You probably saw the trailer and thought, “blue people… again?” You already had The Smurfs, the genie from Aladdin, Jennifer Lawrence in X-Men, Avatar #1, Sulley from Monsters Inc., Onward, Sadness from Inside Out, Paul Giamatti in Big Fat Liar, Sonic, the girl car from Cars, Megamind, Stitch, the blueberry girl from Willy Wonka, and, while not movie-related but impossible to exclude, The Blue Man Group. At this point, being blue is just cliche.
But James Cameron had a mission — to explore the unknown, to put blue people where they’d never been put before. So, he decided to submerge them in water and film them obsessively playing with fish. And not just ordinary fish, fish that could be both killed for sport for foundational emotional flashbacks and fish that blue people could play with for over three hours and not get bored of.
While being beaten by Black Panther: Wakanda Forever by a few months, Avatar 2 officially became the second film to put blue people underwater.
However, Cameron is too clever to shoot for only one monumental, cinematic blue people record. During the course of the film, he slyly reveals his secondary goal: to speculatively expose us to the grandeur of blue existence only to pull the rug out from beneath us when we walk out of the theater in order to remind us that we can never attain such a feat in our lifetime. In fact, this film is so immersive you may become hypnotized by the visuals, paint yourself blue, leave your family, illegally marry a fish, start speaking in bubble languages, and then repeatedly wake up in PetCo’s fish habitats. If you were already planning on doing those things, then I would recommend watching the film as a good pre-workout-for-life-altering-decisions.
Reportedly, audiences are experiencing depression and discontentment with their ordinary lives after watching Avatar. So much so, that they have created an official acronym for this called PADS (Post-Avatar Depression Syndrome). Dare I say watching blue people may make you feel… blue?
It is at this point that Cameron allows us in on his secret. He subverts expectations with a startling third and ultimate goal. Even though our faces are not a beautiful facade of CGI, we are the real blue people. This unexpected social self-reflection comes as a surprise until it doesn’t. Until we look in the mirror after the movie, meet our own shell-shocked gaze, and break down because that case of Pink Eye is worse than we thought originally and is going to force us to cancel that date with that girl we’ve had a crush on since middle school. [I use the loose “we” because we can all relate at one time or another.] Avatar 2 is really a mirror of our own daily emotional worlds that we never take the time to listen to and reflect on, even though we should. There’s a beautiful world inside of you, so explore it. Take the time to dive deep into that alien landscape of trauma, sadness, and irreparable hopelessness that you’ve been avoiding for so long… and experience the magic of Avatar 2.
Official synopsis: This is all to say that Avatar 2 was a gorgeously stunning, emotionally-heavy sequel that bests its original in visuals, story, and moments. It lets the feelings and character dynamics do the talking and run the ship, while allowing the story to take the back burner. Knowing Cameron stories, this is something to be thankful for. Cameron ultimately creates an immersive masterpiece with a world and family you’ll never want to leave.
Parent guide: As expected, Avatar follows the story of half-clad CGI aliens that are nearly always sporting partial nudity. However, it is never meant to be provocative or particularly titillating. There is also a smattering of very mild profanity, one F-bomb, and mild peril and violence.