If you already love Avatar and its sequel, you'll also love Fire and Ash. It brings nothing new to the table beyond an update on how the new 3D effects have improved, but it is more Avatar, and that seems to be enough for most.
The previous Avatar film, The Way of Water, was already a bloated mess without a beginning nor an end. Fire and Ash is the same film right down to the exact same final act, only this time it's even longer than before. Cameron and his four writers have somehow managed to find a way to say even less with more at their disposal.
Fire and Ash picks up an indeterminate time after the events of The Way of Water. It is wholly unclear how long it has been or how long the events of this film are, and where in the world anything happens. Cameron's vision of Pandora is so limited in scale and scope that it all could be in a single suburb and we couldn't tell the difference.
The much-hyped new fire clan is the same ugly and fetishized take on aboriginal tribes the franchise has built its style upon. Once again we're meant to hiss and lust after a barely clothed temptress, Varang (Oona Chaplin), who serves as the priestess of a nation scorned by Eywa, the goddess of the planet.
Outcast and feared by others, Varang's tribe has taken to raiding other Na'Vi and viciously brutalizing them so they can't even return to Eywa in the afterlife. When Quaritch (Stephen Lang) meets them, he discovers a way to weaponize the locals for his own vengeance against Jake Sully (Sam Worthington).
In a better written film, this could prove an interesting perspective. After all, the myth of the nature-loving and eternally peaceful native is a colonialist fantasy. Like all things in history, the truth is far more complex. What would this aspect of survival look like in the world of Avatar? How would the Na'Vi navigate the betrayal when one of their own sides with an invading force to save themselves?
It isn't a surprise that Cameron isn't interested in such questions. In his world, the fire clan is effectively meat for the grinder and a further escalation of his ugly tendency to see the natives as little more than a vague, distant Other that is always removed from Real Humans.
Even worse are the implications that the fire tribe is somehow cosmically deserving of their fate. When we meet them, Varang explains to Quaritch how decades ago a volcano erupted and engulfed their home tree, leaving them destitute and starving. They prayed for Eywa to help them, only for the goddess to ignore their pleas.
Later, we're shown in no uncertain terms that Eywa not only exists, but actively takes part in the happenings on the planet. Which means it was her choice to let the fire tribe suffer and die. Again, this potentially fascinating concept of an uncaring god is fertile ground for exploration, yet Cameron does nothing with it. The bad guys are bad and we should cheer for their deaths.
These concerns grow only more prevalent as Fire and Ash reveals it has nothing to contribute in terms of story or character. When the credits finally roll, it is shocking how little has changed. Cameron claims his story requires a whopping five films for a proper telling, yet so far they barely contain enough to warrant a single full feature.
You could argue there's a compelling tragedy buried within the two Avatar sequels. The original Avatar, released 15 years ago, was never original, but it utilized familiar tropes effectively enough to tell a classic and contained story. Now, let loose to do its own thing, the two sequels have settled into repeating the same narrative because moving in any other direction would require the films to make a statement of any kind. Which is something Cameron refuses to do.
Instead we get more vague posturing about the importance of nature and the dangers of corporations, yet Cameron muddles the waters by suggesting that it's only a few bad apples causing trouble in the end.
The objectifying of the Na'Vi reaches a paramount of bad taste in how Cameron further sexualizes Chaplin's Varang. More than once it embraces the ugliest sides of Orientalism, right down to the insinuation that Quaritch has "gone native" in his love for a fierce warrior woman he can mold into his own image.
By now, some will shout that this is Avatar; a slick popcorn film meant to entertain and dazzle instead of – gasp – educating us about something. If only the rest of the film was so spectacular that it hadn't left me bored to tears and wondering about the implications of its trite narrative. At nearly three-and-a-half-hours in length, Fire and Ash is almost two hours longer than it needs to be.
Entire sequences feel pointless while others exist only to reiterate plot points we already know. Cameron's fabled sense of place and structure is nowhere to be seen. Watch, once again, as entire armies disappear from battle entirely with little awareness of where the fighting happens. There is simply so much material at hand that even with a team of editors, Cameron can't make sense of his elaborate battleground.
In one particularly dire moment, a character death is revealed to have happened within spitting distance from another major event, right down to characters looking slightly off-screen to witness what is necessary to transition elsewhere. The direction is so scattershot the audience is left to piece it together like a puzzle, which should fascinate the truly devoted.
The action feels recycled and dull, right down to the climactic battle between whalers and the Na'Vi on a massive sinking vessel, which we already saw in The Way of Water. Even the film seems to agree as it shrugs off a major call to battle with post-production narration and B-roll from what looks like deleted scenes.
Elsewhere, characters thought dead show up without any further explanation, as if Cameron dreads the idea of introducing new ones into the already muddled storyline. At one point Fire and Ash even suggests that none of the good guys can truly die; they only take a breather elsewhere.
It's this sense of weightlessness and lack of stakes that hinders the franchise even further. Cameron's excitement for the technology overshadows everything, including any semblance of a story. We're left with vague hints at a familiar themes without any unifying structure, which makes for an expensive tech demo that isn't much fun to watch anywhere but in a cinema. At home, without the 3D and HFR effects, the turgid pacing and shallow dialog stand out even worse.
Viewed in a cinema, Fire and Ash will probably captivate for a time. After all, it throws 400 million dollars at the screen with all the talent artists ranging from CGI to costuming and set design can muster. It is undeniably pretty to look at, just as long as you don't think about what it is you're seeing.
Perhaps the two upcoming Avatar films will prove Cameron right in the end. Maybe all of this is just a long preamble necessary for a major turn that reveals Pandora a complex and narratively satisfying whole.
It is increasingly unlikely, and there's little evidence the Avatar franchise won't always be what it already is. But one can dream.
