James Cameron’s Avatar broke the world when it came out in 2009. The stunning visuals were unlike anything anyone had ever seen before, and the immersive design of the planet of Pandora took the world by storm, quickly overtaking an older Cameron movie to become the highest-grossing film of all time and setting a record that’s yet to be broken.

The sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, is less than half a billion US dollars behind the second-highest-grossing film of all time, Avengers: Endgame, both of which are sci-fi movies with incredible ensemble casts. so, Avatar‘s success as a franchise cannot be questioned even with just two movies right now, and a third set to be released later this year.

Avatar 3‘s box office can see it ranking higher than movie franchises with more than twice as many films, if it’s even half as successful as its predecessors. However, if you missed it, Ryan Gosling pointed out Avatar: The Way of Water‘s flaw of still using Papyrus for the тιтle card, and rewatching the movies today reveals even bigger flaws.

The Two Films Tell Style-Over-Substance Stories

Both Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water prioritize the visual grandeur of their worlds over the strength of their storylines. Both movies have straightforward plots whose conclusions you can predict before the first acts are over, and they leave many unanswered questions that loom over the movies like major plot holes, some of which could possibly never be resolved.

Realizing every single Avatar scene is designed to set up the next big action setpiece makes the viewing experience frustrating. The avenues for emotionally richer writing are sacrificed in favor of showcasing the advanced CGI. James Cameron is right about Avatar‘s success being linked to its positivity, but it still fails to inspire due to a lack of compelling storylines.

Zoe Saldaña Is Criminally Underutilized In Both Movies

Taking a page out of James Gunn’s playbook, where every major actor in The Guardians of the Galaxy almost shares the spotlight equally, would have helped Cameron’s franchise, because, despite her screen time, Zoe Saldaña’s Neytiri is an underwhelming character without any major role in the story. Jake Sully being motivated by her existence doesn’t make her a well-written character.

Saldaña has an incredible acting range, but she has a one-dimensional role here. Neytiri helps Jake settle into his Na’vi body in the first film, and there’s a major arc for her as a mother in the sequel, but both storylines lack emotional depth, leaving Saldaña underutilized. She could only become important if Jake Sully is killed in Avatar 3.

Sending a Pregnant Character To Battle Isn’t As Feminist As Cameron Thinks

When you see Kate Winslet’s Ronal charge into battle while pregnant, it doesn’t stand out as a particular talking point beyond realizing that that’s really the only big moment Kate Winslet has despite all the hype around her character. Ronal even has a genuine motivation to do so, because she is enraged by the death of her beloved Tulkun life-partner.

“It doesn’t happen in our society—probably hasn’t happened for hundreds of years. But, I guarantee you, back in the day, women had to fight for survival and protect their children, and it didn’t matter if they were pregnant. And pregnant women are a lot more capable of being a lot more athletic than we, as a culture, acknowledge… To me, it was the last bastion that you don’t see.” – James Cameron

What sullies this scene is James Cameron’s instistence that it’s an instance of female empowerment (via CinemaBlend). It’s the knowledge that he pats himself on the back for empowering women by portraying a warrior so heartbroken that she isn’t thinking about her unborn baby’s safety that’s frustrating. Showing her disregarding her safety, albeit for understandable reasons, doesn’t make Avatar feminist.

Avatar’s Characters Are Forgettable

It is one thing to realize you don’t know much about the characters in a franchise during its earlier stages and another to realize you don’t care enough to find out more. Sam Worthington’s Jake Sully is barely a protagonist because his arc may faithfully follow the hero’s journey, but we don’t know him beyond some stereotypical male hero traits.

James Cameron’s other upcoming movies are more exciting than the planned Avatar sequels because Avatar follows uninteresting characters whose motivations are run-of-the-mill and who don’t give you enough reasons to be invested in their stories. They’re barely fleshed-out beyond what purpose they serve the story’s aim of setting up setpieces.

