- On this Fifth Wednesday, this isn't an episode. It's an emergency. The Earth Mother decreed it (cue: hamma-heying).
- You must muster at the muster point (not the mustard point). Ben has never mustered for real, only as part of a drill. Henry associates mustering with maritime disasters but Mike has mustered on dry land in his hospital accommodation days. While living in a tower block, a flatmate was cooking with too much oil, and pushing said oil around the cooker like Napoleon moving troops on a big map, and started a fire. The group only moved to action when the fire alarm went off.
- Henry remembers a Heath Robinson-like fire evacuation device that a friend had in their kitchen at uni in the top of a tall building. Involving a harness, a blanket, and hurling out of a window (landing is your decision). The contraption was perhaps based on the Leonardo corkscrew helicopter. Any students using it would be scattered over about 12 muster points (including some back into the flames). Henry characterises the person with the clipboard who signed off on this contraption (a papier mache chair made out of napkins + a scooped-out watermelon + 18th-century guano-derived pseudo-elastic) in a particular way which he now regrets.
- David Cameron has done it again. The film has snuck out. Crazy that it came out without fanfare. Or perhaps the Beans don't have their fingers on the pulse.
- Mike saw it on the day of release, when schools were breaking up, but there were still only a few people in the cinema (it was not rambo-jamboed).
- Cameron thinks Avatar is the pulse, but he's a Boomer. The Avatar paradox is that the films are two of the Top Four top-earning films of all time (plus Cameron also has a third: Titanic), but no kid is wearing an Avatar T-shirt.
- The market disagreed with the Beans, clearly. But the market really likes war, so it can get stuffed. Mike's hot take: not that pro-war as a concept, unless it's La (Sexy) Revolution, including short shorts where the pockets are longer than the shorts.
- People in Leeds on a night out might be dressed up as stormtroopers (the Star Wars ones, not the ones from Manon des Sources) but not as Na'vi (at least the Beans didn't see anyone dressed as an Avatar character during their time doing two tour dates in Leeds in 2025) or talking whales or luminescent squids. Not even on Halloween. Is it because there are no great characters in it? No sexy Chewbacca. Call-out for someone from Leeds to get in touch to confirm on this.
- People are seeing it because they feel they should, like when a friend has made a Basque cheesecake and it will be shit because of the lack of a biscuit base, but it's very hard to make, or when Chloe is really looking forward to playing her flute for everyone. You just have to suck it up and go, just get in the car, because James has worked so hard on this. It's not about you, it's about James.
- Why has Cameron only made Avatar films for 15 years when he's got such a great back catalogue? He has unlimited time and money and no one to stop him. Even when he was making The Terminator, he was doodling blue aliens while Arnie went off to lunch. He gets through so many blue crayons. He might be staring into the distance with "hamma hamma hey-a" going through his head, perhaps after watching something very worthy.
- The Hamma Heya lady has had a cracking 15 years. She probably bought a huge fibreglass hammer and pile of hay to put on her driveway so that she could say to people "Hamma Hay paid for this house." Then she'll offer a guest a sandwich: ham or hay? So much work going into the visual/food puns. Did moth pupae/pups have to die to make the fibreglass hammer and hay? Henry does not understand what fibreglass is.
- Ben and Henry saw it on Britain's Biggest Screen (the London IMAX), a fact told to them by the man who emceed the film there. Mike also saw the second one there. Mike and Henry saw the first one together in Holland Park, way before podcasts, proving they were just hot young babes (wearing belts with pockets stapled on for shorts) who felt they should see it, then go clubbing all night.
- Ben and Henry were amongst the Avatar fundamentalists at the IMAX. No one else but them was tutting and snarking. Perhaps the nearby uni's Sociology department were doing experiments on the mega-dweebs (the podcast is dweeb-positive). The dweebs were even laughing at 'jokes' that Ben didn't see as jokes. Gales of laughter at the IMAX but no chuckles at Mike's screening. The IMAX screening even had a round of applause at the end. Ben's reply of "Not really." to a staff member who asked if he enjoyed the film left the chap crestfallen, but he had asked Britain's Greatest Naysayer. The expectation was that anyone spending 3.5hrs watching a film must have loved it.
