake and his family set off to stay safe and to learn more about the return of the humans. The movie continues, and we eventually learn about the whaling. Instead of being for aging, it could be revealed that the humans need it for a new drug that’s used as a sort of reverse terraforming in order for humans to adapt to be able to survive on pandora long term. This would then lead to discovering that earth is dying, and that the humans came back out of desperation. This would then lead to disagreement between some naavi who don’t like the sky people, Jake, who has been both, and spider, who cares about his own people and has mixed feelings about his father.
Easier as it is to say and make a video about the film than create the film itself, your changes are spot on. For whatever reason they decided to spoon feed the audience in the first act maybe because the director didn’t feel like writing a good twists which is sad seeing as he could have found another outlet to mess about rather than an anticipated high budget film for his benefit.
They’re not spot on. Quirritch avatar looks like him
@@AuspexAstarte too busy with the visuals, got lost in the sauce basically… was visually spectacular but imagine if it was setup the way the creator reorganized the scenes.
@@slawrence6366avatar films is very expensive to make and they have to make billions to profit. I think Cameron purposely write his films the way he does for the mass audience and high revenue. Mysterious storylines just isn’t as fun as straight to the point storylines for the “Mass Audiences”.
@@josephbanks888 if that was true the incentive would’ve been to make it re- watchable from a strong story pov rather than assuming that we the audience doesn’t have basic reasoning skills so they have to spoon feed us the story, rather than taking us on a journey as described by our friend here.
I’m sticking with my hypothesis “too busy with the visuals” a good story sequence ages better than good visuals and would have a better shelf life that would continually generate future profits beyond its box office debut.
I feel that’s because the last film was 15 years ago so they probably felt a recap in the first act done this way was the best way to engage old and new viewers of the series.
While I'm a die hard Avatar fan, I knew right off the bat that WAAAYYYY too much was happening too quickly and I absolutely love your ideas for making it better! Youre so right - if you just shuffle a few things around, they add so much weight to the story and the suspense, emotional conflict and immersive feeling you'd get from that would be more reminiscent of the first movie - and the kind of caliber audiences expect from films and directors like this. Thank you for sharing!!!!!
JC has talked quite openly about how challenging the first act of A2 in particular was for them to figure out, especially after so much time has passed and the need to also serve as onboarding for the uninitiated. Apparently there was even originally supposed to be some kind of massive space battle near the beginning which they ended up completely cutting out and moving to a later point in the series (baffling to me without context). Despite that it was still so unwieldy they ended up cutting it in half, pushing the rest to A3. The battle on the ship was not originally supposed to be the end of A2.
Biggest problem was why Spider helped humans in the first place. I thhink humans should have offered Spider his own avatar if he cooperates.
In a prequel comic it is revealed that Spider's mother was an RDA helicopter pilot who was killed in the final battle of the first move. It could have been a more believable way for Spider to help Quaritch and his team if he thinks that the people he was raised around killed his mother.
While it would certainly be THE thing that would make him help them - the ultimate prize for a kid who grew up on a hostile planet incompatible with his continued survival, surrounded by people who tolerate him at best - I don’t think the humans in this film have the emotional intelligence to put two and two together. They’re too overcome with hostility towards the na’vi to ever consider that somebody might desperately want to be one of them.
He didn’t help them at all. Like its said in the movie he just rode along
I think the revelation of what appear to be more human/naavi avatars with guns and human clothes like from the first movie being back on Pandora would be a major concern for Jake and the rest of the naavi. This would raise the question of why the humans came back. Jake is worried of another large-scale attack, and with the safety of his family compromised, decides to leave with them to keep them safe. Unfortunately, the rest of the naavi don’t see the urgency and decide to stay. At this point, Jake and his family set off to stay safe and to learn more about the return of the humans. The movie continues, and we eventually learn about the whaling. Instead of being for aging, it could be revealed that the humans need it for a new drug that’s used as a sort of reverse terraforming in order for humans to adapt to be able to survive on pandora long term. This would then lead to discovering that earth is dying, and that the humans came back out of desperation. This would then lead to disagreement between some naavi who don’t like the sky people, Jake, who has been both, and spider, who cares about his own people and has mixed feelings about his father.
These proposed changes you suggest all sound great, but wouldn't people see them coming a mile away? I mean, Avatar colonel looks so much like the colonel from the last movie that I doubt anyone paying attention would miss it. But maybe that's just me.
Exactly
Even if it's obvious to most viewers, it still creates lots of questions in our minds. The idea is not just to create mystery about who he is, but how he's still alive and why humans are back there. Also him crushing the skull is a nice red herring, and many viewers might instead think he was Colonel's child inside a temporary Avatar. Sprinkling in some mentions of colonel's son could also act as a red herring, where most people assume it's the avatar only for it to be more surprising with the Spider reveal.
