By Matthew Moorcroft

Highest Recommendation

• Directed by James Cameron
• Starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Sigourney Weaver
• PG-13

The Sully family is grieving. This also means, due to the nature of Pandora and it’s interconnected ecosystem, the entirety of Pandora is grieving in unison, and that’s the moment we start off with in Avatar: Fire and Ash. James Cameron has always been as ambitious and intense of a director as they come, and while his four sequels to Avatar experiment started off seeing impressive results with Way of Water, the real challenge was always to maintain that momentum going forward into it’s other films.

So it’s not surprising then that Fire and Ash, suitably titled as it’s a film that mostly deals with the aftermath of a tragedy and the fires that it stoked, feels like Cameron with the shackles completely off at this point. With two $2 billion films behind him as a proof of concept, Fire and Ash is like a battering ram of gorgeous, enthralling imagery and thousands of ideas just waiting to be plucked from the center of the translucent moon. While this certainly will not be the last of the Avatar sequels – there are two more on the way for sure – Cameron sure thinks there is a chance it could be, and Fire and Ash is so jam packed with ideas that sometimes it feels like there is enough here for at least it’s own trilogy of themes, ideas, and action setpieces.

But like that last two films, part of the appeal of Fire and Ash is in that maximalism; an artist letting loose and just going all out in every department without much in regards to what anyone else has to think. So yes, Fire and Ash is most certainly a lot and probably needs a rewatch or two to fully digest, but Fire and Ash is also one of the most engrossing, intoxicatingly addictive movies made this year and a prime example of why we go to the movies at large. It’s a beautiful hodge podge of Cameron’s best and worst impulses, and that alone is the price of admission.

The big draw this time, outside of the ability to return to Pandora and visit our usual crew, is the introduction of the Mangkwan clan, also known as the Ash People, who are a group of Na’vi who don’t believe in Eywa. Instead they are led by the fire obsessed and eventually gun obsessed Varang who wants to spread her fire across all of Pandora in the name of proving a point. Her point being that faith will not save you, belief will not save you. The only thing that will is determination, pragmatism, and weaponry. Varang absolutely steals the show here as per expected thanks to a standout Oona Chaplin, but once Stephen Lang’s Quaritch shows up it’s them as a duo that the movie truly comes more alive then it already is. You would think it would a reluctant partnership, but Varang and Quaritch surprisingly engaging genuine romance is a beating heart of a film that contrasts it with the slow dissolution of our heroic cast’s relationships.

And as mentioned before, the Sully family is grieving. That grief is impossible to remove from Fire and Ash, which uses that grief and the faithless Ash People to explore hefty ideas of faith, religion, clinging to the past, and our own personal biases and pasts being both things to learn from but also the very things holding us back. Some will find the myriad of plot arcs in this disjointed and somewhat haphazardly placed – it is true that there are several, far more then the prior two films – but all of them relate back to this central theme. Jake and Neytiri are both dealing with the death of their son in different ways, with Neytiri clinging to her faith while Jake returning back to “marine mode” which causes a rift between them as Neytiri’s seething hatred of humans has gotten to the point where she starts to see that in Jake. Lo’ak is guilt ridden and himself clings to his friendship with the outcast Tulkan Payakan, who himself is haunted by the deeds of his past. Spider and Kiri also feel like outcasts, with both of them having their own perceptions of Eywa that are tested throughout the film in regard to their personal identities.

Fire and Ash is a tapestry, and once those webs fully form the tapestry in the last act of the film, it becomes a glorious display of action choreography from the best man in the business and some of the most insane visual effects work ever put to American movie screens. The action here occasionally veers into the biblical, with the franchise’s usual focus on Eastern philosophy now mixing with Old Testament parables (a standout scene involves what can only be described as a modern day Isaac and Abraham) and a literal vengeful deity who fights back against those whose land is not theirs to take. And it’s always entertaining while maintaining that thematic depth, never forgetting that yes, these are still movies where giant whales are battering ramming ships and cool aliens are riding even cooler creatures.

And as Fire and Ash comes to a close with a pitch perfect – if a little silly – of a final shot – it’s clear that even if the franchise likely continues past this point (there are too many plot points left unfinished in the last bit of this for it be truly the end), Fire and Ash would be a solid stopping point if Camerton did have to end it here for whatever reason. The real lesson of the Avatar films is that of connectivity and universal truths about ancestry and family, and the final moments recognize this as the key to everything. I’m dying to see more, but as a final coda for this chapter of the saga, I’m absolutely satisfied and then some. The movies!