Avatar: Fire and Ash Review: Another Electrifying Visceral Experience
PLOT: A year after the events of Avatar: The Way of Water, the Sully clan is settling into a new life with the Metkayina. However, Quaritch is still obsessed with capturing Jake and reclaiming his son, Spider, and he allies himself with the violent Mangkwan clan to capture his enemy once and for all.
REVIEW: James Cameron’s Avatar movies are outliers when you consider the current state of cinema. One of the big problems nowadays is that people just don’t go out to the movies anymore, as they tend to stay home and wait for any movie they want to see to hit streaming. Heck, with digital projection and the state of some screens, going to a lot of movies does indeed feel like just watching a huge 4K TV, but Cameron still knows how to deliver a cinematic spectacle (to the point that he has a specified process exhibitors need to follow). At over 3.5 hours, shown in 3D and at 48 frames per second, Avatar: Fire and Ash is a lot of movie, but it does something a lot of other films can’t do — it delivers a cinematic experience on the big screen that can’t be duplicated at home, no matter how fancy your screen is.
While I’ve never considered Cameron’s Avatar movies among his best work (they always just feel like high-concept sci-fi variations on Dances With Wolves, A Man Called Horse, and The Last Samurai), I respect his dedication to the world of Pandora, and even if — for me anyway — they tend to be one-and-done experiences, I wouldn’t dream of missing one of these on the big screen.
Avatar: Fire and Ash picks up where The Way of Water left off, with it gradually shifting the narrative focus to a younger generation of Na’vi, including Britain Dalton’s Lo’ak, who serves as the movie’s narrator and has to carry the guilt of his brother’s death from the first movie. Much of the movie revolves around both Lo’ak and his adopted sister, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), coming into their own as the war on Pandora intensifies, not only with the humans, but also with a dangerous tribe called the Ash People.
Warlike and only interested in chaos and destruction, they become Quaritch’s new allies as he hunts down the Sully family. The Ash People contain one of the best new additions to the franchise: Oona Chaplin’s psychopathic Varang — the scariest villain the series has ever had. While Sam Worthington’s Jake and Zoe Saldaña’s Neytiri are still pivotal, you can sense Cameron trying to move the franchise forward, especially with a renewed focus on Jack Champion’s Spider, who finds himself torn between two fathers, while he himself carries a secret that makes him a fundamental threat to the Na’vi.
Again, at over three hours, Fire and Ash is jam-packed with action and world-building, but for the first time in the series I started to feel like I had a handle on the geography of Pandora, as well as its numerous creatures. Yet it’s in the simpler, character-driven moments that I really found myself having fun. I especially liked the continued evolution of Stephen Lang’s Quaritch, with him learning to use his new Na’vi body and being torn between his pursuit of Sully (which he feels is justified, as Sully committed mutiny and killed many of his fellow soldiers) and his growing attachment to the son who despises him, Spider. He also gets to explore some Kurtz-style territory as he finds an unlikely home among the similarly warlike Ash People.
To be sure, not all of Avatar: Fire and Ash works. A potential romance between Kiri and Spider is hinted at, but it’s a little strange given that they are essentially brother and sister. The formula is also starting to feel repetitive, with each of the three movies so far all ending the same way, with a big battle royale between the Na’vi and the humans, with no real resolution. Cameron has spoken about potentially stepping away from the Avatar series at some point, but this doesn’t feel like he’s even close to wrapping up the saga, with many threads left dangling by the time the credits roll.
Yet, as always with this series, I had a good time, as the lengthy running time races by, and the immersive tech really does make you feel like you’re part of this world. Cameron still seems engaged by the material, and it’s bound to be another hugely successful crowd-pleaser (an Aliens callback involving Weaver’s Kiri will no doubt get a lot of cheers). Some think the audience’s thirst for Avatar may run out someday, but Cameron has been wise in the way he’s refused to allow the studio to spin off any element of his world, keeping the franchise feeling fresh. If there’s an Avatar 4 and 5, I’ll be there.
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