Avatar 1 Has A White Savior Storyline

Of the many things that James Cameron copied from The Last Samurai for the Avatar movies, the white savior trope is possibly the most confusing. It is genuinely bizarre that he’d choose to use this trope today, but Jake Sully’s story is exactly that. The Na’vi would be helpless without his participation in their fight against their oppressors from Earth.

While there is a wholesome love story between Neytiri and Jake, the movie quickly redeems Jake despite his role in Earth’s conquest of Pandora, and despite his initial manipulation of Neytiri and the Na’Vi, he’s turned into a heroic figure who will fight alongside them to save them. The story of cultural integration is overshadowed by Sully’s white savior complex.

There’s No Proper Explanation For Sigourney Weaver’s Return

Sigourney Weaver’s Dr. Grace Augustine’s death was one of the few noteworthy emotional moments in Avatar, but its impact is almost immediately undone by Avatar: The Way of Water, which somehow brings her back with a far-fetched explanation about her bond with the Eywa. Who doesn’t want more Sigourney Weaver? But this is just a poorly written excuse to retain the actress.

The Avatar sequels must tweak Eywa’s powers and fix this death problem if the franchise wants its character’s deaths to have any meaning. A mechanism that can revive ᴅᴇᴀᴅ characters at the drop of a hat makes it even harder to be invested in their stories, because even their mortality is now rendered meaningless by such a frustrating plot device.

Quaritch Is Never A Compelling Villain

Stephen Lang’s Colonel Miles Quaritch serves as the primary antagonist of both Avatar movies, and he barely makes a compelling case. He’s a clichéd representative of capitalist America’s conquestous instincts, and has almost no discernible personality traits beyond his role as the power-hungry and greedy colonel who is even willing to endanger Pandora’s stability as a planet for his mission.

Though Quaritch has to reconcile with being a Na’vi in the second movie, he’s reduced to a worse cliché as a vengeful character with practically no development. He wasn’t interesting the first time around, and he’s somehow supposed to be the next film’s antagonist, too. Avatar 3‘s trailer shows General Frances Ardmore’s return, and I hope he takes the reins.

Avatar’s Visuals Don’t Justify The Lengths of its Setpieces

Every setpiece in Avatar overstays its welcome. This is not a flaw you notice at once, but on a rewatch, it becomes clear that Cameron is trying his best to showcase the incredible technology his team developed for the Avatar movies, even at the cost of cinematic sense. The setpieces drag on forever, just to show off more grand visuals.

On a first watch, the visual grandeur of Avatar, which makes the living, breathing planet of Pandora seem real enough for you to get immersed in the film’s events, hides the flaws in the narrative structure. But once the initial wonder sinks in, you realize the action sequences can actually be much shorter, and there should be more genuine storytelling.

Avatar Is Better Suited To Be A Video Game Franchise

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is an immersive video game set on a gorgeous fictional planet with enough of a barebones plot for you to care about what you’re doing. Its success proves what fans of James Cameron have been claiming for years. Pandora is an interesting location, and the stunning visuals of the Avatar movies deserve the hype they generate.

With a new third-person update in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, players can switch between modes to experience the grandeur of Pandora to its fullest extent. Unfortunately for Cameron and his fans, a movie needs an actual storyline and characters who keep you invested. Avatar lacks both, and the it can be much more compelling as a video game franchise instead.

There’s No Way James Cameron Can Get 5+ Movies From This, Right?

As if these two boring instalments aren’t enough, James Cameron has talked about Avatar 6 and 7. I wonder where he’ll get the stories from. The characters are forgettable, the plot is paper-thin, the lore is only explored enough to justify more setpieces, and the brilliance of the visuals has now sunk in. What more does Avatar have to offer?

There are only so many times audiences can be convinced to invest in the same clichéd storylines and one-dimensional characters for the sake of beautiful visuals, right? Pandora looks gorgeous, but its lore is so whimsical that there needs to be heavy retcons or incredibly far-fetched justifications for newer concepts. It remains to be seen how long this franchise runs.