The year was 2009. Avatar fever swept the globe. James Cameron threatened to redefine Hollywood with his proprietary technologies that could generate awe-inspiring cinematic realms. A new dawn, perhaps?
I was in college … well over a decade ago. When my joints didn't ache, Obama kept the White House classy, and I could look at Korean food without getting heartburn. The future was bright, and yet here we are in 2025, where Avatar: Fire and Ash resembles a whimpering fad. Cameron's oft-delayed franchise is nothing more than astounding visuals masking corny, underwritten FernGully fanfic, and Fire and Ash is the biggest offender. With Avatar's pop-culture moment passing by, Fire and Ash needed to be a home run—but even by Avatar standards, Cameron takes his eye off the ball.
The "Fire and Ash" portion isn't as splashy an evolution after The Way of Water. Shifting from Pandora's bioluminescent jungles to the Metkayina's reef dwellings brought about revelations, with Cameron developing performance-capture techniques that could withstand underwater conditions. In Fire and Ash, the volcano-dwelling Mangkwan clan doesn't inject new lifeblood. In fact, Cameron repeats himself by recycling much of the captivation of The Way of Water. He goes back to the well and resurrects an eerily copy-and-paste third act, especially all that waterlogged vehicular warfare.
The Way of Water, for its issues, exploded Pandora's borders. Fire and Ash settles into replication, failing to convey the "epicness" of this third return to Pandora's pixelated utopia.
Screenwriting lovebirds Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver collaborate with Cameron again after The Way of Water, steering the narrative as Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his family acclimate to Metkayina. The biggest problem is Spider (Jack Champion), who cannot breathe in Pandora's atmosphere. Jake struggles with what's best not only for Spider's health, but also for the Metkayina's safety, since the Na'vi reincarnation of Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) is still hunting for his son—and Jake, the blue-skinned traitor. The RDA is still a very real threat to Pandora's natives, even before Quaritch allies with Varang (Oona Chaplin), the ruthless leader of an antagonistic Mangkwan tribe who follow the RDA into battle in exchange for weapons and protection.
Returning to Pandora this time around doesn't bring back memories—it highlights what's forgotten. When the likes of Giovanni Ribisi, Joel David Moore, and Jemaine Clement pop back up in bit parts, there's no nostalgic comfort, just the minor jump scare of these characters existing. Cameron is so focused on producing game-changing motion-capture technology, his storytelling takes a back seat. That hits tenfold in Fire and Ash, where Metkayina council meetings, RDA attack scenes, and scenic sky-gliding blur into highlights of past films. The wafer-thin concepts of plotting are less excusable this time, disconnected from Eywa's graces.
It's just so … banal? Cameron's playing with familial themes of abandonment and acceptance while also taking stances against ecological destruction, but his messages are piddly and weak. In a world where death means "nothing," since Eywa's spirit realm is accessible, you lose dramatic stakes whenever a prominent character falls in battle.
There's an eye-roll quality to countless conversations in Fire and Ash that lack bite, made even more frustrating by the over three-hour purgatorial runtime. These movies are supposed to be gamechangers, yet Fire and Ash exposes how little substance there is to offer beyond visual appreciation. Moments might stand out, like Sigourney Weaver's take on a 14-year-old Kiri's determination when trying to connect with an unlistening Eywa. Still, overall, Cameron's epiphanies and prophecies are diluted by the script's paint-by-numbers approach to conflict. Cameron's patenting behind-the-scenes inventions, but leaves his actors to muster enthusiasm for dialogue that'll have you cringing and cackling into oblivion.
Miraculously, Lang and Chaplin strike a magical connection as a cartoony villain couple. They are, bar none, the marquee attraction of Fire and Ash. Chaplin scowls and hisses with menace as Varang, embodying the barbarism of a dominant warrioress, but she's best when lusting for Lang's Quaritch. It's crucial to Cameron that we know these Na'vi fuuuuck, as Lang's sly smirks and boyfriend charms bring this hilarious power-couple menace into the fold. There's a gooey layer of cheese atop Lang and Chaplin's sexually charged chemistry, which represents a rare instance of Fire and Ash accepting its science fiction lunacy.
Otherwise, Cameron doesn't want to engage with Avatar's big-brained scientific reasoning. Everything exists "because," and we're supposed to accept that. Multiplate times in Fire and Ash, a specialist goes to launch into an intricately detailed explanation for why something happens, only to be cut off immediately by someone else saying, "We don't care about that!" Like, Eywa can't be your blanket answer for plot advancement. Fire and Ash is this high-concept, low-effort take on sci-fi that's both incomplete and unfufilling, once you realize there's a skeletal blueprint behind all the dazzling animation. Jake, Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), and the entire clan have immense soul-searching to undergo, yet so little of it moves the needle.
Unsurprisingly, Fire and Ash looks superb. That was never in question. The flora, creatures, and tribes’ traits continue to foster a universe where people can lose themselves. Payakan and the Tulkuns exemplify everything Cameron's technology stands for: these immaculately designed beasts that look more alive than National Geographic footage. All the actor motion capture, the glow-in-the-dark foliage, it's as mesmerizing as before. Sometimes, more frantic action sequences can feel like a video game cutscene, or when the camera POV switches to first-person, but yeah, Cameron and Wētā FX are trailblazers. That doesn't change here, nor were the rendered SFX ever in question.
What makes Fire and Ash the weakest Avatar yet is its glaring beauty pageant approach. It's not that performers cannot convey emotions through motion-capture techniques, but rather that the stories around them do not enable grand moments of resilience or tragedy. Cameron doesn't distance Fire and Ash from The Way of Water enough, causing parts of the finale to spark déjà vu. In a feature this long, you need pure innovation and limitless exploration to justify the attention required. That's not the case with Fire and Ash, which deflates in a way that questions if there's an actual appetite for two more entires, should they reflect the same issues.
2.5/5