No one can ever fault James Cameron for being an ambitious filmmaker when it comes to the Avatar films. Cameron pours his heart and soul into making these films a purely cinematic experience, and it shows in aces.
Avatar: Fire and Ash, the third installment of this epic sci-fi franchise, delivers sensational spectacle perhaps better than the previous two films. Nearly every scene has something that has a sense of wonder and awe that only could have been the brainchild of Cameron and his crew. Fire and Ash is visually resplendent if thematically repetitive, which is more or less what we should expect from an Avatar movie.
The movie picks up after The Way of Water in which Sam Worthington’s Na’Vi Jake Sully and Zoe Saldana’s Neytiri and their family are grieving the loss of their child Neteyam. Neytiri has a total contempt for humanity following the loss.
The family gets ambushed by a new clan of the Na’Vi known as the Mangkwan a.k.a. the Ash People led by the ruthless Varang (Oona Chaplin). Varang and the other Ash People are far different from the peace-loving tribes of the previous film, who have a desire to disintegrate anyone who crosses their path.
Stephen Lang’s Quaritich returns, still trying to find his son Spider (Jack Champion), and his character goes through one transition after another. First, he’s still Sully’s enemy. Then, he’s forced to help them search for Sully’s family as well as Spider. Then he may have a desire to team with the Ash People. His role provides a sense of moral ambiguity, but he still has a lot of the characteristics from the earlier films.
Spider is perhaps the dominant character who undergoes an arc as he becomes the first human who is able to breathe the air on Pandora without the aid of a mask. Spider proves willing to be in the thick of the action, but he’s in jeopardy most of the time. He gets as much screen time as Worthington and Saldana. Sigourney Weaver returns as Kira, Jake and Neytiri’s daughter, who also has an arc trying to save Spider from certain doom.
From the moment I saw the first film, I was impressed by James Cameron’s vision, so I had no hesitation settling in for the spectacle he promised. Once again, Cameron doesn’t just raise the bar for visual effects—he pushes it several levels higher. His creativity in building the world of Pandora is unmatched. The visuals aren’t there simply to dazzle; they serve a deeper purpose, transforming Pandora into a fully realized environment that feels authentic, immersive, and richly detailed. Every frame looks crisp and alive, making the world not just something we see, but something we believe in.
As for the rest of the film, I’m pretty sure I won’t be alone in the sense that, from a storytelling perspective, Cameron seems to be stuck on repeat as he seems much more content with revisiting the themes from the first two movies instead of giving us completely new material.
Cameron can’t seem to resist giving us themes of environmental issues as well as mumbo jumbo spirituality that hit on the nose way too much and way too often. The film is 197 minutes long, and sometimes the themes are asking a lot to digest.
Still, one thing is for sure: Cameron’s vision is one that is virtually unparalleled in the world of cinema, and at a time when very few filmmakers are allowed to embrace and execute their visions with the amount of cost, length, and spectacle that Cameron gets.
Fire and Ash is a step or two down from the previous films in terms of its narrative structure, but if you can get past that, it’s an absorbing, immersive experience that only a virtuoso like Cameron can deliver. On that level, he knows exactly what he’s doing.
Grade: A-
(Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, bloody images, some strong language, thematic elements and suggestive material.)
Reviewer’s Note: I saw this movie at the World’s Tallest IMAX at Royal Cinemas and IMAX in Pooler.
