Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025)

Score: 3 / 5

Another venture to Pandora leaves us elated at Cameron's mastery over visual splendor. While those hankering for more narrative meat to chew in this franchise will be left wanting, Fire and Ash, the third entry in this laughably expensive series mostly recycles the elements established in its watery predecessor. Between an ironically chilling new villain and a story slightly less plagiarized than the two first ones, this film hits similar beats while allowing Cameron's imagined world to breathe and maintain its pace. Some new elements are inspired, so it's not a totally dull retread, but one wishes for imagination to match spectacle here.

Shortly after the events of The Way of Water, Ishmael -- ope, pardon -- Jake Sully and his family are settling in to their new home among the Metkayina, Na'vi who live on oceanic reefs and have adapted to a mostly aquatic life. Jake (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) are at odds, as the latter has developed an intense, murderous hatred of humans. As the threat of violent encroachment will likely never end, the family must decide what to do with Spider, a rather feral (and obnoxious) human boy who has been semi-adopted by the Na'vi family. Sending him away to live with other humans at the scientist encampment only works until their convoy is attacked by other Na'vi: a rival clan of violent heretics called the Mangkwan. 

Apparently having renounced the nature-god of Pandora, Eywa, the Mangkwan live a somewhat tortured life in no-man's land near an active volcano. Ash and charcoal are their color palettes, and they raid other Na'vi tribes aggressively. They are led by Varang (a hauntingly effective Oona Chaplin), a sort of loose cannon whose mystique is laced with sociopathy. Scattered by the attack, the Sully family struggles to handle a compounded threat when Varang begins to work with the humans in an effort to wipe out Pandora's resistance to colonization and industrialization. Conveniently, this leads almost immediately to Spider being "accepted" by Eywa, and infected with mycelium, so that he can now breathe freely on Pandora. 

Ugh, I know.

From this point, the film loops back into annoyingly familiar terrain -- narratively -- and squanders some promising opportunities hinted at then fully ignored. I like Fern Gully and Pocahontas as much as the next guy, and Moby-Dick as much as the next gay, but we don't need yet another grossly lengthy film dramatizing the same basic story with the same basic moves. Matt Reeves's Planet of the Apes series should have been cited as an inspiration for Cameron in this regard. Especially seeing that the screenplay was basically written by committee (five credited writers, no less), and produced and distributed by the entertainment-industrial complex that is Disney, it's shocking that there is so little attention paid to decent dialogue, pacing, and thematic conceit. The scenes with Spider and the other kids are the worst, still repeating bizarre colloquialisms ad nauseam in every single scene they tumble through. Yeah, bro, you know it, bro!

It doesn't help, I should note, that this film doesn't entirely feel like its own film. Rumor has it that this was intended to be a continuous story from the previous film, so I'd recommend a rewatch of that before this. Most of the characters aren't (re)introduced, so if you don't remember what Edie Falco and her team of weird humans (including Giovanni Ribisi and Jermaine Clement) are up to, you're shit out of luck this time. Additionally, there's the added complications of who is actually an avatar these days; Jake Sully is fully embodied, of course, and Kiri contains the spirit of Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver, who I love, but we can all agree that her voicing a child is weird, especially when she develops affections for her adoptive brother), and Quaritch (Stephen Lang) is still alive but also locked in an avatar body. I don't know, but I do think we've lost the plot a bit when it comes to the damn title.

Scenes with the whales (and their unbearable subtitles) are much worse in this film than the last, perhaps because the awe is gone. There's a montage late in this film of the whales in meetings that is so outrageously silly and dramatically inert that I almost completely checked out of the film. For something so profoundly cool to see on screen, the atrocious dialogue and frankly cartoonish sign language these CGI critters are forced to enact ruin the magic. I also think the editing is significantly poorer in this film than even in the last, though that's also partly due to the screenplay; we often go for extended stretches of time, even in battle sequences, only following a character or two. Granted, there are a lot of characters to keep track of here, but the editing (also apparently accomplished by committee: six credited editors!) seems hellbent on deliberately obfuscating. 

The elements with Varang and her tribe, however, are what I've wanted from this series since the first film. The Na'vi have such an interesting relationship with their god, their environment, and each other, and even back in 2009 we were given a glimpse of the shamanistic theocracy of their culture. The Mangkwan take this to its inverse extreme: they're presented as a Mansonesque cult of unhinged, gleeful violence. While I remain annoyed that Quaritch takes the spotlight in this film, making Varang a sort of minion not long after she's introduced, even her presence helps the film feel more interesting than it should. And it's a shame, because Cameron has introduced us to very strong female characters -- heroes and villains -- before in his career, and nobody can say Saldana's performance in the previous two films isn't one of the best parts of this franchise. 

Just like nobody can fault these films for sheer awesome spectacle. Frankly, I'd love to watch these films just as they are but without dialogue. Sure, we'd still see the repeated climactic battle and the follies of the invading humans, who never fail to underestimate the whales' destructive capabilities. We'd still see repeated raids and captures of children and those pinkish tentacles in their hair having sex with other creatures. We'd still get the rousing music and immersive sound effects, but at least we could come up with our own damn dialogue. 

I don't like just shitting on a movie -- and truth be told, this was a very fun time at the cinema -- so I'll add my own spin here. This movie could have been so much better had we focused wholly on Varang. Perhaps including a story about Jake or even Neytiri trying to find their way forward and getting seduced into this cult, even as the supposedly salvific Spider continues on his way to the humans (which could then lead into the inevitable fourth film). We could have even started with the humans, including the terrifying scene where she decides her people need guns for maximal killing prowess.