I mean, most people watch movies just to see how their questions are answered and how the mc’s reach their goal
its not like they have to keep his face they same they could change it a bit so its not as obvious
So either people figure it out themselves due to visual similarities or the movies tells us hamfistedly early on. I'd take the revised option.
the reveal that Pandora is now trapped in an endless doomed cycle of war would be a great reveal, as it is it almost felt like Humanity was just trying a little harder than before and that's it
This is a really interesting structural experiment that I think sacrifices character in favor of a twist. While the movie could definitely benefit from moving the Colonel reveal to later, keeping it from Spider, leaving him as a captor rather than a father figure acting as a foil to Sully, would ultimately undermine the relationship on both their ends.
And people would’ve been calling him boring. Cause he would have to be hidden and bland for sake of mysteriousness. With the version we got, we actually get to see Colonel personality even more. His first scene making “Why So Blue” jokes was perfect. He was clowning he and his teams failure as humans. I think Cameron saw that Colonel in Avatar 1 was called a bland character and he wanted to immediately give him personality and complexity. Personality with letting him speak more and joke around, Complexity with Spider.
When I first watched Avatar 2, I had to leave the theater for an important call at the beginning of the movies and came back at the children an soldiers scene.
I guess I can confirm from experience that it felt way better not have sat through 30-40 minutes of exposition.
2:02 This scene is awesome, what with the fireball chasing the animals, but it's also really cool symbolism. At the end of the first movie it was the animals of Pandora directed by Eywa that pushed the battle in favor of the Na'vi and allow them to win over the technologically superior humans. Now, Way of Water opens with all the animals running from the firestorm that the humans return has caused. If nothing else, this part is cool for that alone.
Earth is dying reveal is the only one that i definitely prefer the others aren’t bad but it does make it feel a little more cliche.
What I like about the Earth is dying reveal is that, it sets up for the future films. We know what happened in Avatar 2 is nothing more than a small squirmish battle for Quatrich. That’s why I like that the General want in it that much. It shows that bigger battles is on the way.
Jim has said that he likes to state the problems of each character to the audience right from the start instead of going cutesy or establishing mystery. Obviously in the writing room they had concluded that hiding Colonel’s identity wouldn’t necessarily be a smart narrative choice and might have been called cliche had they gone for these plot twist formulas that we’ve seen in other movies.
yeah it's like how even in T2, which has a twist (Arnold/the T800 has been reprogrammed to protect JC and the "normal looking human" is just a more advanced skynet terminator) is resolved in the very first action scene, and JC's own parental issues are set up around the same time in the 1st act. It may sacrifice narrative tension but the upside is greater exploration of the characters involved throughout the rest of the film.
I would’ve liked to see Spider join the humans, and fully become apart of their corporate endeavours to see the slow degradation of his wonder and beauty in the world for greed like the others, it would’ve hit so much harder
yeah, I believe the plan long-term is for Quaritch himself to somehow turn but that would've worked better if he could see the negative effect the human's exploitative and destructive society has on his son.
Interesting. However I think the way the colonel acts, looks and talks would give the twist away quickly for audience members who have seen the first film recently
Which other movies could be improved with a few tweaks?
Apologies if the editing isn’t up to the usual standard, but I also uploaded a video on Inglourious Basterds yesterday (in case you missed it), and I'm happy to say I was able to put up nearly an hour of content in total.
Passangers. If they flipped the three story parts (1. Jim wakes up and is alone | 2. Jim wakes up Aurora and the honey moon phase starts 3. Aurora learns about Jim's role in her waking up 4. The finale with saving the ship and reconciliation) to 2/1/3/4 and start with the waking up of Aurora and following the slow building of the trust between them, then switching to "a year before" to show the story arc of Jim before Aurora before retuning to present time for the finale, the story would have been much more compelling, more psychological drama and less cheap romance in space.
SW:Rogue One!
Love the back to back! These are awesome
Michael Cimino's infamous "Heaven's Gate" could be greatly improved to possibly emphatic masterpiece status with a much tighter slightly non linear structure of relational event juxtaposition in editing which keeps the narrative momentum ratcheting up with revelations - rather than just move from one seemingly pointless and deflating scene of monotonous flaccidity to the next in endless unfocused retours of respite from one another.
Sprinkle in something like a Nick Cave & Warren Ellis type of oneric music score as the wistfully connective conductor. Keep the sprawling grandeur of Vilmos Zsigmond's sublime cinematography, add some lyrical meaning through an editorial romanticism more akin to Terrence Malick at his most pointed, where glimpsed moments of resonant memory pour into one another and leave an informing emotional reverberation as imagery and sound pass through the present tense (no voice over though). Snow Falling on Cedars would be the best example of this Malick influence of aesthetic fluidity done to magnificent effect.
I don't think it would be terribly difficult to fix... For Hank Corwin, anyway.
The Musketeers d'artagnan.
It's a movie that disappointed me by many reasons.
When I saw the trailer I was excited by his production that it looked amazing but when I saw it I got disappointed by the use of the camera that it was pretentious with a sequence shot where the characters fight or a lot of subplots and they don't have an order and introduces other characters near of the final of the movie and other mistakes.
