- This movie is 3 hours and 15 minutes long, but it feels like 6 hours because of the uneven pacing. There’s a big action setpiece 2 ½ hours in that really feels like the end of the movie, but then the movie doesn’t end. Instead, it slows way down again for some whale meetings, then finally ends in another rousing climactic battle.
- Here’s my big problem with this movie: At the beginning, the bad guy is searching for Jake Sully, but then several hours into the movie, he shows up at Sully’s village with a bunch of gunships and demands they hand him over. Why not do that at the beginning of the movie? What’s changed? Did they not know he lived in this village before? I think they did, if I remember the second movie correctly. Couldn’t you have cut out 90 minutes here by getting to this point more quickly?
- This movie was clearly harmed by the studio panicking over the last movie not doing well at the box office. They didn’t pay off things that were set up in that movie because they worried that no one had seen it.
- I’d hate to say this movie should be even longer, but the biggest problem is that there are no great set pieces until the submarine an hour in. They needed to either add some great stunts to this section or cut it way down. The previous movie ended with them saying “Now we’re ready to get the key from the submarine”, so why couldn’t this movie have just started with that?
- The number one writing lesson to take from this movie is that you shouldn’t make the team too big in an action movie, because you’re going to need to craft an ending in which everybody makes a crucial contribution to victory. (As The Scorpion King did so well.) This movie needlessly added four members to the team, but the finale was basically Tom Cruise saving the world single handedly, while Benji, Grace, and the other four new cast members had to run around trying to make themselves useful. The previous seven movies did a better job and keeping the team small and everybody’s contributions crucial.
- This movie was a lot of fun, and, as with most Marvel movies, it helps if you vaguely love but don’t actually know much about the characters. In this case, as a big fan of the comics, it bugged me too much how out-of-character they are.
- Johnny is a Reed-level super-genius who saves the day by translating an alien language based on knowing three words? Ben is an even-tempered guy who hates to say “It’s Clobberin’ Time”? Sue doesn’t know not to fly in the third trimester? Phoebe on “Friends” knew that!
- I liked it enough that I hope they keep making them, but ultimately this movie is not on the list.
Okay, enough complaining, let’s get to some movies I liked better...
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