Avatar Is Still the Ultimate Cinema Experience

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Spoilers! I completely understand the criticism around Avatar: Fire & Ash. Still, this movie absolutely blew me away—especially the second time, when I realized that the first time I hadn’t seen it in HFR Dolby. That revelation added so much to the experience. The technology I witnessed in The Way of Water was finally fully on display, and I forgot most of my issues with the movie.

Sure, it has too many characters and can feel chaotic, especially in the editing. It’s long, and in places it’s repetitive. But look at that masterpiece, man. Every single frame is a wallpaper on its own.

Meanwhile, critics are trying to convince me that movies like Superman, Wicked: For Good (sorry, guys, for dragging you into this, but the second part wasn’t on par—and not that the first one is better than this movie), Predator: Badlands, The Black Phone 2, Kiss of the Spider Woman, the Terrifier franchise, Wake Up Dead Man and all the Knives Out movies, F1, The Long Walk, Sinners (yeah, you heard me), Fantastic Four, and the other Marvel movies from this year are somehow better than this film.

What are you smoking?

We are consuming visual media, and in that regard this movie has no real competition—except the last two Avatar films. This movie deserves to hit the 2-billion mark, and no matter what James Cameron keeps saying, someone should point him firmly in the direction of not leaving this world anytime soon.

Sexiness & Exophilia

A minute to learn some cookie information:

Exophilia: Defined as a fetishistic attraction to extraterrestrial, alien, or non-human life forms.

Xenophilia: While commonly meaning a love for foreign people or cultures, it is also used in science-fiction contexts to describe a sexual attraction to alien species.

Xenosexual: A term occasionally used to describe a person with sexual interest in alien beings.

I was not ready for how sexy this movie is. And what exactly is going on if I’m attracted to the Na’vi people?

Let’s dissect this scenario. Imagine we encounter another humanoid species from another planet that is that damn hot—like Jake and Quaritch, who, by the way, look absolutely real (like everything in this movie). Many people, myself included, feel the same way. Is that normal? And what even is normal at this point?

Quaritch’s biceps. That blue tail. I’m all for it—although some people will definitely puke at the thought. But damn, Jake… those legs. There was one scene, after Jake got caught by Quaritch and they put him on the plane. The moment the plane landed and they showed Toruk Makto with his legs spread in both directions—it was just mind-blowing.

I mean… what am I smoking?

Realizing that you’re attracted to fictional aliens is not something I expected to experience this year, but we live and learn.

Women

Not to mention how sexy the new addition, Varang, is. She is the most captivating Na’vi in the entire franchise—cool, mesmerizing, brutal, vicious, everything you’d want from an evil clan’s Tsahìk. The way she speaks, the way she moves—it’s like watching sex performence in a ritual. Almost like a take on the Goddess from the Alien franchise, where James Cameron once left his mark.


The scene where she seduces Quaritch and gives him drugs that make him realize how powerful—and how hot—she is was truly hypnotizing. I never expected to see something so psychedelic in this world, which is already a full-on psychedelic explosion. 

Every moment she’s on screen is my favorite. An astonishing character and performance.

Neytiri is still the GOAT, delivering yet another complex and mesmerizing performance. In The Way of Water, she had that final-battle, mother-rage moment—starting with the cry of a mother losing her son and ending with the roar of a beast—that cranked the movie up to eleven and instantly made her an iconic alien warrior mother.

Here, she storms the human base to save Jake—right after he spreads his very sexy thighs (it is what it is). She faces off with Varang, followed by a chase sequence where she dives with her banshee through a narrow opening at insane speed, without hesitation or doubt in her own skill. I was just sitting there thinking: damn, girl. That was legitimately one of the coolest action scenes I’ve ever seen.

Hard Scenes and Hard Choices

I appreciate everything involving Spider, and this time around he had only one scene that made me cringe a little—which is already an improvement over the last movie.

Everything with Kiri felt a bit anticlimactic, but I’ll allow it, because it has meaning and makes sense within that world.

Seeing Eywa was a bit much the first time, but after watching it in HFR, I definitely fell in love.

Neytiri and Jake almost killing Spider was a hard choice to watch, and I’m not sure how this young Tarzan just continued staying with them afterward. He understood Jake, but I don’t think the actor quite had the range to convey such a complex relationship and moment.

The whale court drama was a bit too much, but honestly, I love being in this world so much that just looking at those majestic creatures was enough—even with their stupid papyrus subtitles.

I heard somewhere that the movie was supposed to be four hours long, and after seeing it, it definitely feels like it’s missing some needed moments. For example, the morning of the Tsahìk. Kate Winslet—whom some critics continue to bash for her accent—I genuinely don’t see the problem. Her performance is magnetic, just like the other women here.

Communicating so easily with the dead cheapens the meaning of life. It feels like: oh wait, give me a second, I have to answer a call from the dead—I’ll call you back. It kills the mystery and makes loss feel less impactful. Still, the movie hits its own emotional highs for some reason. I get it, and I still love it.

Box Office: A Score

The critics are downers. They really do have the power to ruin the experience for a lot of people—but not for me. This movie is a visual fist, and it’s bigger, bolder, and more epic than anything else released this year.

Iliya Badev

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