In the middle of the movie I was a little bored looking the mistakes in the movie and I realized that the movie would be better with another cut or edition because the subplots were interesting but the problem is that the subplots are in disorder and with a better cut it would be a better movie.
I like this version a lot more and it’s kind of what I was expecting to see before seeing the film. Especially the part where Quaritch reveals himself to Jake Sully who becomes taken aback and has a minor freak out moment. Quaritch defeated death, planted evil ideas in his adopted child Spiders head, has his real children at gunpoint, and reveals the entirety of mankind is on their way to take over.
Don’t ever expect a complex or mysterious story from an Avatar film. Cameron has been said this after Avatar 1. These films is straight to the point story wise because honestly don’t need the story to be great like that. It don’t take a film to be great in every area to be a good film, it may take the film to be great in one area and alright in the next. Great on visuals, alright on story, ok on sound quality, ok on music.
I think if the movie had this twist it would be really cool the first watch but reduce the movies rewatch value. I like how they just let the audience know all of it.
Must have been the reason Cameron did it. He wanted audiences to watch this on repeat and rule the box office.
That’s like saying any movie with a twist is not rewatchable.
@@seriousnesstv7902I don’t think that’s necessarily what OP meant but more so that when the twist is obvious, it can feel tedious to have all this tension and buildup for a secret that isn’t well kept. I’m not necessarily agreeing with them but I see what they mean.
Both avatar films still suffer from that. I tried recently to watch them both at home, and it took me 3 days because I kept getting bored.
The stories and characters are weak, and don’t add any re watch value to these films after they leave theaters.
@@cg02tx true
Biggest problem I have with this movie (and there are many, but let's focus on a big one) is the sum of the following plot points:
- Humans need to take over Pandora to survive, and the natives are seen as a threat.
- Sully is seen as a great strength for the natives - a general of sorts - so removing him has high value.
- Sully decides to secretly leave the forest to protect both the forest and his family, since he has become a target.
Hold up.
Read those three sentences a few times in your head and see if you can figure out what's wrong.
Ok did you find it?
There are several fundamental flaws, so lets break it down:
Number 1.
- If Sully and his family leaves in *secret* then how does that protect the forest?
This one is mindboggling.
If the point is to protect the forest and it's natives, then what he actually needs to do is travel somewhere else and then shout "Hey! I'm over here!" in the face of the military.
If logic is to be upheld, then him and his family sneaking out should not affect the actions of the military at all - meaning they would still attack the forest thinking he is still there.
Number 2.
- If the point of getting rid of Sully is that he is a strong military leader, then isn't him running away from the forest already a green light to attack?
This one is even more mindboggling as it reveals that the arguments being made earlier are actually circular.
Even if we fix issue Number 1 above, that Sully has run away from the battlefield - not to save his family but to distract the military away from the forest natives - then, well... why not simply attack the forest? It's the perfect time to do so since "Sully the resistance leader" just removed himself from "his troops".
But wait, some of you will argue, wasn't the chase for Sully simply a personal revenge plot?
Well yeah, kind of.... which leads us to the next problem:
Number 3.
- If taking over Pandora is completely necessary for humanity's survival, why spend precious military resources to revive a colonel for the sole reason of sending him on an unnecessary personal revenge?
Yeah, the implication of the above highlights another mindboggling error in the plot - namely that humans seem to have near unlimited resources in the second movie, which is why they use them so frivolously. And no it's not just about the colonel and his crew. If you think about it, the power dynamic of the first movie was one of limited resources. The humans have already demonstrated that they have the superior weapons technology to just carpet bomb the entire forest out of existence. Think about it: they don't even need to use planes since they have space ships - they could just drop bombs from orbit and be completely unstoppable ...unless, they have too limited resources to win the war that way.
In essence the idea that resources are precious is what makes the first movie work, but here is the second movie we are repeatedly treated to arbitrary spending budgets.
The beginning shots of the train raid really drives this point home:
Humans have reached a level of infrastructure and resource income where sending *a train* that is loaded with *weapons* through hostile territory with minimal escort is an acceptable level of risk. I highlight the word *train* because trains run on rails, meaning a completely predictable route, and the humans apparently had enough *weapons* to spare that they could afford such a massive risk to their military supply transport. (Not to mention that the very fact that they are able to establish railways on the planets surface means they have multiple cities, further establishing the lack of any resource shortage and an already pretty solid ground control and infrastructure level.)
I will stop here.
I think the suggestions made in your UA-cam video are great, but ultimately I would also like to add that they shouldn't have displayed such excessive human wealth in this movie, as that also severely reduces the tension. Throughout the whole movie, it always feels like the framing of "humanity's survival" falls flat, as they already seem well under way to successfully control the planet, regardless of how the plot points surrounding Sully plays out.
While watching it at the cinema I could never get rid of that nagging thought in my head "but does any of this even matter" in the grand scheme of things?
Also what are the humans going to do about the big problem of not being able to breathe Pandora's air. Everyone can't get an avatar
@@royalreviews5270 A good point, I actually never thought about that one.
