‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ Is Visually Stunning and Narratively Underwhelming
James Cameron’s third installment in the Pandora saga doesn’t reinvent the wheel, yet still builds one of the greatest arguments for the virtues of cinema
For anyone who went into 2022’s Avatar: The Way of the Water for its plot, there’s a fair chance they walked out of theaters disappointed. But the 13 year pause between iterations was never meant just to buy James Cameron time to write the script for a sequel to his meteoric 2009 blockbuster. The primary reason for the lengthy intermission between movies — why we saw that 2022 followup title pushed back for over a decade before its eventual release — was so that the technology driving the story’s visuals could properly develop.
From the series’ conception, thematic value was never its selling point. Borrowing strokes from nearly every other “colonizers vs. the colonies”-themed film that predated it, there was scarcely an element of Avatar’s plot arc that could be reasonably called original. And yet, that’s hardly to say that its seismic reception was unwarranted. Throughout my life, it’s the only movie I’ve ever seen that not only sold out every seat in the theater, but actually had people pouring out of rows and into the aisles in order to witness the all-consuming spectacle for themselves. My friend, his mother, and I spent the entire movie’s duration at the far back corner of the theater, cardboard cutout glasses strapped to our faces as we passed popcorn back and forth along the carpet of our loosely allotted perch.
Avatar was a movie that, in many ways, stood as more of a tech demo than a film. Prior to that point, 3D movies could fairly be relegated to the category of “gimmick.” But packed shoulder to shoulder in that dimly lit theater with my friend and his mom, I watched Cameron build the first compelling case for the 3D technology that I’d ever seen presented. And it ushered in a paradigm shift in the world of cinema; competitors realized that 3-dimensionality didn’t need to come at the expense of beauty or craftsmanship. It didn’t need to be merely some cynical ploy to entice kids into theaters. It could be the main attraction.
Now, if ever I see a movie in 3D, it seems there’s a prerequisite level of visual fidelity that’s invariably met. Had Avatar never arrived onto the scene, I think that 3D movies would have remained in that dizzying, rudimentary limbo state for years longer, and that Hollywood would have happily continued cashing in on the trend as long as consumers would have allowed it.
In the years it took for Cameron to come out with a sequel to Avatar, I went from being a middle school student to a man coming up on his 10-year high school reunion. Intermittent announcements of delays blended into the background chatter of growing up. They were greeted at first with annoyance, then confusion, before, eventually, downright mystification.
By the time I graduated high school and went off to college, the notion of another chapter in the Pandora saga was treated as the butt of a joke. Once the pandemic rolled around, it had become a matter of faded legend. An apocryphal tale whose skeletal remains would never be unearthed. A story passed along more as rumor than reality, sustained only by the shaky beams of our vaguest, most winsome recollections.
But when Avatar: The Way of Water finally emerged, it was clear that the years of gestation had enabled it to mount another, equally poignant argument for the merits of cinema. As with its predecessor, the story was never the main attraction. No more than an art museum prides itself on the subject matter of its paintings.
What matters instead is scale, texture, and the way the works command the space they’re given. How they redefine the viewer’s sense of what the medium is capable of providing. From an artistic lens, Avatar: The Way of Water and Avatar: Fire and Ash can be referred to more or less as a singular entity. This third installment felt less like a continuation of a story than a renewed demonstration of cinema’s potential. It’s built more for absorption than analysis.
When we labor over the specifics of the plot, over the rehashing of certain topics, we’re all but bound to be disappointed with this latest Avatar iteration. But when we plant ourselves in front of the biggest, most immersive screen we can find and allow the Pandora world to wash over us, we understand the experience for the intent behind it.
It’s for this reason that I’ve had a very forgiving attitude toward the deluge of superhero films we’ve seen in the past decade. On a narrative level, they’re about as bland and formulaic as movies get. And yet, they’re so visually immersive and bombastic that they build some of the very strongest cases for the value of the theatrical experience. They’re treated as vehicles for VFX teams to run rampant, and in this visual medium, that’s valid enough reason for them to exist — cliches, plot holes, and convolution all be damned.
Throughout the 3 hour runtime of Avatar: Fire and Ash, I continually found my mind drifting toward video games. This owed in large part to the specific style of visual effects on display. But mostly, I was struck by the way that the Avatar Universe has mirrored the trajectory of the world of gaming.
The advancements between Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo’s first few consoles were so enormous that they could be discerned through the most crippling of cataracts. But as time has gone on, it’s demanded ever stronger magnifying glasses to properly discern the difference between new consoles and video game sequels. The leap between the PlayStation 1 and 2 was colossal, but the one between the PlayStation 3 and 4 was significantly less pronounced. The PlayStation 5 represented a less visible jump forward still, and the PlayStation 5 Pro has marked the first time in the company’s history where even the most wide-eyed reviewers will hardly even deign to endorse it.
Avatar was a groundbreaking cinematic achievement when it released, and its record-breaking successes always owed more to its visual prowess than its plot. Had James Cameron released a sequel as soon as a completed script would have allowed, it wouldn’t have been visually distinct enough from the original. It would have felt more like a rehash than another earth-shattering showcase.
Since the release of that second film, it seems in some ways that Cameron has found himself in a similar choke point to the one that so many video game developers have begun to confront. They’re expected to release new games and new consoles on a set calendar, but technology doesn’t always scale and progress so predictably. As we near the limits of what our eyes can even process, the differences made in a few years can no longer be so easily detected.
Cameron could have made another gamble prior to Avatar: Fire and Ash. He could have waited until 2030 to release another sequel that represented an appreciable vault forward from its predecessor. Or he could kowtow to the fans who lamented that a decade is simply too long to wait for another followup. He could accept the technology we have today and work within its confines.
Given the relatively tame three year interregnum between these past two Avatar films, it seems that Cameron has elected to keep fans happy and run with the tools presently available to him rather than wait for new ones to develop. Maybe he was satisfied enough with the visuals that he achieved with Avatar: The Way of Water that he reasoned he finally had justification to go ahead and tell the rest of the story.
From that perspective, Avatar: Fire and Ash is less a failure of storytelling than a recalibration of priorities. Cameron remains uninterested in novelty at the narrative level, choosing instead to push against the boundaries of what a theatrical experience is capable of offering. That throughline can be seen as far back as The Titanic; the disparate love between his two protagonists didn’t need to be original for the film to drive home that grave sense of scale and sensation. They were an integral emotional core; they infused gravity into spectacle.
Avatar: Fire and Ash is unlikely to shock fans with its general framework. It’s designed more to remind audiences how effectively visuals can still function when treated as the main dish rather than a mere garnish. If that argument no longer feels revolutionary, it’s because Cameron already proved his point seventeen years ago.
Thanks for this Ben. I think I will wait for it to come out on DVD. :o)