‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ review: It’s ‘The Way of Water’ take 2
3/5 whale courts
As someone who respects the craft of the Avatar films, it has always baffled me how people treat them as God’s gift to cinema. Like throwing Avatar: Fire and Ash on Best Picture predictions months before the film was shown to anyone. And I am still baffled by it after seeing it.
Fire and Ash is the third installment in James Cameron’s Avatar franchise and it feels more like a redo of the second film, which was an upgrade from the original Avatar movie. In saying that Avatar: Fire and Ash doesn’t give us that many new things to explore in this world. It just feels like telling the same story but with Oona Chaplin as Varang, one of the Na’vi from the “Fire” tribe.
Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his family are grieving the loss of their son and still living with the water tribe when Quaritch (Stephen Lang) comes back for his son Spider (Jack Champion). So the plot of the third film becomes getting Spider back to where they started so that Jake and his family can go live with Bailey Bass, Kate Winslet and the whales. Oh by the way, there is a lot of Payakan and the Tulkun in this one. So much so there’s a whole court scene about Payakan.
But it all leads to a finale that feels exactly like the second film’s. And not even in a “mirroring” kind of way. In a “oh this is the same” kind of way.
It’s the same old story with just a few new additions
Part of the issue with Fire and Ash is that it only introduces a few important plot points throughout its bloated runtime. So it is far from worth it to have an entire 3+ hour movie that is more of the same. And unfortunately the allure Pandora is no longer as breathtaking as it once was. Back when Avatar was released in 2009, we’d never seen something as beautiful. Since, we’ve seen worlds built and destroyed just as beautiful as Pandora and with more substance than these films.
Fire and Ash is the Na’vi once again fighting against the sky people but also joining with them to fight other Na’vi who believe their ways are better. All with Quaritch and Jake’s feud mixed in. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing to know what you’re getting into with a franchise. But when the new movie doesn’t really tell you anything new, it is a bit jarring.
Yes, there are some developments that will make the future of this franchise interesting. The issue is that unless Cameron and company figures out a way to make these movies less of the same story, we’re just going to be rinse, wash, repeating the same arcs time and time again.
I love returning to the story of blue daddy Jake Sully and his kids who cannot stop saying “bro” but even watching Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) be a badass isn’t enough to make up for probably 3 hours of the same story we’ve seen before.
If you go into the Avatar movies only for the beauty of Pandora and not the substance of the story, then you’ll be fine. But it feels like just another “look at this CGI I did” film and not like anything that expands the world of Avatar.
(featured image: 20th Century Studios)
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