When James Cameron became “king of the world” with his astronomical success making the movie Titanic (1997), many wondered what he would do for a follow-up.  Well, he did have an idea about what he wanted to do next, but we wouldn’t know what that would be for another 12 years.  Even before Titanic, Cameron had a seed of an idea for a movie set on an alien world very much like Earth, but with it’s natural beauty still unmarked by mankind.  It would be a world populated by creatures unlike anything we had ever seen on the big screen before, with a blue skinned tribal race known as the Na’vi being the most advanced civilization on this alien world.  With Titanic providing him with the capital to get anything he wanted to make in Hollywood greenlit, he decided that this would be his next project.  The only thing was, visual effects had not advanced to the level needed for what he envisioned.  He didn’t want his Na’vi characters to be simple computer animated creatures; he wanted them to have the full expressive range that a real physical actor could bring.  Motion capture technology made it possible for Cameron to bring his vision to reality, and he went to the digital artist who made that leap forward in visual effects possible to bring them on board to realize that vision.  The folks at Weta Digital, the Oscar winning team behind The Lord of the Rings, were now tasked with helping to push motion capture to the next level.  Cameron, as we have seen, is a patient man and he will not execute his vision unless he knows he has the tools necessary to make it happen.  It would be a process that would go on for a decade, but eventually James Cameron got to the point where he was satisfied with the results.  He was now able to get his actors’ performances to shine through with these digitally rendered puppets, and he had the confidence to finally get his vision on the big screen.  The movie, Avatar (2009) as it would be called, hit theaters in the same holiday time window that Titanic opened in, and while it started off with modest box office, it remarkably kept bringing in people week after week until Cameron managed to top his own record and have the highest grossing film of all time, 12 years after he did the same feat with Titanic.

Of course, after you’ve managed to take the box office crown twice in your lifetime, people are going to wonder if you could do it again.  James Cameron did have plans, but they would still remain in the Avatar world that he created.  In fact, he had ideas for as many as four more Avatar films.  People expected that he would quickly try to get another Avatar film out soon after the first, but it wouldn’t be that simple.  Ever the perfectionist, Cameron was not ready to dive back into the world of Avatar until he felt he was confident that he could pull it off.  With the first film, the challenge was in perfecting the look of the Na’vi characters.  For his next film, Cameron wanted to explore a different environmental setting within that same world of the first movie; one set around a lot of water.  Creating water in a digital environment had been tricky.  The way water physics work has been difficult to simulate with computer animation.  In most films up to that point, water effects often looked either plastic-y or were only possible with live action mattes.  For someone like James Cameron, who has spent a good portion of his adult life in and around water, both as the director of Titanic and as a deep sea explorer, he had a particular high standard for how water should look, and digital effects needed some extra time to advance to get to the point where it met his high standard.  But, the team at Weta Digital managed to finally crack that nut after another decade of work, and Cameron was finally able to get rolling on his next Avatar film, with a release date now a whole 13 years after the last one.  Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) had a lot to prove.  It had been so long since the last Avatar.  Would audiences still care?  It turns out they did.  The Way of Water performed at the box office nearly identical to how the original did, and while it didn’t achieve the same height at the box office, it came pretty close.  But, audiences wouldn’t have to suffer through another decade long wait for another Avatar.  Cameron planned to shoot two of these Avatar sequels back to back, utilizing the same crew and cast, and developing the visual effects in tandem.  So, only three years after the last one, we now have Avatar: Fire and Ash coming to theaters.  The only question is, can James Cameron do it again?

Avatar: Fire and Ash picks up right after the events of Way of Water.  Jake Sulley (Sam Worthington) and his family are still reeling from the loss of their eldest son Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) in their last battle with the human beings they call the Sky People.  Jake’s wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) is particularly taking the loss very harshly, and has isolated herself from the others.  But their time of peace proves to be shortlived.  The human boy who lives with the Sulley family named Spider (Jack Champion) is running low on batteries for his oxygen mask, the thing that helps him to breathe because of the toxicity of the Pandoran atmosphere to human beings.  The Sulleys decide that it is safer for Spider to return to the research base where he was born, because they’ll have the supplies he needs to survive.  They say goodbye for now to the Metkayina clan that has protected them, including their Chief Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and his wife Ronal (Kate Winslet), and set out on their journey.  Unfortunately on their way, they are ambushed by a clan of volcano-dwelling Na’vi known as the Mangkwan, who are led by their blood-thirsty queen Varang (Oona Chaplin).  The skirmish ends up splitting the family up.  Neytiri becomes wounded but escapes.  Jake Sulley ends up getting captured by an old adversary, Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) who keeps defying death and remains determined to destroy Jake and his family.  The children of the family try to remain hidden in the forests of Pandora, led by the now oldest son Lo’ak (Britain Dalton).  Unfortunately for them, Spider’s mask starts to malfunction, nearly out of juice.  The adopted Sully daughter Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) uses her connection with the spirits of the natural world to try something to save Spider.  Miraculously, she manages to save him, and he can breathe the Pandoran air without a mask.  This causes profound curiosity amongst both Na’vi and human alike.  What does it mean for Pandora and the Na’vi now that there is a way for the humans to freely breathe their air, and why was Spider saved by the goddess Eywa in this way and for what purpose?

