There arrived a time in the day when, after waiting as long as I possibly could, I ventured to ask the guide how far away we were from the resort. I expected him to say "Oh it's just around the next bend" or "Just another ten minutes, sir." Instead he revealed to me that we still had a full hour left to go.
This is how I felt when I first checked the time during Avatar: Fire and Ash with my sons.
Now, I don't usually have my phone on at all during a movie. They only tell you to silence your phones these days, but I always turn mine all the way off. But with this particular film -- this particular three hour and 17-minute film -- I thought it would be a good idea to know how close we were to the end, because I was worried about one of my two viewing companions.
Although it was two-and-a-half years ago now, and he would have only been nine at the time, my memory is still fresh of how my younger son couldn't handle The Flash, and required us to leave after less than 15 minutes. It wasn't that the subject matter itself was so assaultive to him, but that he couldn't handle the loudness of the film and some of its overwhelming visuals.
So Avatar -- a loud, visually overwhelming film, especially when watched in 3D -- could have been a recipe for disaster for him, even though he has subsequently survived plenty of loud and visually oppressive films on a slightly smaller scale. Never mind the fact that he also feels a bit embarrassed about forcing me to leave The Flash and would not likely let a similar thing happen again. (Have I held it over him? I hope not, but I suspect I have let some comments drop here and there that could be interpreted as passive aggressive.)
I thought, if I were able to determine how much time was left, I'd know whether I could push him through to the end, or if it was too far off to do that. Which, actually, was sort of a faulty idea from the start, since any Flash-style reaction to the stimuli would have happened in those first few minutes of the movie, not the last few.
Turns out, it was me who needed to check the time -- though I wished I hadn't.
I had made the argument that I thought the movie would never be boring, and would not seem like more than 180 minutes. I didn't know if I believed my own argument, but it was an attempt to try to set the kids at ease. Not that either of them needed the encouragement. They were both keen to see the movie.
Well, due to the problematic narrative structure of the film -- it reaches a point partway through when a non-James Cameron filmmaker might have split it in two -- there did indeed come a storytelling lull, which you will probably remember if you've seen it. It was around here that I dared to check my phone, thinking we were at least halfway through the running time.
Nope. We still had two hours to go.
Two hours!
I knew our 10:45 showing was scheduled to get out around 2:25, so I was under no delusions about the length of this experience. I just couldn't imagine we were only around an hour and 20 minutes into that experience.
Fortunately I had the good sense not to tell either of my kids about how long we had left. Though this did set off a flurry of me checking every 20 minutes or so for the rest of the movie. I did occasionally get caught up in what was happening, and sometimes when I checked, more time had passed since I last checked than I feared had passed. Though sometimes it was way, way less.
Say what you will about either of the previous two Avatar films, but at least in both cases they felt like single stories -- single very long stories, but single stories nonetheless. Checking their times just now, I'm surprised I didn't remember that Avatar: The Way of Water was only five minutes shorter than this, because indeed, the time did pass faster in that one. The original Avatar seems like a model of restraint by comparison, clocking in at a modest 162 minutes.
But by the third film in the series, Cameron has accumulated so many characters who need to have their own story arcs -- there are about four "chosen one" characters in this story alone -- that it's just way too much story for one movie. At the same time, it feels underdeveloped in the way Cameron stories often do.
For their part, my kids did pretty well with it, though I could tell they were also exhausted. For my younger son, he had his 3D glasses removed at some points, his shoes removed at others. He did a lot of wriggling around, which is funny because he was the best equipped of the three of us to handle the cramped seating. My older son wasn't fidgety like that, but he engaged in the single most symbolic act of despair during the whole movie, at one point crossing his arms on the seat in front of them and burying his head in them, as if fully defeated. Fortunately, this only lasted about two to three minutes.
Despite all this, and despite the fact that I had to take an hour-long nap when I got home, we all enjoyed the movie to varying degrees. In a situation like this, I am likely to award the film "achievement points," which basically comes down to a half-star higher than the movie is really worth, based just on the difficulty of making it. I mean no doubt, all these movies are very impressive achievements, meaning I'm ultimately giving it 3.5 stars even though it's probably only a three-star movie.
As for the fourth and fifth movies in the series, maybe -- just maybe -- Cameron will have storied himself out on these three, and can show comparitive judiciousness by bringing the next two in around that 2:40 mark. I mean probably not, but a girl can hope at least?
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