1/15/23-1/21/23

Avatar: The Way of Water

Boy. A lot of choices sure were made here.

So, I didn’t read up on the production of this or anything, which wouldn’t be a big deal in a normal movie. There’s a Na’vi character that I think is named “Kitty” that is supposed to be the teenage daughter of Sigourney Weaver’s character’s avatar from the first movie. Now, putting aside that she is supposed to be Na’vi Jesus (don’t worry about it, it’s not important, somehow), when I was watching the film I was wondering who they got to play Kitty because even through the CGI-ification, the actor looked remarkably like Sigourney Weaver. Then at some point a line came out Kitty’s mouth that was clearly just Sigourney Weaver’s actual voice with not enough audio editing to make it sound younger and it clicked into place that it was Sigourney Weaver playing a teenage girl along side actual young actors. Once I realized that it never stopped being off-putting throughout the rest of the movie.

There’s a lot of things that I find weird about Avatar 2 and frankly, I think the whole thing is a big-budget mess. A mess that’s neat to look at, but still a mess. Why is Jemaine Clement doing a (terrible) American accent when he’s playing opposite an Australian? Would it be too confusing? Why is the space ambergris only brought up 2 hours or so into the movie, and never mentioned again? Why is there about an hour dedicated to sequence that could’ve been boiled down to a 3-minute montage? Why are there plot elements that don’t go anywhere (for the sequel, duh)? Why is Spider a character?

I know, I know, no one’s watching this for anything other than spectacle of it all, and it’s definitely that. It’s so graphically advanced that the projector at our theater actually hitched up two different times. Which, actually doesn’t make any sense, even if it is a 48 fps and in 3D, it’s still pre-rendered so it shouldn’t be an issue. The explosions are fine, even if the movie itself is pretty dumb and forgettable. I’ll give credit, Cameron did a good job of making American Marines look like sadistic morons, and that’s never a bad thing.

My brother and I laughed the entire time, but most of it was not at anything resembling a joke. Take that for what it is. I wouldn’t watch it again.

Jimbo’s Inferno by Gary Panter

Technically a prequel to Jimbo’s Adventures in Paradise, I guess? I don’t think it matters, at the end of the day, it’s just a nice way to incorporate the Divine Comedy into the lore of Jimbo. And hey, we all love Jimbo! He’s pretty high-up on my list of indie comics himbos. Panter’s artwork is gorgeous as always, and the idea that Hell would be a gigantic, seven-layer mall seems not only funny, but accurate. I’ve been to the Mall of America, I know what it’s like.

100 Drawings by Gary Panter

Exactly what it says! Great!