Avatar: Fire and Ash Review

James Cameron Returns to the Same Well A Few Too Many Times

By: Marc Kozak

Avatar: Fire and Ash

James Cameron Returns to the Same Well A Few Too Many Times

By: Marc Kozak

If you’re reading this, there is an extremely high likelihood that you’ve seen one (if not both) of James Cameron’s Avatar movies. Seeing as how both movies made a combined $5.3 billion, you’ve almost certainly had a conversation with one or more people about the experience. Having had these conversations and read various articles, reviews, and/or social media reactions online, you probably have a pretty good idea of the general consensus surrounding this long-running and mega-successful movie franchise. It usually goes something like this:

The movies look incredible, truly groundbreaking in terms of special effects and immersive 3D imagery. The action sequences are breathtaking, which we’ve come to expect from the acclaimed director of “Aliens,” “Terminator 2,” and “Titanic”. But the story is kind of unimaginative; it’s a very simple and familiar narrative that kind of slides right off of you. The characters aren’t much better; everyone is a fairly standard archetype, which limits any deep emotional connection. Really, the main selling point is the awesome visual spectacle and fantasy world-building; it’s a project designed as eye-popping escapism for a mass audience, and it is very successful at doing that.

So while it would be foolish to expect anything radically different from “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” you’d still be forgiven for being a little surprised at how disappointingly familiar it all feels. In fact, the main story beats of this movie — the third in a planned five-movie series — are almost identical to those of “The Way of Water.” I would go so far as to say that if you wrote an outline of what happens in “Fire and Ash,” it would be exactly the same as “The Way of Water.” Even more troubling is that by the end of “Fire and Ash,” things are still pretty much in the same status quo, which means we might get more of the same if the fourth movie comes to pass.

" While “Fire and Ash” contains a few jaw-dropping moments and features technical elements that are certainly as good as they’ve ever been, the returns are starting to diminish.  "

No one expects these movies to be Shakespeare, but you can only ingest the same formula so many times before it stops having any effect. And if our interest isn’t held by the story or its characters, the action and visual elements have to work even harder to give us our money’s worth. Unfortunately, while “Fire and Ash” contains a few jaw-dropping moments and features technical elements that are certainly as good as they’ve ever been, the returns are starting to diminish. The 13-year gap between “Avatar” and “The Way of Water” allowed for a much bigger leap in technology, which made “The Way of Water” feel just as visually awe-inspiring as the original. Because “Fire and Ash” was filmed simultaneously with “The Way of Water,” there is no comparable leap forward. The underwater worlds are still beautiful and every background detail looks real enough to touch, but some of the novelty has worn off. Maybe it’s a bit unfair to take this level of craftsmanship for granted, but when the franchise is built on the expectation of unprecedented technological advances, it’s a letdown to get more of the same.

The movie begins with a message from James Cameron himself, who explains with pride that none of what you’re about to see is made by generative AI. From there, we rejoin the Sully family one year after the events of “The Way of Water.” Jake (Sam Worthington) is consumed by grief over the loss of his eldest son and places most of the blame on his youngest son, Lo’ak (Britain Dalton). He also fails to connect with his wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), who is isolated by her pain and rage, wanting nothing more than to exact revenge on the humans. Their adopted children are feeling more and more like outsiders in their own community — Spider (Jack Champion) because he’s human, and Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) because of her unnatural, quasi-divine connection to the God of the planet itself.

Kiri is the most interesting Sully child, thanks to her connection with the planet’s mysterious force (which we even get a brief glimpse of in a particularly staggering sequence), aided heavily by Weaver’s gentle mannerisms and pained expressions. Spider is given a ton of screen time but does very little with it, mostly running and parkouring through the jungle while yelling video game dialogue like “come on!”, “this way!” and “follow me!”

The family is once again terrorized by walking military cliché Quaritch (Stephen Lang), now a full Na’vi being but still ridiculously intent on capturing Jake for his perceived betrayal of humanity. This time, Quaritch is joined in his machinations by Varang (Oona Chaplin), the leader of a feral fire-based tribe/cult that lives in a volcano and loves to inflict violence on others (and themselves). Varang and her people are by far the most interesting thing going on in the movie, as they slowly have their eyes opened to the awesome destructive powers of human beings and their fancy guns. Eventually, Varang and Quaritch form a kind of evil power couple, hellbent on using their combined power to take over the world or something of the sort.

The final third of the movie is a copy/paste of the final third of the last movie. The whale poachers show up again, led by Brendan Cowell with Jemaine Clement in tow as the conflicted marine biologist, who inexplicably is still doing the same job after the events of the last movie. They reprise their comically evil routine only to be jubilantly rebuffed (again) in a bit of environmental fantasy. All of our characters converge in what evolves into an enormous battle sequence, featuring a dizzying array of flying and swimming characters being gunned down, while our main characters navigate submerged industrial piping (a Cameron favorite) only to meet in a neatly climactic showdown. A main character suffers what appears to be a fatal defeat, but it’s almost guaranteed that they will show up again in the next movie. Nothing is resolved and many of the same conflicts are still in place; the only real changes are meant to be emotional victories won by members of the Sully family, which, let’s be honest, hit with the impact of a feather pillow.

There are genuinely impressive moments scattered throughout this epic battle – rarely has the scale of such a large conflict been rendered so fully. You can tell that an incredible amount of time went into rendering each figure in frame, even when there are literally hundreds of figures zooming around. It’s always been a little disappointing that Cameron could never match the excellence of his Avatar visuals with an equally excellent story and characters. Before, you could mostly look past those things because everything just seemed so big and bold and exciting. But now, three movies in, Cameron is already repeating himself, a cardinal sin for someone who takes pride in showing people things they’ve never seen before.