Another thing that I really want to bring up because it annoyed me soo much, is how differently the natives are portrayed in the second movie:
- In the first movie they are portrayed as peace-loving but fierce warriors - a force to be reckoned with.
- In the second movie they are portrayed as sad and pitiful, to the point where they are getting bullied by a small fleet of fishermen.
Seriously... they fended off fully equipped trained military forces in full on warfare in the first movie.
And now they are portrayed as helpless against a few scientists on fishing ships with a small military escort??
Come on... if this was the first movie, they would have stalked the fishing ships back to their base, silently risen out of the water in the dead of night, and pulled off a deadly night raid in which Sully would have commanded them to destroy as many docked ships as possible.
But no. Despite their previously proven strength and craftiness, they just seem to have lost all will to fight for some reason.
They are completely powerless, they can't help themselves, and the humans can stroll ashore in broad daylight whenever and hold their entire tribe hostage.
@@BadgersEscapeits a terrible point. Finding a planet where you can go outside without a suit is incredibly lucky. The air is the least of your worries
@@royalreviews5270because when consider space colonization the breathabily of the atmosphere is the last thing to worry about since its pretty much assumed NO planet will have a breathable atmosphere. This ain’t star wars
Hello, I think you are wrong. Let me cover each point.
Number one. Quaritch took Jake's kids and threatened them. Jake doesn't want them to die. Not only this - Quaritch took Spider, who knows about the Omaticaya's whole operation. The decision to leave was inherently selfish; your kids are in danger so you have to leave to give them a life. Jake and Neytiri will realise this was the wrong move later in the story.
Number two. Spider ended up not telling Quaritch where the Omaticaya were - he didn't have to, all he had to do was ride along. Quaritch asked the general (general Ardmore) for a ship to defeat Jake because (and sorry this is in a deleted extended scene) because he 'could be raising an army among the sea people'. The humans cannot attack the forest because they don't know where the people are. But they do know where Jake is.
Number three. Quaritch was revived because he was a competent military leader. If not for a literal miracle (of sorts), he would've won in the first movie. All of Jake's allies were dead. In the first movie, the RDA (people on Pandora) were a private company. Now it seems they've gone more national. They also know how to make clones so its perfectly plausible that they'd bring Quaritch back. He knows the land.
Also in the next point I think you're referencing the magnetic train and track? The one introduced just after the time jump. Jake's whole thing is being unpredictable (otherwise he'd be dead) so I don't think the humans saw that attack coming.
The theme isn't about humanity's survival in this one, it's about family. So why bother making scenes talking about it when... it doesn't matter to the story?
2 videos in 2 days. Damn!
Boy's cooking alright. 😁
Man says "i know its pretentious but lets do it and have some fun with it" and actually build a WAY better movie.
Amazing job, i couldnt figure out why that movie bored me, and you listing out all the reveals that happen in the first hour was eye opening.
It's like that friend that starts explaining a book, game or movie with the twist, and then goes back to explain WHY the twist was so good
I strongly agree with your restructuring. The pacing in this movie felt off. Too much exposition. Many scenes without proper set ups or pay offs. And the mid section of the film was really going nowhere: The kids try to ride Ilu, Jake tries to ride a Skimwing, Quarritch tries to tame an Ikran, the kids learn to ride an Ilu, Jake masters to ride a Skimwing, Quarritch learns to ride an Ikran. It's just so clunky.
Another gripe I have is the scene where Neteyam dies and Neytiri got hysteric. I understood her emotions, but I didn't feel it. I think the reason for this was, because we didn't get to see her interact all that much with Neteyam. In fact, Neytiri was sidelined for a big part of the movie.
This makes me believe that Jaffa and Silva really are overrated in Hollywood when it comes to scripts. Also Cameron split the script into two movies which, must have led to a lot of changes.
One can only hope for a Director's Cut that fixes all these issues, but I wouldn't hold my breath, since Cameron has announced that the Way of Water is his final cut.
I'm almost mad I didn't get to see your version. Brilliant
somebody made the Hobbit Cardinal Cut. Based on the idea, that if the movie was edited, to resemble the book as much as possible it would be really good. I watched it, and it was.
Please make the Avatar cut, based on your idea. I'd watch it.
Being a diehard Avatar fan since I was 9, and having watched both movies at least 100000 times, I love reading these comments and seeing everyone’s in-depth suggestions as to what may make this movie better. I agree with a lot of you guys
I would have enjoyed the series more if the needed resources are far more vital. One of my favorite changes I would make is that Unobtainium is a new fuel source, this could be whats needed to find a new world. Then you can have far more complex and moderate motives, as every passing day is knowing Earth won't bounce back without it. Imagine how hard you'd fight if you were there, your communties and families are hoping you succeed in this gamble. Ultimately you are doing terrible things but they are sadly necessary evils in your eyes.
It then becomes a better portrayal of Green Parties Vs Pragmatic Destruction. Countries like India and China are our biggest polluters... but they aren't doing that with outright evil intentions. They want to improve the state of their country, it's selfish but its understandable.