There’s one thing going into any of the Avatar films that we all seem to understand, and that is that these movies are far more about spectacle than substance.  James Cameron is unequalled when it comes to crafting spectacle.  It is quite remarkable that even 3 movies into this series, he’s still able to create a sense of awe and wonder for his audience.  There is indeed a lot to admire with Avatar: Fire and Ash.  I for one still love the fact that Cameron allows for the movies to take their time, allowing us the chance to be immersed in this world.  The dedication to world building is incredible, and that is likely what Cameron loves most of all about making these movies.  He wants to make us all believe that Pandora is a living breathing world with sights and sounds unlike anything seen on the big screen before.  But, the Avatar movies also have the same weaknesses that most of Cameron’s other films have and that’s the story and writing itself.  Cameron, ever the perfectionist, is committed to putting his voice throughout all his movies, and that includes writing the screenplay.  While Cameron remains strong in plotting his movies (very few of his films ever feel like they drag) he unfortunately still proves to be very amateurish when it comes to dialogue, and Fire and Ash is no exception.  James Cameron is corny and prone to cliché, and his characters often feel more like archetypes than actual people.  While he can from time to time come up with a clever line, most of his films still show their weakness in the dialogue.  This was true even with his Oscar-winning Titanic.  While Fire and Ash continues Cameron’s trend of sophomoric level dialogue (just count how many times they say ‘bro’ in the movie), the movie thankfully still attains the director’s high level of visual storytelling.  The movie does soar when it’s using the mood and setting to tell part of the story.  There are some especially interesting uses of eclipses in this film, which provides some very striking visuals.

There’s one other issue that plagues this movie as well.  When Avatar came out 16 years ago, it stood out because it was unlike anything we had seen before.  The Way of Water managed to overcome the sophomore slump because it came out so long after the first one that it made us the audience feel like we were rediscovering the world of Pandora again because of that long absence.  Fire and Ash doesn’t have that benefit of re-discovery, because it’s getting released after a relatively short 3 year gap.  One thing that Cameron could have done with this movie to help make it feel new and fresh was to allow us to see a whole other biome of Pandora and spend most of the film there, making it distinct from the visuals of the other movies.  For a while, it looked like that’s what Cameron was about to do, given how prominently the character of Varang and her tribe or Ash Na’vi featured in the marketing of this movie.  But, alas, we only spend a brief time with her clan in their home environment, on the slopes of an active volcano.  It would’ve been very exciting to have used this ash covered wasteland as a key battleground within the story, but sadly that’s not what we get.  Instead, this story chooses to re-tread most of the same locations we saw before in the series; the forests and the oceans of Pandora.  It all makes Fire and Ash feel less like it’s own movie and more like The Way of Water Part II.  It’s also sad that even with a 3 hour and 17 minute run time (the longest so far in the series) the story still doesn’t feel like it advances that much more than Way of Water did.  At least Cameron keeps things active, so it’s not a dull three hours.  But, this is the first film in this series where I feel like the novelty is clearly wearing thin.  If James Cameron says there are still 2 more films to go in this series, he needs to shake things up big time from here out because otherwise audiences are going to stop caring.

At this point, it’s the visuals that are carrying the series more than anything else.  I feel like I got the most out of the experience based on my choice of presentation.  In a select few IMAX theaters nationwide, not only are audiences able to see the film projected in 3D, but also at a high frame rate.  The high frame rate craze never really took off in the 2010’s, with it quickly fizzling out after the mixed reactions from the Hobbit trilogy’s usage of the format. 3D as well has been in a steady decline over the years.  But, James Cameron is still choosing to present his Avatar movies with these gimmicks still a part of the experience, and strangely enough it actually kind of works.  The high frame rate does take some getting used to, but over time it actually looks quite good.  I think it has to do with the fact that the majority of the movie features digital animation (whether it’s the environment or the actor’s motion capture performances) which looks better in a higher frame rate than live action.  And without a doubt, the Avatar movies feature the best uses of 3D photography ever put on screen.  It helps that Cameron made these movies with high frame rate 3D in mind, and crafted his movies to better integrate the gimmicks into the experience.  One of the best uses of the formats is a scene when Quaritch meet with Varang, and she gives him a powerful hallucinagenic drug to allow her to read his mind.  Cameron allows us to see from Quaritch’s POV in this scene, so we get the full hallucinagenic experience, which looks wild in 3D and with the smoothness of the high frame rate.  While we aren’t seeing the giant leap forwards in visual effects that the first two films represented, the Weta Digital team still delivers some incredible visual treats throughout the film, and it’s good to see this legendary visual effects studio continue to push the limits thanks to the challenge of keeping up with James Cameron’s vision.  Even if you are unable to see this movie in the ideal High Frame Rate IMAX 3D experience, you’ll see be amazed by the imaginative things that Cameron and company came up with for this third chapter.

