Avatar: The Way of Water was the last big blockbuster I saw at the cinema. As I was seemingly the only audience member who didn't talk through the entire film or play with their phone (something I also experienced during the Dune and No Time to Die), this time I waited until Fire and Ash was released on Blu-ray 3D. Having now seen it, I think it's the best film in the series and along with the Planet of the Apes reboots (not counting the TIm Burton one), this is my favorite blockbuster franchise. This is a three-hour-plus movie and I would have been happy for it to go on for longer. There are no lulls, the characters are engaging, it looks spectacular and nobody stages action better than Cameron.
Unlike many Hollywood films, this one doesn't merely use grief as a plot device; it genuinely engages with it on a character level. When someone dies in these films, it matters, and much of Fire and Ash deals with the aftermath of a death in the previous installment. Each family member experiences the loss differently, and Neytiri's grief manifests in genuinely unsettling ways, Zoe Saldaña gives a career best performance here. There are emotional beats here that you won't find in an MCU film. The most distressing of these is when
Jake and Netiri are willing to kill their perfectly innocent adopted human son, with the resigned boy asking Jake if he loves him before he cuts his throat. That's biblical shit right there.
I'm not usually a fan of sermonising in films, but Fire and Water is an angry film about humanity's relationship with nature. Considering the state of the world, I'm not complaining and there is enough sugar to make the medicine go down. Cameron's sincerity in addressing environmental themes has been ridiculed, but it's one of the film's greatest strengths. It is a work animated by despair at the way we exploit nature and other living beings and on Pandora, the same cycle repeats, another world is sacrificed for short-term gain.
Oona Chaplin's gleefully villanous Varang and the Mangkwan are a great addition, introducing Na'vi who have come straight out of James Wan horror movie. The courtship between Quaritch and Varang, which consists of him teaching her how to use automatic weapons, is a brilliantly perverse callback to a similar scene in Aliens.
Having the 75-year-old Sigourney Weaver playing her own teenage alien daughter, the product of an immaculate conception who is in love with a human boy, shouldn't work, but it does beautifully (though I never need to see the behind-the-scenes motion capture footage of the more romantic moments).
Visually, these films are a wonder to behold. There are no seams, and anyone who claims they resemble cut-scenes from video games needs to look with better eyes. The world-building is endlessly inventive, and the level of detail is staggering
(my heart went out to that poor creature pulling the ship, when it panics as the whole thing goes down in flames and that's just one of many things going on in that shot).
The merchant Wind Traders and the action scene that plays out on their ships, is a highlight in the series. Having worked in digital effects and animation for nearly three decades, I have no idea how they managed to pull much of this off. While I don't agree that these films don't work when watched on a TV at home, because Cameron is a great storyteller, watching them on a projector in 3D is the way to go.
While these films have always been huge financial successes and well received by critics, they have been largely dismissed online. But just as happened with Titanic, I can see the consensus on the Avatar films changing. Initially ridiculed (not because it was popular with women and girls, of course!), Titanic has since become a beloved classic. And while Fire and Ash is currently considered the weakest film in the trilogy, I'm sure that will change too. I often read that these films have no cultural footprint, but I personally see this as an advantage, as the Avatar films don't come with the toxic fandoms associated with the MCU, DCU or Star Wars. Those who love Avatar, simply do.
I'd be perfectly happy if Cameron gets to make more films in the series but one thing I still don't quite understand is how a film that made back four to five times it budget can be considered an financial failure.
