Directed by James Cameron, Avatar: Fire and Ash follows Jake, Neytiri, and their family, grieving Neteyam’s death and facing a new threat from the fiery, war-worshiping Ash People led by Varang, who’ve allied with Quaritch. As the RDA escalates its attack on Pandora with new technology, Jake’s family must unite warring Na’vi clans, confront internal strife (especially Neytiri’s hatred for humans and Spider), and navigate dangerous lands to protect their home and family from total destruction.
The Avatar series has received endless praise for its evolving and phenomenal visuals, which it rightfully deserves, but I’ve always had a mixed relationship with this series, which to me is not James Cameron’s best work in his incredible filmography. The first film didn’t age as well with its characters and writing, while the second film improved upon the first with both of those elements but still had some things holding it back. Does this third film go further with improvements and bring us back to a world that is worth seeing to completion? Unfortunately for me, it didn’t.
Epic visuals and action can only carry this series so far before running into a narrative rut, which is exactly what I feel this unnecessarily long third installment has done. Cameron had the opportunity to do something new and bold with this third installment, outside of improved effects, and give us a reason for us to continue to care about this series for two more films in a planned five film series. But I feel he has squandered it all by repeating the same narrative formula of his previous films and playing things too safe, to the point that the stakes feel meaningless, resulting in me losing interest in everything that was happening. Basically, the Avatar franchise has become the new generation of Michael Bay Transformers films.
The cast has mostly been one of the best parts of this series, with each of them giving their best to their motion capture performances for their respective characters. The only cast member in this film that I feel has lost passion for their role at this point is unfortunately Sam Worthington as Jake Sully. In the previous two films, Sam Worthington felt like he was giving his all to this character but now he feels boring and bland compared to everyone else who is putting forth actual effort. I couldn’t tell if this was perhaps the fault of Sam Worthington himself or Cameron’s direction of him, but what used to be an interesting character to follow in this series has now become a shadow of his former self because of a very weak performance.
On the contrary, Zoe Saldaña continues to be absolutely amazing as Neytiri, with her having a more grief driven arc that sees her being pushed to her limits physically and emotionally. Saldaña is able to deliver such powerful and raw emotions through motion capture, even without dialogue, making her a force to be reckoned with as well as one of the most emotionally investing characters in a story that isn’t so investing as a whole.
Stephen Lang returns as Colonel Miles Quaritch, and just like in the previous film he has evolved into a much better and enjoyable villain for this series as we get to see him go through many interesting changes in this film. He feels more layered and complex compared to his one dimensional beginnings and Lang is having the time of his life playing such a smart and menacing character, while also delivering some hilarious bits of dialogue that felt improvised but work so well.
Alongside him is a new character named Varang, the Na’vi leader of the volcano-dwelling Mangkwan clan, played by Oona Chaplin. Varang is shown to be the leader of a people who have gone through incredible hardship that has twisted them to become evil against other clans on Pandora, and Oona Chaplin does an amazing job bringing this character to life through a performance that is full of ferocity and malice. But despite having such an awesome backstory there is not much explored about her or her clan in this film, which I found to be extremely annoying because I really found them to be interesting and wanted to learn more. For a film titled “Fire and Ash” you’d think this film would dedicate most of its three-hour runtime to exploring this new tribe and their culture, just as the other films had done, but instead they just rush through them and make them just as evil and basic as the corporate suits of the RDA.
Other major cast members and supporting cast members also do a great job with their performances for their respective characters, with some of them getting their own arcs that I thought were decent, but unfortunately some of them get caught up in a web of other plot lines and unnecessary characters that they get lost in the mess. On top of that there were a number of times this film hugely teases the deaths of major characters throughout the film that would have given multiple opportunities for bold character and story direction, but it never happens, resulting in those opportunities getting lost along with any kind of investing stakes. Additionally, the RDA has reverted back to being a big bad one dimensional corporate military group trying to harvest Pandora resources rather than a desperate military group trying to conquer Pandora in order to save humanity on a dying Earth like in the last film. Just when things were starting to go forward for them we are now going backwards.
This film has such a bloated and scattered narrative, full of so many plot lines going on at the same time, that it doesn’t know which one to focus on and is thinly held together. There are interesting plot lines, characters and new world building elements that are shown for one moment but then are never further explored when it suddenly switches to less interesting and unnecessary plot lines, characters, and recycled world building elements. This was clearly a case of too many cooks in the kitchen as evidenced by the fact that five writers were credited for writing this installment.
Additionally, there are very poorly depicted themes of grief and rage throughout the film involving the Sully family that made certain scenes between them feel like a melodramatic soap opera. It becomes so monotonous to the point that I started caring less and less about their family dynamics that I originally thought were so great in the last film. Barely anything feels new or refreshing in this third installment, especially with its endless repetition of events and third act beats that literally felt copied and pasted from the third acts of the first two films combined. It feels like this series is narratively running on fumes and I honestly don’t know how much more Cameron thinks he can do with this series for two more films if it’s just going to be repeating the same stuff over and over again. And also this film didn’t need to be three hours long because there was so much unnecessary stuff they could have cut down or gotten rid of entirely to make for a much smoother paced story.
There’s not much to say regarding the technical side of this film because as expected it’s pretty much visual perfection in every frame, including the incredible CGI effects, the smooth movements, the phenomenal cinematography ,and gorgeous set design of Pandora. The action sequences are large in scale and epic in execution though it’s hard to get completely invested in some of them when you have little to no investment for some of the characters involved or the storylines that led to them. There are sparks of satisfaction within some action sequences but there are also some action sequences that didn’t need to happen, such as the endless chase scenes this film seems to be obsessed with.
As for the music, we have Simon Franglen returning to compose the score and it’s fine but not as memorable as the music from the first two films.
I know some people reading this review may believe I’m being too harsh on this film and maybe they are right but I was honestly expecting so much better from James Cameron, a director who has made some of the best sequels of all time for some iconic franchises. I really wanted to like this film and while there were some things I enjoyed about it I was left majorly disappointed by the overall product and I don’t see myself wanting to continue the series going forward. In my personal opinion, I think James Cameron needs to move on from Avatar and work on something else that can give him a creative reset because at this point he needs it. I’m going to give Avatar: Fire and Ash a D+ = 69.
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