For all the film’s flaws, it is nonetheless a remarkable exercise in silver screen razzle-dazzle.
There are moments in Avatar: Fire and Ash when it plays like a propaganda reel for Greenpeace.
Like its predecessor, Avatar: The Way of Water, the film is an eco-action flick, an environmental revenge film, in which the well-armed forces of a capitalist-military resource extraction operation get their comeuppance at the hands of dragon-riding blue-skinned natives and a pod of pacifist space whales. (It’s not much of a spoiler to reveal they don’t stay entirely peaceful.)
And like its predecessor, it’s a rousing, immersive, impressive big-screen spectacle. James Cameron’s sci-fi fantasy epic, which runs three hours and 15 minutes, is about as fully realized as a big-budget, special effects-driven blockbuster can be. Even if these movies aren’t to your taste, you do, in fact, have to hand it to him. Again.
The again part, however, is what makes the movie somewhat less successful than The Way of Water, which was an improvement on the original Avatar in nearly every way. Too much of Fire and Ash feels like a repeat of the prior film, from the thunderous whale attacks to the familial drama that drives so much of the story to the mechanics of the action scenes themselves. We’ve seen so many of these beats and big ideas before. It should have been called Avatar: Fire and Rehash.
Still, Cameron is stealing from himself, and that’s not a bad thing. Cameron has a gift for scale and spectacle that few directors can match, an intensity and depth of cinematic vision that is always welcome on screen. Even warmed-over Cameron feels fresher than most of what passes for big-budget, big-screen ambition these days. There’s an extended action sequence in which a caravan of alien traders flying airships pulled by what look like flying jellyfish is attacked by fire-wielding raiders.