I do look forward to the future with James Cameron, because I've sided with the humans in every instance of this story even with the bad writing and poorly motivated characters. The overall concept on paper of a humanity that has a chance to continue but at terrible costs is far better than anything potrayed in this series.
Damn dude you fixed it. Some of the early parts of the movie seemed so clumsily thrown together, like an after thought that should have been added in the first movie
Damn you’re so right but couple things I disagree with.
I want Jake to figure out it’s the colonel however he goes in with confidence knowing even if another one comes back it lacks the experience of fighting with Jake, an advantage Jake will always have.
Then I want Jake to find out during the battle that earth is dying. It would creating a pause in the action and being able to split the action in 2 gives more time to further split it into a 3 spaced war zone. Neytiri commanding the skys, Jake and the tribe leader commanding the naval and on boat battles with the kids narrowly escaping under the water.
After Jake discovers Earths near death he immediately understands that this is no revenge from the colonel but desperation for survival from humans. In Jake’s panic he tries to flee with his family knowing it’s a war he could never win.
Neytiri spots this, flys down and tries to convince to Jake that this is an easy battle to fight and an easy war to win. Jake explains it’s the colonel and tells that the rest of Earth is coming cause Earth is dead.
During the Sully families retreat Neytiri realises Jake is trying to leave the clan behind and decides to encourage others to fall back.
The tribes leader spots their betrayal and his lack of concentration and confusion is killed causing a full scale retreat from everyone.
Similar to the first film with the same music. Multiple slow motion shots portray many na’vi being sprayed down as they flee.
Neteyam is one that’s killed where we see all hope is lost as Jake and Neytiri try to save their son.
However in a twist, Eywe joins, the ‘whales’ destroy the boat killing most.
We see the colonel and Miles narrowly escape with the colonel drowning and in a split decision saves the colonel. The colonel with his adventure on becoming Na’vi is alone and shows a hint of a change in opinion on the war, flying off on his ikran.
With the Sully family gathered mourning round their fallen brother and son, where Miles returns finding his best friend dead.
This creates the suspense whether Miles will announce who is father is and forgetting his tracker.
The film can then cut to the rest of the clan crying at fallen comrades. Cutting to a funeral for the members lost in battle we see the leaders wife has taken his role and leads the ceremony.
With these changes it allows us to start the next film with confusion how the colonel is back despite him being dead. Miles explaining that they’re no normal Avatar remotely controlled but a human but an Avatar implanted with the memories of their previous self.
This creates a split in the family as Jake and Lo’ak believes in some way this can bring Grace back and help unite all Na’vi and a last hope against the humans. Whereas Neytiri and Kiri believe Grace should stay as she is, Neytiri because she has lost a trust of humans after Jake was selfish in saving only himself and his kids rather than the people, and Kiri believes Eywe is keeping her like that on purpose.
Hopefully we get to see the colonel struggle adapting to hunt without his equipment in isolation. He also struggles as he can’t communicate with other Na’vi and fears they will kill him for being an avatar.
He could then find a Na’vi clan who are killing others with first war human weapons. A clan that admires the humans. This gives the colonel the opportunity to show his avatar body and convince them he is human. They capture him and take him to a human facility which is loving having him back with the humans fighting against Pandora. He has to comply to survive but toils with his decision after stalking the na’vi culture while alone.
"If my grandma had a wheel, she would look like a bike"
44 years since Empire Strikes back, and it is still one of the best plot twists ever.
Here's the problem with keeping the colonel return a twist, they have the same face and actor. You would have to hide his face and not have him speak until the reveal without an recast
All these people in the comments would still be complaining if the film was shot like this instead.
9:35 problem is they already gave us this information in 1st movie, meaning moust of us should already know it.
I don’t want an Avatar 2 without the line “demon, I will kill you as many times as I have to”
idk about anyone else, but when I look at Spider, the only thing I can think is, "That sure looks a lot like Tekashi69." 😂
I was constantly waiting for him to snitch on everyone....
💀Now I can’t unsee this
Why make something so mysterious when Neytiri knew just from his voice it was Quaritch. It looks just like him, they would instantly know. It also made the story way more personal to Jake and gives reason on why he was so adamant on leaving the tribe.
Personally i don’t think this change would’ve worked well.
00:40 it's far from harder than that : people don't realize they are commenting on the final product, "I would have added this here.". No you wouldn't because there was nothing there. The people who made it started from scratch.
Exactly. Its really arrogant to say that you could do be than James Cameron, especially when you don't have the tools
Exactly, the fact that Avatar is exist with its success should be appreciated. To build this world up from scratch like this. It’s easy to “Modify”. Not that easy when your in a room with a blank white sheet and have to build this world and tell a story from scratch not just that it has to be good enough to make at least 1.5B in order to start profiting. A lot of writing decision is affected by making a product that makes money. Mysterious stories don’t make as much money as a straight to the point story. Mass audiences like to know they was a straight forward emotional other worldly ride. Cameron has been killin it 2/2 .