The movie does also benefit from a committed cast of actors who over time have gotten better working with the motion capture technology over these last 16 years.  Zoe Saldana still remains the MVP of the series.  While Neytiri takes a bit of a back seat in the plot of this movie, Zoe nevertheless still shines in every moment she appears on screen.  Sam Worthington also seems to improve his portrayal of Jake Sully with every new film.  Starting off as pretty wooden in the first film, he has managed to become more forceful with his portrayal in the these last two.  He’s also becoming more flawless with that American accent, to the point where you can’t even hear any trace of his natural Australian accent anymore.  But, much like with many other space fantasy films, it’s the villains that become the favorites.  Stephen Lang returns again as the primary antagonist Colonel Quaritch, and he still is a blast to watch with his scenery chewing performance.  But, the best thing about his role here is that they paired him with another equally fascinating villain to work off of.  Oona Chaplin is easily the best new member of this cast, delivering a delightfully deranged and venomous performance as Varang.  She is a very compelling villainess, and she brings an incredible, sinister presence into the movie.  I also love the unique design of her outfit too, with the mix of blacks and reds making her feel all the more twisted.  The best part is also how well she works off of Stephen Lang’s performance as the Colonel, making their scenes together all the more electrifying.  The downside of the cast in this movie is that Cameron perhaps has too many characters taking up space in the plot, to the point where some even get neglected despite there being 3 hours to tell the story.  The Sully’s youngest child Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss) for instance is barely a presence at all throughout this story.  And some performances seem to suffer from that lack of focus.  I still find Sigourney Weaver’s performance as Kiri to be a little off.  It’s distracting when you are listening to a older aged woman attempting to play a teenager.  It’s clear that James Cameron and the actors love these characters, but it also feels like the movies are not doing them justice either with it’s odd choices in pacing and stilted, unnatural dialogue.

In the end, my feelings about Avatar: Fire and Ash are pretty much the same with regards to how I felt about the other two Avatar films; that they are good but fall short of being great.  There are many times throughout this franchise where I do feel James Cameron coming very close to achieving greatness with these movies.  But, then he’ll drop the ball by falling back on clichés and making his characters deliver some pretty clunky dialogue.  In comparison, I believe that Fire and Ash falls a bit short of The Way of Water, mainly because so much of it feels like a retread.  But, at the same time, I like both of the sequels better than the original.  As flawed as these sequels are, I still feel the ambition behind them, and Cameron is working with a full deck of spectacle that is far ahead of what we had seen in the original.  It’s quite a feat to make these two, 3 hour long epics feel like they breeze by.  Truth be told, I was feeling the movie drag in it’s last hour, especially with a battle scene that felt like it went on a beat too long, but it never got me to the point where I was checking my watch, hoping it would be over soon.  I feel like this movie is unlikely to sway audiences one way or another.  People who hated the other two will like hate this one as well, while people who loved the other movies will get exactly what they want with this new film.  I for one liked revisiting this beautifully realized alien world on the big screen once again, but I feel like the novelty has worn off as well and it’s time for James Cameron to start reconsidering where he should go with the next film.  It’s not enough to keep making the same style of movie over again.  There is potential to be mined here in the world of Avatar; like say taking us to a completely new location on Pandora, like maybe a desert or the frozen polar regions.  Avatar needs variety to help make us care about returning to these worlds.  That’s the thing that I felt was lacking the most with this new release.  At the same time, I was mostly having a good time watching the flick, because Cameron can still deliver some exhilarating action sequences.  We’ll see what the future holds for this record-shattering franchise as James Cameron maps out his final two chapters and whatever lies beyond.  For what it’s worth, he did manage to do it again, but again merely means making almost the same movie as the other two, and we’ll see if that’s enough to set a fire to the box office again.

Rating: 7/10