Avatar: Fire and Ash

A visually staggering saga running out of fire

James Cameron has now devoted close to two decades to his Avatar films, which have revolutionized blockbuster cinema: the first Avatar (2009) through its groundbreaking visual effects and use of 3D, and the second, Avatar: The Way of Water (2022), through its pioneering work with notoriously difficult water effects. Both films proved such enormous successes that they now rank as the first and third highest-grossing films of all time. Cameron has long promised a total of five Avatar entries, yet with his third installment—now released—you begin to sense a fatigue settling in, both in the director and in his prolonged stay on Pandora.

Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025) picks up only weeks after the end of The Way of Water, with Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his Na’vi family now integrated into a water tribe after successfully repelling attacks by rapacious human poachers. When the humans, led once again by the vengeful Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang), attempt to capture Sully and crush all remaining resistance, they align themselves with a like-minded, bloodthirsty Na’vi clan: the Ash people, led by Varang (Oona Chaplin), who worship fire and destruction.

If the plot sounds thin, it is. While The Way of Water was breathtaking in showcasing the next generation of visual effects, its story was essentially a reworking of the first film. Cameron has never been known for narrative originality, often falling back on clichés and derivative structures, but he has traditionally compensated with a visually lush and arresting directorial style that makes his films impossible to ignore. Fire and Ash continues to impress in sheer visual scale, as Cameron blends lessons learned from the air and water environments of the first two films into striking new images. Yet the screenplay here is his weakest yet—more underdeveloped than in either of the previous installments.

Fire and Ash feels unsure of how to tell its story. Some viewers may have expected Cameron to explore a new facet of Na’vi culture with the same curiosity afforded to air and water tribes, but the fire culture receives neither the depth nor attention of its predecessors. Instead, the Ash tribe exists largely as a narrative afterthought, reduced to caricatures of violent antagonists. As a result, the film struggles to establish a central thematic spine, condemned instead to wander in literal circles. Characters are captured, escape, are captured again, and escape again, with little consequence or narrative progression. This repetitive structure feels less like deliberate pacing than a thinly veiled attempt to pad the film’s unwieldy runtime of three hours and seventeen minutes.

The film’s lack of thematic focus extends to its characters as well. The original Avatar featured an engaging ensemble with clearly defined arcs, even if those arcs borrowed heavily from “Pocahontas” and “Tarzan.” The Way of Water expanded the scope by introducing Sully’s children, adding a compelling coming-of-age dimension. In Fire and Ash, however, Cameron and his co-writers seem uncertain how to continue developing these characters. Several are abandoned entirely, while others are granted only plot-driven movement rather than meaningful internal growth.

As a result, despite its scale, Fire and Ash offers little of consequence. With few new visual revelations, a hollow and repetitive narrative, and a retreat from character work, the film leaves its world and characters largely unchanged from where The Way of Water ended. Most dispiriting is the sense of exhaustion that permeates the project. Cameron seemed to will the first two films into existence through sheer enthusiasm and belief in this universe. Here, that propulsive energy has waned. We circle back to familiar characters and situations, neglect new cultures, and drift without momentum—a lethargy that carries over into the performances.

Worthington, despite a major push in the mid-2000s, never fully emerged as a leading Hollywood star, largely due to a wooden delivery that persists here. In earlier entries, he was buoyed by electrifying co-stars such as Sigourney Weaver and Zoe Saldaña. Weaver, in particular, delivered a remarkable performance in The Way of Water, taking on the physical challenge of playing a teenager in her seventies. In Fire and Ash, however, that sense of transformation has diminished; her movement and vocal work now betray the fatigue of a 76-year-old performer. Saldaña’s once-fiery presence is similarly muted. Lang remains the lone actor sustaining the intensity and commitment of previous films, while Chaplin is convincing but hamstrung by a thinly written role.

Themes of environmental protection, colonial exploitation, and resistance remain central to Fire and Ash, complicated this time by the introduction of an antagonistic Na’vi tribe. It is still difficult not to feel stirred when nature fights back against human greed, even if these confrontations are stretched well beyond their narrative necessity. The visual effects team continues to deliver astonishing work—particularly with water, which still appears years ahead of anything else in contemporary cinema.

Ultimately, Avatar: Fire and Ash represents another instance of diminishing returns for a franchise that, while never narratively daring, once brimmed with energy and wonder. That sense of awe is now beginning to fade. Though the film retains the size and visual ambition synonymous with Cameron’s name, it is hard not to sense that, nearly twenty years into this technological gamble, the 71-year-old director may be wondering whether these Avatar films will be the last ones he ever makes.

6.0/10