@josephbanks888 Exactly. There are no pre-established books or TV shows or toy line. Avatar doesnt really much of a fan base. But it's growing right before our eyes and I love it
its a bullshit logic . its their job to make movies, they are professional and get paid in millions. james cameron created Avatar of course he's genius. he dedicated decades of life and that's why its even more tragic that story is ASS.
@kazech5225 I'm sorry you think that
Another problem with the film is that it is difficult to understand Jake's decision to leave his tribe. For "primitive" people, family is not only a wife and children, but also the entire tribe. Leaving them will not logically ensure their safety. Because they are ALREADY waging a guerrilla war with people. They will already be perceived as an enemy anyway.
How can this be fixed?
1. Showing the peaceful life of the tribe before the return of people
2. Landing of people on Pandora, the beginning of a new war
3. A year of guerrilla war
4. After unsuccessful attempts to assault the flying mountains, people decide to solve the problem more radically
5. A new wave of ships from Earth arrives, one of the ships begins to land right on the flying mountains
6. Most of the tribe dies, Jake, Neytiri, children and several surviving members of the tribe, because of the wall of fire cannot fly deep into the continent and are forced to flee towards the islands
7. There they settle as refugees
8. Then the rest of the plot
As a result, Jake no longer looks like a selfish asshole in the eyes of the audience
Totally agree with everything, I actually stopped watching after they left the village to go to the water area cause the tension and story just fell off so hard it became extremely boring, the way you put it makes me want to watch this version much much more, maybe get in touch with the director and make a new movie based on that.
I stopped watching the second movie 20 minutes into it.
When I watched the first movie I fell in love with the world that was shown to us, I genuinely enjoyed and defended that movie. But when I sat down and decided to watch the second movie, I stopped watching immediately after the humans come back and destroy the big trees and the big bad guy is revealed to have a second chance at life. That happens so early in the movie considering its 3 hours long, I expected more focus on the family Jake had created and what had changed since the humans were banished in the first movie. I sensed the plot was going to be exact same as the first movie and it sure seemed that way, aliens peaceful, humans attack, humans defeated.
The way the giant trees and the forest is just immediately annihilated was so uninteresting, I get that their technology had advanced but their return plan was to just nuke everything?? How pointless. Also the graphics, maybe I just have rose tinted glasses but the first movie was so visually pleasing that it felt real, the second movie instantly breaks that immersion with the Navi looking way more CGI than before. I felt like the movie was just a cash grab and not a loving project, so couldn't be bothered to give it the time.
I can't believe people actually root for the giant blue space cats rather than their own species.
Cause humans stink
If I was to do this movie, I would make it more like a Western set in space, but I'd balance out the two sides more. I'd have more sympathetic humans and less sympathetic Na'vi to balance out the story and make it less black and white that is Na'vi are all good and virtuous and the Humans are all bad. The humans are basically trying to survive, and a faction of them RDA seems to think the end justifies the means. The humans built a city, so what I'd do is have some more sympathetic human characters, some new arrivals, perhaps a family of pioneers, comparable to the Ingles Family from Little House on the Prairie, have some ruthless Na'vi that just wants to get revenge on the humans for despoiling their wilderness, and who aren't particular about who they get revenge on as to them all humans are the same. So, a human centric story would be good to balance out the Na'vi point of view.
Bravo 👏 👏👏👏👏
Great work!!!
Not as pretentious as you’d think… your perspective has a lot of depth and ‘edge of seat suspense’ that would really set the stage for part 3…
The first 50mins really was a informative dump that takes away all the mystery and detective work from us the audience to speculate which would be playing in the background of our minds as we look for more clues and pieces of the puzzle as we navigate the unknown terrain of the plot as it unravels.
I really see where it would’ve been mind blowing if it was reorganized the way you described.
the movie was gorgeous but I found the dialogue and monologues were really dull.
It's much better written in Marvel Studios. Bringing back Robert Downey Jr to play Doctor Doom is desperation who is actually Tony Stark gone bad spoiler Avatar fire and ash with outperform Avengers Doomsday big time😂
This is a video where I act so spicy you’ll want to turn the video off before you can say JAAAKKEEE
I just finished watching your video on the underground bar scene from Inglorious Basterds, and I just wanted to say you're videos are great and I appreciate them. You earned my sub brother
"Luke, I am your father...."
Do you think Jake would feel guilty if he knew the Earth was dying?
The start could have used more scenes considering that most of the movie is just slow scenes and then a final battle
Wow this was amazing!! 👏🏻👏🏻this would have made the film as good of a sequel as T2 was. I want a video of how you came to this revelation and how you made this video
Spider would make an incredible villain tbh. If he joined the humans, and became bad, the story arc would make more sense.
