if anyone out there is across film – and of course the Avatar franchise – then it’s James Cameron. No surprise that in his recent interviews – including that press conference we got to attend – he was telling us countless times that ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash‘ is being considered as a sequel to ‘Avatar: The Way of Water‘. He even said that the two films are meant to form a single entity, so much so that he had run-ins with the studio, which were keen on turning it into one big film instead of splitting it into two.
Watching ‘Fire and Ash’ suddenly gets you wondering – have the studio been right all along? Generally, it’s the suits wanting to cash in on a phenomenon and churn out films that barely scrape together a decent plot (i.e., The Hobbit trilogy – 300 pages of book turned into three bloated movies no one actually needed).
Here, though, it’s been the complete opposite. Disney has rolled over and given in to Cameron’s demands to stretch out the plot over two films and have the chance to tell it that way. And fair play to them, really. When you’ve made them a small fortune in the past, they tend to let you get on with it. But the thing is ‘Fire and Ash’ doesn’t bring enough new material to the table to make the experience feel as satisfying as ‘The Way of Water’. It feels more like a 2.5 rather than a third installment in the saga – a 2.5 that just happens to last 3 1/4 hours.
A bit of a rare event
It’s actually pretty impressive, though, to be honest – managing to keep you on the edge of your seat for 195 minutes when the script is pretty underwhelming. The visual and technical bits are absolutely stunning, and the 3D has improved even further – it’s worth going just to see that. No other film manages to use its tech quite so well as ‘Fire and Ash’, and while it does a great job of immersing you in the beauty of Pandora, you get the feeling at times like you’re plugged straight into a futuristic VR headset.
In these tough times for the cinema, with the latest news not looking too rosy, ‘Avatar’ still serves as a shining beacon of hope that reminds us that being in the cinema is still the best way to watch a film. But the franchise has always prided itself on being more than just a pretty face – its story of the climate emergency, colonialism and refugees bears a pretty striking resemblance to what’s going on in real life right now. And it’s that script where ‘Fire and Ash’ really stumbles.
Avatar’s problems with the third installment
The third Avatar installment – which sets out to dig deep into Jake Sully and Neytiri’s grief following the loss of their son Neytiram – gets pulled apart by a whole load of unresolved plot threads right from the get-go. At first, it’s all clear – you’ve got the real possibility of exploring the threat posed by a new clan that has abandoned their faith in Eywa, the deity of Pandora. But you know what – as the minutes go by, then hours, it all goes off the rails as more and more plot threads start tying in and by the end theyre losing sight of what’s really important.
Some of those plot threads just work, like getting back to Kiri and her powers from ‘The Way of Water’. But others, like Payakan getting kicked out of the tulkun clan, never should have been reopened in the first place and just feel like a warmed-up rehash – completely pointless and redundant by now. With all this going on, I reckon it’s about time to talk about Spider
The character played by Jack Champion in Spider is by far the one who has changed the most in ‘Fire and Ash’, right along with Kiri. He is the one, I reckon, who puts some meaning into keeping Miles Quaritch’s avatar in the story – and his adaptation to Pandora’s ecosystem might just very well define the rest of the Avatar saga. And yet – might this be asking a bit too much of a character who is not exactly one of the most popular ones among fans?
In life, you have to expect that people move on from the days of fighting for a place like Pandora, seen in the first Avatar, to now fighting to stop the loss of family. While Kiri and Spider are being drawn into an exciting pathway to full potential, the adoptive parents Jake and Neytiri are trudging along a twisty road of grief – ones that include detours like anger turning to her and resignation in him. “I thought I’d finally got myself outta this one, they just drag me back in now,” as that great line from Michael Corleone goes.
Its no secret that Jake and Neytiri themselves feel somewhat lost and disconnected from their own way of thinking and acting these days. We spot it too – even though they still have the epic moments – their importance to the plot has been waning for quite a while now. No longer is the focus on Jake and Neytiri – but it’s now the Sullys that are driving the story – and at times we find ourselves looking back on the simplicity of days gone by.
Now this is especially concerning – the direction Neytiri is taking. Zoe Saldaña is working hard to extract every last bit of potential out of a character who has lost a lot of the spark that made her great in the first place. It’s almost as if she had kept a bit of the Beyoncé from her Beverly Hills girl days around to watch over her daughter in ‘ Battle After Battle ‘. Sadly, the third season had the chance to refocus on her and to have some real confrontation with Varang’s paganism against her deep faith in Eywa – but that theological conflict is just very superficial.
Varang kicks off with a bang, but then just sort of loses steam. The Cinder Clan, led by her, hits the screen with the full force of Mad Max – all gritty, all intense – and their crazy desire to see the whole world go up in flames is just as captivating as the great movie bad guys used to be in the first half. But by the time the main bit is over, they’ve fizzled out and are just there to prop up Quaritch at this point. All that fire and fury turns out to be just a flash in the pan
Varang, sadly, is another example of what ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ could have been – had the ending not tamed down to be so blandly family-friendly and, to be honest, not really adding much that’s new to the table. It’s as if all the risk-taking that could have given the story some much-needed twists just got cut out at the last minute. If ‘Avatar’ wants to be seen as more than just a visually amazing franchise, then ‘Avatar 4’ better get it right next time. We’ll have to see what 2029 brings.
