When Avatar: The Way of Water was released in 2022, it had been 13 years since a new Avatar movie, so the return to Pandora was a reminder about how immersive and captivating this world could be, and another reminder that writer/director James Cameron can deliver blockbusters of scale like few others. Now it’s been three years in between Avatar movies and the novelty is definitely missing. Fire and Ash feels in many ways like Avatar 2.5, a direct holdover of characters and plots languishing from the second film. Some of this continuity is a given considering it’s an ongoing series, but each movie should feel like it’s own complete story. Too many of the characters feel stuck in the same place we left them by the end of the second movie, which means it’s another sequel where Zoe Saldana’s Neytiri spends most of those three hours bereft and crying before getting into fighting mode in that last climactic hour. There’s a general sense of same-ness to this story, extending conflicts and character arcs from the second but forgetting to give them more to do. The Na’Vi teens feel disconnected from the larger storyline, off assembling aquatic allies. Primarily, Fire and Ash is the story of Spider (Jack Champion), the son of dead Quaritch (Stephen Lang), raised by stepdad Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), and pursued by the Na’vi clone of his biological father (also Lang). He undergoes a physical transformation that makes him the object of desire for the greedy humans exploiting the natural resources of Pandora. I just didn’t care about Sully child #5 (a.k.a. Spider) when he felt like a tag-along to the group anyhow. To base the majority of the emotional arc of the movie around him is a bold and unfortunately unsuccessful gambit. There’s also a flamboyant and unstable Na’vi antagonist played with magnetic allure by Oona Chaplin (Game of Thrones, Taboo). The character isn’t particularly interesting but the brash commitment of Chaplin and her high energy, especially in a movie where so many other characters are morose and dull, makes you draw a little closer every time she’s onscreen. Bringing the same villain back for a third movie in a row, while failing to explore the more existentially compelling questions of identity of a clone, is just boring. The visual spectacle of the world, the special effects, the different elements all mixing together into a stunning photo-realistic tapestry is still world-class and state-of-the-art. The plots of the Avatar movies have never been as groundbreaking as their special effects but they were serviceable, reliable, and sincere, and they followed plot formulas that worked. This time Fire and Ash feels too much like the cobbled together leftovers of the second movie, and with the longest running time of the series yet, the whole experience feels bloated and overburdened with tying up storylines and threads that felt mostly completed with Way of Water. This movie probably could have been condensed down into 45 minutes of additional footage for the second movie. Sorry, James, but this one was more listless than transporting.

Nate’s Grade: C+