It’s an interesting rewrite/ restructuring. However, not everything needs to be a „mystery box“. If I ask myself why Cameron did it the way he did it, I think it is because he wants Quaritch not to be mysterious or evil, but a sort of anti-hero. Now, Quaritch starts as the same bad guy he was at the end of the first one and all the scenes add tension where we ask ourselves if he will change his ways. What is going through his head when he sees his own death? Will he be „loyal“ to spider? Is he really the same person he was before. Granted it does mean frontloading the first act a bit, but I think the idea of making Quaritch a second protagonist going on a similar journey as Jake in the first film, is not less compelling than having him as a mystery box for the first half of the film. In fact, my take is that on repeat views it’s actually more interesting. I can compare this to Star Wars „I am your father“, on repeat views prequel first and the originals is actually better as the twist is now in Episode III and it’s more consequential that the protagonist becomes the villain rather than learning the protagonist‘s idol thought to be dead is actually the villain. It also flavours Luke‘s journey in Enpire with more tension as he is exhibiting many of the same flaws we have already seen in Anakin (anger, impatience, strong attachment to his friends, recklessness), and this positions the I am Ypur father Scene as the potential breaking point for Luke that could push him over to the dark side or simply destroy him completely, leaving Leia in place to save the day.
Both are different ways of telling the same story more or less, but you emphasise different things. A mystery keeps the audience engaged the first time through but on repeat viewings it can also become tiresome (doesn’t have to, rewatching a whodunnit a second time if written well can be just as intriguing as the first time).
The Lancelloti Cut, should be a thing! Enjoyed this more than the movie.
3:37 Crazy to see that Carmela Soprano enlisted and helped with the invasion of Pandora after her husband died. Always knew she had that dawg in her.
Best comment here 😂
I think they were just afraid that people have completely forgotten the plot of the first movie. That's why they dumped all the information in the very beginning
Gotta admit, wasn't sure about the premise here... But you sure as hell won me over by the end there. 👍
this is a really excellent idea to be honest. One last tweak you might want to do is to have a sequence early on where maybe the humans show a previously unseen recording of Miles... maybe just have him exposit about the mission they are about to go do and giving the military guys a target in Jake.
This doesnt do much for the viewer but it is a way to derail anyone who was following the IMDB page and seeing that actor being listed. They would assume that the actor returned for this one little video recording and thats it. tricking them into thinking that was all he was brought back for.
It was already great to start with
great video as always !!!
I would love to see this movie re-cut properly, the suspense this version adds is amazing 🙏
I thought movie is goid once i understood family dynamics because thats what we sould prepare for third one, not all movies sould be like Arrival or casual find it super dull- i find inception boring for lack of human emotions to avoid 'cliche"
6:53 Sellfish?
Dude! Yes! Big improvement storytelling wise.
Omg why aren't you part of the avatar story writers already? This is so cool!
1:25 "Do you wish to update your child's software from Eywasoft"?
Amazing analysis agree did u watch it in big screen avatar 2 could be what dune 2 does cinematic visual style
Can't wait for Colonel's great tragic and inspiring redemption arc.
Step one.
Don’t make The Human Space Racist blue.
Really. I never understood that approach.
If they cloned him.
Why not just keep him the same.
He could have struggled with survivors guilt of himself.
Then found out he had son on top of that.
Without being blue…. Making him an avatar destroyed a huge part of his character from the first movie
What a movie ❤. (The new one)
I think part of the problem is that it was not originally intended to be a quadrilogy. What was supposed to be Avatar 2 ended up getting split in half with the rest of the storyline becoming Avatar 3. This created some narrative challenges and James Cameron along with his cowriters talked quite candidly about it on a long form Q&A writing panel last year. One of the funnier details was that since A2, A3, and the first half of A4 were all shot together as one continuous production, people internally were referring to the Sea Dragon battle at the end of A2 as a "minor skirmish" because early on they didn't realize at the time it was going to be the end of the movie. 😂
2:56 correction: People can be COPIED, brought back to life implies they're the same person, even if you backed up your memory and uploaded it to a new body before you died, thats an entirely new you, the consciousness you are, the one that did that would still be dead
Dropping this info gives ppl some expectations.
Remember Avatar is easily digestable by even dumb ppl AND at the same time hiding some more deeper stuff thats beyond the plot
I think having the colonel wear a mask along with the other members of his squad as well when he is in the field of battle would increase the mystery behind the character and not give too many clues as to who he is. Not a mask that would be for breathing cause obviosly they wouldn't need that but one to show their eliteness and something to hide the colonel's face in the first moments we see him. With his facial features and his voice especially I feel that it would be easy to predict that this is somehow the colonel but in an avatar body. Otherwise I think this reshuffling of the movie was fantastic.
I agree turning Jake Sully into Vader would be quite the plot twist.
I’ve always thought that being upfront with Miles being Spider’s father kneecapped the movie.
I love the arc they’ve set up for Spider across the 5 films.
Though Spider always knew he was his father, it was no shocking revelation to him as it was to Luke, after all he grew up among a bunch of blue aliens and always knew he was not one of them.
I haven’t even seen the movie and I like your version better.
