Avatar: Fire and Ash

4 outta 5

With the third Avatar movie, director James Cameron once again delivers a spectacular visual journey into the world of humans and Na’vi. The films have gotten a little less awe inspiring as they’ve gone on and the simplicity of the first film’s story makes it the best. There’s a lot more characters and plotlines in these sequels, some of which don’t feel very resolved. A new villain enters this movie dynamically and then the film kinda forgets about them by the end. And the film seems to care more about the space whales than necessary. The emotional payoffs that will work only as much as the viewer enjoys the Sullys family dynamic. But it does look fabulous and there’s a bunch of cool action, sci-fi and fun moments sprinkled throughout. They’re big, blue and cause quite a lot of chaos.

On the moon Pandora in the future, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a human who was transferred into the body of a Na’Vi warrior, is protecting his family after the death of one of their sons. His wife, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), is angry and in mourning, while Jake is basically blaming his son, Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) for the other boy’s death. Their adopted daughter, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) is adrift with her inability to connect to the planet, while the human Spider (Jack Champion) who lives with the family is endangered by being unable to breathe the environment of the planet. They are being chased by the human RDF military force, and Jake’s biggest foe is Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), a Na’vi clone of the military commander Jake fought years ago. Quaritch teams up with Varang (Oona Chaplain), an Ash tribe Na’vi that worship fire. She is supplied with firearms and military weaponry by Quaritch which makes her tribe even deadlier. When a miracle occurs and Spider can breathe the air of Pandora, he becomes a high priority to be seized and studied by the RDF. Now Jake must protect the kid from their enemies because if he falls into the RDF hands, they could make the humans breathe the atmosphere of Pandora, which could be the end of all the Na’vi.

Chaplain’s Varang arrives in the film with fiery savage fury as her Ash tribe raids and destroys the other Na’vi, and she gets cool evil monologues. When Quaritch gives Varang access to flame throwing weaponry, she looks ecstatic. This leads to a twisted relationship between the two. Unfortunately, she kinda disappears by the end. And Quaritch’s antagonistic relationship with Jake goes through a lot of different permutations as Jake tells Quaritch he doesn’t have to be a copy of the dead human commander. Lang is great, but in the end Quaritch’s final decisions don’t make a lot of sense.

The final scene of the movie features a heavenly reunion of deceased characters greeting the young heroes which is reminiscent of the final scene of Titanic when Rose had a heavenly meet up with Jack Dawson and company. Cameron has spent a lot of time on Avatar, and it seems like Cameron will never return to his R-rated action movies from the ‘80s and ‘90s, which may be because of the increasing budgets of Cameron’s films. Apparently, these Avatar movies need to clear more than a billion to be profitable which is doable as the first two Avatar movies made over 2 billion each.

There are still hints of classic James Cameron flourishes here. As these are just space aliens fighting other space aliens, then the violence can be a bit rougher, like a moment when the Fire Na’vi are cutting off the connecting head-tails of the other Na’vi, instantly killing them. As it was shown in the first film, when the two Na’vi are intimate they connect the head tail things, and here Varang subdues Quaritch by connecting her head tail to his so as he looks incredibly pained which is like she is kicking him in the balls repeatedly. Another moment when Jake and his tribe aim at Quaritch and Varang, Jake says that on his signal, “You and your girlfriend die. For you particularly, a lot!” It’s a snarky bit of action writing that was in a lot of Cameron’s earlier films. There’s also a fantastic single F-bomb dropped when a character is fed up with the humans destroying the Na’vi culture.

Spider in the film is basically a plot point as he is kidnapped and then threatened by all parties. At one point it seems like Jake is going to sacrifice Spider for the greater good of the Na’vi. After Spider was cut by Neytiri in the 2^nd film and almost murdered by Jake, he needs to stop hanging out with the Sully family because he’s starting to look gullible. Neytiri spends most of the film in a funk which isn’t exactly the most compelling watching. And there is a lot about the giant whale Tulkun species and their relationship with an exile that committed violence. Basically, there’s a bunch of waiting for the space whales to arrive and fight, kind of like the Ent trees in Lord of the Rings but not as cool or funny. When Avatar: Fire and Ash starts character and subplot juggling it can be a bit of a chore, but when it goes for pure visual spectacle, it is quite a treat.