You have to give it up to James Cameron. It’s rare that a filmmaker has the commitment to a singular narrative that Cameron has to Avatar. While movie theaters are struggling, Cameron is routinely packing houses with each chapter of this epic sci-fi saga, delivering the kind of dazzling visual and aural spectacle that makes each film a major event. Avatar: Fire and Ash is our third trek into Pandora, and while the stories are following a familiar pattern, it’s undeniable that Cameron is giving audiences the complete theatrical experience to keep them coming back for more.
Picking up shortly after the events of Avatar: The Way of Water, the story of Fire and Ash finds the Sully clan trying to settle in with the Metkayina clan. However, Colonel Miles Quarritch (Stephen Lang) isn’t ready to give up yet. He still wants vengeance against Jake (Sam Worthington), his fearsome wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), and the rest for, well, they killed his ass a couple of movies ago. But he’s still in pursuit of them, in the body of an Avatar recombinant, and has found new allies in the warlike Ash People, led by the psychotic Varang (Oona Chaplin).
Avatar was in desperate need of some fresh blood, and a healthy dose of chaos to disrupt the order of things. Varang is the answer, becoming a villain who is even more terrifying than Quarritch, who seems to be on the slow path to redemption. But not Varang, who has a god complex and is fascinated by raining down destruction on all of Pandora. The look of wide-eyed wonder she gets when handed her first human firearm is scary. When her tribe soon inherits an entire arsenal, it’s hard to imagine how anyone is going to survive the experience.
Cameron and his team of screenwriters are progressing this story at a gradual pace, perhaps because there are, at minimum, two chapters left with the possibility of more. The story of Fire and Ash follows the same beats as its predecessor. The Sully clan are chased one from tribe to the next, Quarritch and the human invaders plunder Pandora’s natural resources, killing its natural inhabitants to farm resources, and repeatedly unleash furious assaults against the Na’vi. You can predict each step of the way, and that is a problem Cameron is going to need to confront at some point. Each movie has a nearly identical finale. The ensuing war between the Na’vi and the humans looks spectacular, but the results are the same and only set up the next movie.
Some interesting character developments keep Avatar: Fire and Ash engaging. Cameron seems to be setting up a “passing of the torch” moment by having the film narrated by Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), who is carrying the guilt of his older brother’s death. He becomes the focal point of the story and feels like he is emerging as the Luke Skywalker-type character going forward. Similarly, his adopted sister Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) has deepened her connection to the planet, with all of the Force-like powers that come with it. Kiri has also grown closer to Spider (Jack Champion), Quarritch’s estranged son. Quarritch continues to grapple with his hatred for the Sullys and his conflicted feelings towards Spider, and I can see him becoming Han Solo-esque in the future. Avatar has always been derivative of other films, but Fire and Ash is the one that’s closest to a Star Wars movie.
Avatar: Fire and Ash continues to be hugely entertaining. When Cameron sets his mind to blockbuster filmmaking, there’s simply nobody better. In-between movies, you always get those thinkpieces written about how audiences don’t really care about Avatar and they have no cultural imprint, but the box office doesn’t lie. Audiences go to see these films three or four times, and that speaks to the experience that Cameron has created for them, one that they can’t get from anyone else. Even as I worry about the franchise becoming repetitive, Cameron has likely already foreseen it and will shock us with something new for Avatar 4.
Avatar: Fire and Ash opens in theaters and IMAX on December 19th.
