We went to the movies last night, to see “Avatar: Fire & Ash.” It’s the second time in a month that we’ve been to the movies, which is mostly noteworthy because we usually don’t see the inside of a theater above twice a year. For the most part we prefer the comforts of our own home for our various viewing—not to mention being able to pause for potty-breaks. Occasionally, though, it’s fun to indulge in movie popcorn, and the big screen that goes with it.

We usually don’t know a thing about the titles that are playing, because we don’t have TV channels, so we don’t see ads and previews—so a movie-date usually begins by looking up previews for whatever’s playing at the local theater. This time, though, there was something we recognized, in the new “Avatar” movie. We hadn’t seen the second one, but the first one was great, so this seemed promising.

As it turns out, though, this is not one of those movies where you can easily step into #3 without having seen #2. And I feel that that’s badly done on the storytellers’ part. Sure, It’s one of the challenges of a sequel, that writers don’t want to drag the pace or bore their audience with extensive over-explaining of what has gone before… But at the same time, it’s important that at least the plot fundamentals should make sense, and that can be accomplished with a light touch—for example, by clever references to the past, slipped into dialogue without dragging down the pace of the current story. There was absolutely no attempt made, here, so there are a number of major plot-points in this story that go entirely unexplained. Even after watching the whole three hours, I don’t know why there’s a U.S. colonel in a Na’vi body, or how he got that way. Or why there’s a human kid in the middle of a Jake Sully’s Na’vi family, or how he ended up there. Or why Jake Sully is “wanted” by the human military. Those aren’t side issues; they’re the main “drivers” of the plot. There are plenty of other questions—like what’s up with Sully’s daughter and her inability to commune with the “allmother” Eywa—but at the very least the big plot-items should get that little bit of explanation for folks who didn’t see #2. Skipping the attempt altogether is purely lazy storytelling.

My greater disappointment with this movie is its overall lack of imaginative vision. The first movie was so stunning in its creativity that it must be a high bar to aim for… But I feel like they didn’t even aim. Where the first movie was remarkable for imagining things entirely un-earth-like in nature, this movie relies on thinly veiled earth-analogues. There’s a subplot involving whale hunting, and the whales are very whale-like. Their mouths open side-to-side and they have extra eyes, but they’re whales.

All that said, it’s not a bad movie—especially, I imagine, if you’ve seen the second one ahead of this one. It just doesn’t live up to the first movie, by any stretch of imagination.

Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? They didn’t stretch their imaginations in making this one.