Film review: ‘AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH’ by Nick Gardener from ‘Built For Speed’

The Avatar film franchise, which depicts the battle between the giant blue indigenous Na’vi people of the planet Pandora and us greedy humans, holds the number one and three positions on the list of highest grossing films of all time.  This is a remarkable feat that seems due to a combination of a novel science fiction concept (in this case the transfer of a human consciousness to a synthetic host body or avatar), CGI animation wizardry, the crowd-pleasing reputation of director James Cameron, solid action and at least some examination of indigenous and environmental causes and the destructive impacts of colonialism.  Still, the fact they’re cleverly constructed action films with a semblance of progressive thinking doesn’t account for their vast success.  There’s something about the accumulating snowball of hype, marketing and pop cultural event FOMO that has likely contributed to these films becoming such box office behemoths.  No doubt, the third film in the series, Avatar: Fire and Ash will have studio accountants grinning from ear to ear but while this movie is an impressive technical achievement it’s only slightly distinguishable from the last one, Avatar: the Way of Water.

In Fire and Ash, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) a former marine whose consciousness has been permanently implanted in his Na’vi avatar, is once again in the crosshairs of nefarious nutjob Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) who has himself been resurrected as Na’vi Avatar.  The tenacious Sully and his family, wife Neytin (Zoe Saldana), daughter Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), son Lo’ak (Brian Dalton) and daughter Tuk (Trinity Bliss) have constantly thwarted Quaritch and the humans’ attempts to colonise Pandora and exploit its natural resources.  Quaritch also has a more personal motivation to destroy Sully as Quaritch’s son ‘Spider’ (Jack Champion) has been adopted into Sully’s family.  As a massive human war machine descends on Pandora and Quaritch, aided by the planet’s fierce tribe known as the Ash people hunt the Sully family, it’s up to Jake to rally the planet’s other tribes and wildlife to mount an enormous counterattack.

The Avatar films may touch on racial, environmental and colonialist themes but they’re mostly about spectacle. Consequently, this movie, like the others, is built around a series of Wagnerian special effects action sequences that include vigorous jungle warfare, undersea battles and vertiginous aerial dogfights as the Na’vi ride winged creatures much like the Nazgûl in Lord of the Rings.  All of this is realised through a combination of motion capture technology, vivid CGI and 3D.  The technical skill required to animate this intricately conceived world should not be casually dismissed and at times the CGI is remarkable, particularly the elaborate underwater sequences.   These films, though, aren’t always visual masterpieces and at times are simply unappealing as they tend to resemble garish screen savers with oversaturated, almost fluorescent, colours and (although better this time) jerky floaty character movements.

Additionally, this instalment, even more than the previous two, is filmed using the hyper speed frame rate which gives it a weird gleaming clarity. This technique looked horrible in the first Hobbit film and the Will Smith turkey Gemini Man but suits the largely animated world of Avatar a little better.  Still, at times, this filming method gives the movie that bizarre, ugly ‘have I just gobbled magic mushrooms?’ look about it.

The script is also an issue here.  Like most of our intestines will be on Christmas Day, it’s painfully overstuffed.  In addition to multiple action set pieces, it crams in various family conflicts, personal dramas and attempts at constructing an elaborate Na’vi folklore and religion.  Rather than being organically and smoothly integrated into the narrative, all these elements feel conspicuously shoved into the story.   Because there is such a frenzy of activity in this film, the action scenes tend to switch rapidly from being impressively inventive, detailed and energic to chaotic, cluttered and downright confusing.

Thematically, there’s a lot of emphasis on father son relationships here with Jake constantly trying to protect rambunctious teenage son Lo’ak following the death of his other son Netayam (Jamie Flatters) at the end of the last film.  There’s also something resembling a custody battle between Jake and Quaritch for fatherhood rights over Spider.   Typically, for a Cameron film, this familial conflict serves to set up plot points and action scenes rather than imbue the characters or the story with any emotional weight.  Disappointingly, the film’s most intriguing philosophical issue, the idea of transferring consciousness from human to avatar and what it says about the nature of self, which was vaguely addressed in the first film, is essentially forgotten here.

As in the previous film The Way of Water, Fire And Ash sees Camerson revisit his greatest hits with the complex war machines, industrial technology and military fetishism of Aliens, luminescent sea creatures like those from The Abyss, a death that evokes Terminator and even people winding up in the water together after a destructive tragedy ala Titanic.  Perhaps it says something about the vastness of Cameron’s impact on movies that he can be derivative of himself.

The Avatar films have never been great character pieces and three movies in, despite the actors’ impassioned delivery, the characters are still not especially memorable.  Jack Champion’s dreadlocked, ‘Spider’ is meant to be a sympathetic figure and (through events that I won’t spoil) the Harry Potter, Frodo Baggins-style innocent, diminutive person reluctantly carrying the burden of humanity’s (or in this case the Na’vi’s) fate but he’s often irritating and about as likeable as an actual spider. Sam Worthington does a reasonable job of giving Sully both compassion and toughness but he’s hardly a charismatic lead. Stephen Lang’s Colonel Quaritch is more impressive, with a maniacal determination, political cunning, a touch of humour and flashes of humanity.  The female characters are probably the most engaging, though, with Zoe Saldana giving the grief-stricken Neytiri a fierce intensity and Sigourney Weaver making the gentle and spiritual Kiri the most likeable character in the film.  Oona Chaplin (granddaughter of Charlie Chaplin) is also a welcome inclusion as Varang the Ash people’s mysterious, hissing, snarling, witchy leader who forms a weird alliance with Quaritch; their union is the most interesting relationship in the film.

With a biblical length of 197 minutes, Avatar: Fire and Ash is a challenge to bladders, bottoms and concentration but this overcooked psychedelic action fantasy produces enough striking visuals and kinetic action to appease series devotees and please most newcomers.

Nick’s rating: ***

Genre: Drama/ Action/ Adventure/ Animation/Science Fiction.

Classification: M.

Director(s): James Cameron.

Release date: 18th Dec 2025.

Running time: 197 mins.

Reviewer: Nick Gardener can be heard on “Built For Speed” every Friday night from 8-10pm on 88.3 Southern FM.

 

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