A way better story would have been them traveling to the water tribe so we the audience can experience pandora... Wich should be the main focus/character in the story. The war could come in the third act when they arrive and realize that humans already started their attack here aswell. I hope the third movie is not a war movie...
i putted this video to watch later. because i dont want to ruin this masterpiece before watching it.🤗
i will visit here again after watching.
There's still one answer, one thing that always bugged me and I kinda wish this movie would've at least made one self-referential joke about:
How in the name of magical blue cat power do the female bikini's stay on and covering the bits? Most of the time it's just a loose necklace. Like what? It's the weirdest design element, it makes no sense. Do they use tree sap to glue them in place? If they do that, why not do that with the loincloths? Why doesn't Jake Sully just wear a leaf over his pecker like statue of David?
There are multiple moments were the tops don't cover anything at all. It's just not in the focus
I commend the amount of work you put into this, however, from your pov it seems that the only way a movie can be good/great is if it has a mystery plot twist. That's only one type of thematic storytelling plot device - usually found in thriller/horror genre, etc. This movie TWOW since before launch was heavily promoted / pointed out to have a theme focused on the aspect of family, which places it into a drama category. The conflict is tied to Jake and Neytiri being parents and that familial bond being tested. Also, you overlook the known fact that the Avatar movies are part of a 5-movie long narrative arc. These aren't just individual films. Yes, each film will have their own conflict resolution, however there's more to them than just that.
In Cameron's movies (Titanic, Aliens, Terminator 2 Judgement Day), the audience already knows before even seeing the film that there's going to be a disaster/fight that's been built up. There's nothing wrong with giving the audience exposition at the start, as it gets all of that needless questioning mystery of why/how something is happening out of the way, so the viewers can enjoy the wonderous world around them (being in the environments on Pandora is something the audience craves more of). In the back of people's minds, they don't have to constantly carry all of these questions throughout the film, and just focus on how the characters going to adapt to this knowledge and the one question that actually matters, how are these adversaries going to eventually collide and survive.
How did you learn to fix movies? Is it something that can be taught?
im 15 mins in and i wanna see your re-cut of this movie
despite the amazing visuals of the film, i felt that the seaquel was too underwhelming. i am willing to bet that this was the original cut intended by james but was left no choice because some corporate overlords thought that the movie will become too 'difficult for audiences to understand' and that the narrative would be 'too overwhelming' for it to be 'marketable'
I don't agree with you on everything, but you're definitely right that Avatar 2 anticipates way too much information instead of using it to create suspense and twists. I thought the same thing in the movie theater. You can tell James Cameron was thinking of Empire Strikes Back with the father-son relationship, only he plays it out in a much more boring way. But I think the movie should have handled the information differently: Instead of deleting the introduction of Quaritsch, they should have deleted the first 8 minutes with all the exposition. It would be unrealistic to keep Quaritsch's identity a secret for so long anyway. You could hide his voice, but not his face. You can see which actor is playing him. But your approach is definitely right.
"Turn to the darkside", more like join his people.
They fumbled the bag in so many ways in the 2nd avatar. Was so disappointed when I watched it
Humanity first. 👍🏼
been release since watched, but never got why Spider saved the Colonel, but doing this to help divide or increase the build up of the reveal I could get a bit more view point of it. And putting in more doubt what the plan is going back to his navi family.
I do love pushing of the earth dying reveal, drive that tension to see the next. The space ships nice but its cgi spendor not story tension. Oh actully way to much comparison with Empire strikes back 😑
This is a good rewrite
Do movies necessarily need to have twists? I had no issue with the revelations early on tbh.
I like the idea, but the main problem of this is we knew years before the movie came out that Stephen Lang was coming back to be the antagonist once again. That sucks I know, vut otherwise it would have been a great idea
So what happens next?
Avatar 3: CuzBro BroCuz
am I going insane or is this whole video narrated by AI
Like many have said, the changes and tweaks that you suggeted in your video are phenomenal, but I feel like maybe there was a reason why Cameron decided to be a little more blunt and straight forward with all of this info, and that's precisely to avoid comparisons to other movies. Why would this matter? Well, Avatar 1 was already heavily critiqued by people saying that despite it becoming the highest grossing film of all time, it left no cultural mark on cinema and society as a whole. So, if Cameron would've gone by the route of making a revelation like that of the iconic Vader-Luke scene, people would've also found ways to critique the movie by saying that Cameron lost all creativity (story telling wise) and now he's trying to copy iconic moments from movie history in order to try and make his movies relevant. And with the Vader-Luke scene being such an integral part of the collective unconscious, people would've immediately made the connection to the scenes and oh boy... And I mean, it's not like a father son relevation can't be done without it being reminiscent of Star Wars, and it's not like that franchise owns those kinds of revelations. But I feel like yeah, Cameron decided to avoid such comparison on purpose, so as to not get any more slack by movie critics and audiences alike.
Brilliant suggestion. I fell asleep in theaters when I originally saw this, and virtually forgot the plot and exposition scenes. I had not realized that what made me so bored with the movie was how egregious of an expo dump they do at the beginning
I still hear mason
Why would Jake leave if he didn't knew it was the colonel?