Being great director you need to be a great storyteller. And being a great storyteller you need to be a great manipulator. You need to manipulate listener/viewer's emotions, assumptions, beliefs and convictions, and tons of other things to make your story as convincible as possible. And the bigger the story the bigger the manipulation. James Cameron is one of the biggest manipulators of our time.

And yeah, yeah, the story of Avatar 2 is simplistic and silly, the world of primitive tribes that live in some symbiotic connection with the entire planet can't have complex stories of greed, betrayal, conflicts and violence, that we like so much. The primitive frame of this world is just not interesting, a place where all living things live happily with their surroundings is boring AF. That's why we need humans to shake things up and show stupid primitives what a proper civilization really looks like. Whatever problem I may have with the characters, their decisions and relationships, and few cheap manipulations that Cameron does to make this story advance, it all becomes just insignificant compared to the enormous and sweeping visual achievement of this movie. I mean, if there is such thing as visual drug, that's probably it. Cameron is a master in this area, the movie is so fluent in its visuals and edited so well, it's just like a perfect high for the brain that don't involve any chemicals. 3 hours of pure high sinks your mind into the deep hypnosis inside the astral plane.

I could trash this movie for its many weaknesses, but who cares. Avatar 3 can't come soon enough. Come on, I need another dose of this.