By Mark Jackson
Contributing Writer
R | 3h 17m | Fantasy, Action | 2025
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
After watching 3 hours and 17 minutes of the latest “Avatar” installment, I’m here to tell you that $400 million worth of bang-for-your-buck are duly delivered. While “Avatar: Fire and Ash” hasn’t been as widely acclaimed as the previous two “Avatars,” it’s very much of a piece with them, filmed back-to-back, as it was, with “Avatar: The Way of Water” (2022).
Back on Pandora
“Fire and Ash” continues the story of ex-Marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) who’s joined forces with the 10-foot tall, blue, tiger-skinned Na’vi tribe outcasts, who live on Pandora, a moon located in the Alpha Centauri star system, about 4.37 light-years from Earth. Together, they continue to oppose the Sawtute, or “Sky people” — the invasive, resources-plundering human colonists from planet Earth.
The Sawtute are effectively headed up by the dead-but-tech-regenerated-into-a-Na’vi-avatar Marine Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), head of Security Operations (SecOps) for the Resources Development Administration (RDA) on Pandora.
Quaritch and Sully are biological and stepfathers, respectively, to Spider (Jack Champion), a human boy who has become part of the Na’vi tribe but requires a mask to breathe the toxic Pandora atmosphere. Both seek to protect and educate the boy against each other.
Blue, Green, Now Red-and-White
The original Na’vi are blue-hued, the second movie introduced their turquoise-skinned, reef-dwelling, aquatic cousins, the Metkayina, the matriarch of which is voiced by Kate Winslet.
From the name “Fire and Ash” you can guess there will now be a new, red-for-fire, white-for-ash Na’vi variant — the volcano-dwelling Mangkwan clan. They’re led by another matriarch, Varang, a most excellent villainess (voiced and performed via advance motion capture by Oona Chaplin, Charlie Chaplin’s granddaughter). Although tall and skinny like all her ilk, Varang is a curvier, hip-slinging, charismatic, fearsome-but-seductive, witchy adversary.
Sully, who stashed leftover weapons from the last skirmish with the RDA colonists who killed his eldest son, challenges the Na’vi’s spiritual pacifism. They need to take a stand against the ongoing capitalist greed and environmental pillaging of the despicable “pinkskins.” It would appear that director Cameron is doing his part in promulgating the liberal, white-is-evil race narrative.
Soon, Sully’s eldest, adopted daughter Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), who contact Pandora’s goddess, Eywa, facilitates a genetic-level transformation that allows Spider to breathe Pandora’s air without a mask. It sets up a familiar “Chosen One” narrative. Why can she do that? Kiri was born from a brain-dead avatar body in a miraculous, unexplained event. It was effectively a virgin birth by Eywa, who planted a “seed” in the avatar who has no biological father.
Yes! In all the “Avatars,” one must squint a bit and say, “La-la-la-la-la!” when the pseudoscience gets intense enough that it threatens to break your suspension of disbelief.
Who will earn the right to call Spider son? Will Jake’s youngest son Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) come into his own and gain his father’s respect? Will the whale-like Tulkun finally get fed up being hunted down by the pinkskins’ lethal, high-tech Japanese-like whaling outfit, and bring massive, thunderous retribution? If they do, you know you’ll be wanting to see that. See “Fire and Ash” in IMAX and 3D if possible, because that’s where the Avatar magic really lives. “Avatar: Fire and Ash” was 3 and 1/2 hours that just flew by.
What’s Next?
While the novelty of Cameron’s Pandora and Avatar world-building is slowly wearing off, as all sequels eventually must, he’s got two more “Avatars” in the pipeline. And why not? It doesn’t really matter if there are no more earthshaking reveals — the “Avatar” films are abidingly gorgeous and engaging. That said, the latest reveal about how Pandora-based flora and fauna can be harnessed as a force for attack and defense feels fresh.
Will the continuation of the series tie Cameron to one property for pretty much the rest of his life? Possibly, but he may die doing what he loves, and an artist who loves his art — just keep him doing what he’s doing. If the next two “Avatars” don’t get made, it’ll be more to do with their astronomical costs, rather than a diminished public appetite for the drama happening out there on Pandora.
“Fire and Ash” might be the conclusion of a particular narrative, but one doesn’t get the sense we’re done with the “Avatar” franchise. While it would be nice to have new and original intellectual property coming from the director of “Aliens,” “The Terminator,” and “Titanic,” we feel similarly about the “Avatar” films as we did about Peter Jackson’s “Lord Of The Rings” trilogy — keep ‘em comin’.
