Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025)
Directed by: James Cameron
Premise: The third Avatar film. Immediately following the events of Avatar: The Way of Water, Jake Sully and Neytiri (Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña) mourn their dead son. Quaritch (Stephen Lang) allies with another Na’vi tribe known as the Ash People.
What Works: The Avatar films are primarily spectacles and as far as special effects and action set pieces are concerned, Fire and Ash is as good as anything we’ve seen in this franchise. It has many of the best iterations of what are now standard Avatar tropes such as the flying sequences and the climactic battle between the Na’vi and the humans. The middle part of Fire and Ash is its strongest portion. Jake and Neytiri lost their eldest son in the climax of The Way of Water and in Fire and Ash the family comes to terms with that loss. Zoe Saldaña’s performance impresses in her emotional depth and complexity. Especially interesting is the story of Spider (Jack Champion), a human teenager living among the Na’vi. He’s biologically an outsider but culturally more Na’vi than human and his story is part of a larger theme in Fire and Ash as divisions based on species break down and allegiances between groups become increasingly muddled. The best part of Fire and Ash is the introduction of Varang (Oona Chaplin), the leader of a violent and nihilistic Na’vi tribe. Varang is a fascinating character and her scenes are some of the best and most original, interesting, and provocative moments in the Avatar series.
What Doesn’t: Unfortunately, Varang is sidelined for much of the movie. She disappears from the narrative for long stretches and is ultimately an incidental character. Much like the second Avatar film, Fire and Ash is caught between doing things that are new and retreading the same scenarios. Once again, the human colonists exploit Pandora’s resources and Jake must rally the tribes for a showdown with the military. The final battle of Fire and Ash is essentially a remake of the climax in The Way of Water, although slightly bigger. Reworking familiar set pieces is not uncommon to franchise filmmaking; Star Wars, Rocky, Friday the 13th, and James Bond have done that repeatedly. But the repetition of Fire and Ash handicaps the storytelling. The ongoing conflict between the Na’vi and the humans is stuck in a cycle that is repeated in each Avatar film. Despite running over three hours and introducing new variables, Fire and Ash never really moves the story forward. The filmmakers refuse to do anything definitive. No important characters die and the terms of the conflict do not change. The final battle is an overlong flurry of familiar violence in which nothing is really won or lost.
Bottom Line: Avatar: Fire and Ash contains some of the best moments of this franchise and it may be the best version of the Avatar story. But the overall narrative stagnates and much of this film is redundant. A more interesting and original story is buried underneath the mandate to do more of the same.
Episode: #1080 (December 28, 2025)