- The IMAX is expensive, which Henry is aware of as he bought both tickets. Ben always has a sugar daddy for cultural events, and Henry gets something out of it too because of how good Ben looked on his arm. The film is junk bonds, financially speaking, so Henry can't ask Ben to pay him back.
- Henry is reminded of a time playing 5-a-side football in a hall next to young people playing badminton where he realised the younger generation are not enigmas who can't be understood, they're just getting into the same stupid shit as everyone else. Cameron has created something that shouldn't be chiming with people: it's the bloated product of a previously-talented Boomer who has turned narcissistic and has created a mess of half-thought-out philosophy, just absolute crap, stupid irrelevant crap... like badminton. The younger generation should see it for what it is, but they don't.
- Event cinema: people do still like getting together with friends and family to go to see a film that seems cinema-worthy, unlike Knives Out, which will be on Netflix in a bit. This is more like a ride at a theme park, with 3hrs of queueing, but Henry has never been on a rollercoaster.
- Henry's great idea: an indie Avatar made on a shoestring budget. Put the luminous jellyfish on the end of fishing rods and cover people's faces with (toxic) blue shoe polish.
- The very length (3hrs20) of the film leads people to think it's a momentous event. An auteur might make a too-long film, but it's because of their bold vision (e.g. Costner).
- Exactly the same film as the last film except one of the characters has a girlfriend now. Henry needs a pee break, which announcement Ben leaves in the edit to show Henry up for paying for his ticket.
- The Na'vi all have the same build: beefy Nicholas Lyndhurst (he's so good at mo-cap thanks to his years of mo-capping Uncle Albert on Only Fools and Horses).
- Ben thinks this one is better than the second, but Henry worries this is just Stockholm Syndrome. Is it better because of the sexy alien or the human boy (Spring Break made flesh)? Henry and Ben both liked the sexy alien queen, with her 90s Kate Moss prowling vibe. Mike sees how Cameron has tracked Ben and Henry's basic primordial brains into finding the alien sexy. Sex scene in a tent: Henry liked that, as did the dweeb horde (boners ahoy!), who could power the nearby Waterloo station with the heat created. Odd to make the audience have to think about how alien sex works by showing the aftermath of the pair in the tent – like, do they have cloacas?
- Mike is reminded of how much people loved it when Captain Kirk copped off with an alien and would think about the mechanics (how would it work??). But the aliens are both the same species in Avatar (even if one of them is a human avatar). Kirk never got off with a poisonous barb-spitting rock or a bright pink flannel with an eyeball. His mate would be conveniently humanoid and adhering to the human beauty standards of the time.
- The story is hard to recall. Big whaling meeting? Mike has blocked out the opening scene until Henry reminds him: teenagers on a special dragon/skateboard (bro!) but could be an alpaca or a couple of Spitfires. Henry is particularly horrified by the teenagers' affectionate rub-punch. But one of them is in heaven thanks to their USB port. So why doesn't everyone just kill themselves at birth and go live in the spirit world, where you can hang out with Sigourney Weaver and never have to go to the toilet and there is no jeopardy?
- Ben wonders why Henry would imagine you wouldn't need to go to the toilet in heaven, as he imagines heaven would be constant relief. The infiniturd.
- Henry was unconscious for some of the film, perhaps because all the blood was in his Wee Willy Winkie as soon as alien Boudicca appeared on her dragon stallion. Ben also may have napped. Mike is jealous of their napping.
- Spider, the teenage boy character, has 2 oxygen masks left before he will die, which everyone knows, yet they leave it to the last minute to sort out. Ridiculous. At this point, Henry said to Ben, "I've got everything crossed that he perishes". Despite being a human, he brings no humanity. He is Spring Break on legs. Why does he say "shit" so much? Even in front of Sigourney Weaver, who has actually been in some good films? He's a Tarzan/Mowgli type, compared to a monkey, but there are no monkeys on this planet. One of his most extended bits of dialogue is to do with needing a piss. Classic placeholder dialogue that should be in red ink ("Stoppard will finesse this."). Cameron has mis-spelled "piss" on the control+F search.
- Whale language confusion ("You will never hear my song again.") all over the place. The one who died last time was a composer who wrote K Pop parodies and was working on a musical about the life of Idi Amin. But how can a whale even open a music stand or write down the notes? They easily change the whole fabric of their culture for the sake of a big finale. Why don't the whales go to anywhere else on the massive planet but that tiny cove? Or follow their dream to run a churros stand and write poems in cinnamon in Papyrus font?
- Awful fight scenes that are the opposite of Jackie Chan's advice that fights have more impact if you can see things in camera and it's not chop, chop, chop. You don't know or care who's who. If only Jackie Chan was being hit with a ladder in this.
- Too much of everything: a stack of waffles with entire tubs of ice cream, whole packets of Magnums, hot baked beans on top. Too much creation of wonder: glowing squid upon glowing squid. Too many characters ("Who's this?") who all look the same.
- One nice moment: Jemaine Clement as a marine biologist who is the only character who doesn't know how do something. Everyone else know how to do everything, and amazingly. A brief moment of jeopardy, a dilemma.
- Two registers: highfalutin wise natives or "Hey, bro!" frat boys. Why is Lord of the Rings good and this not, when the former is also in mythic register? Is it because it's based on something: old Celtic myths, Norse tales? This is more like AI slop. He's seen Thundercats twice and the Cheltenham & Gloucester advert.
- The ending of the battle is a deus ex machina, same as Lord of the Rings. Squids instead of Gandalf.
- Mike enjoyed the crab subs in the battle (crab bell rings: 1:01:16).
- The water is too clean and sea-through. No mud. No decay. A vision of the rural from the perspective of a city dweller, like Henry hiking in Glencoe with his umbrella or Nigel Farage putting on his farmer outfit from the dressing-up box. Ben doesn't have a problem with this as Pandora has been created as a paradise, but Henry thinks it is because Ben is not as deep as he is.
- Henry doesn't believe Cameron has ever hiked across Cambridge. It's a colonist's fantasy of the colonised. Things that should be a belief system are physically real, even the God Mother (though in half profile). Technology from Cameron's perspective is from his era: plug-in based, not wireless. The tribes are wise and noble, but you can always see their pert arse cheeks.
- Hot Bean ratings: Henry gives it 25% of one tepid bean (cos the eyes are glossy); Mike gives it a bean for Jemaine Clement and the crab subs (and as a nod to the people who worked long hours) but the wrong sort of bean, and one on the turn, possibly fished from a cat's mouth; Ben thinks it slightly better than the second film so he grates a bit of another bean on top of the one bean from last time, as a garnish (completely mad from a culinary point of view).
- Plemonstential: Mike thinks Plemons could have been the Mother God in profile. Ben thinks he may have been in there somewhere anyway as Kate Winslet was but none of the Beans know who she was playing (cuttlefish noises?). Perhaps if they'd CG'ed Plemons' eyes onto the squid eyes, they would have been softer and therefore more terrifying. Henry pitches Plemons' arse playing the whole planet on a long shot.
- Shoutout to Edie Falco for being actually good. Henry imagined her as her character from The Sopranos entering a new phase of life as a pan-Galactic military commander.
- The fourth Avatar is due in 2029, at which point another emergency episode will go out.
- You've put your thumb up your own ass and thought it was the pulse.
- You've finally got permission to put cream on a biscuit and eat it in a pudding with cutlery, looking your brother-in-law in the eye.
- That should be the slogan for all Avatar films: Just get in the car.
- Steal his blue crayon at your peril!
- They had the trademark uniform of the Avatar superfan: none of them were wearing Avatar T-shirts.
- The whole thing is a fabric of cliché.
- I can either have a boner or be conscious.
- Just give me half an hour with no squids. Please!
- Henry likes his blue alien fantasy movies to be vérité.