In December, 2022, I was in Los Angeles for the HollyShorts Film Festival. While there, I bought a ticket for Avatar: The Way of Water, the sequel to James Cameron’s 2012 megahit, which was the highest grossing film of all time. When I was seated at The Grove’s AMC theater, one of the biggest and busiest multiplexes in the world, I was not given 3D glasses. What the hell? A world-class movie theater had knowingly sold me a ticket to an Avatar movie in old-fashioned 2D?
I enjoyed The Way of Water, which is now the third-highest grossing film of all time, but within minutes of sitting down in the theater for Avatar: Fire and Ash, I was reminded of the real point of these films. The original Avatar was basically a technology demonstration for the digital 3D systems which Cameron had developed. For a few years, everyone in Hollywood was buying into 3D, even to the point of doing pointless up-conversions on projects that had been originally filmed in 2D. But eventually, the fad faded because no one can use 3D as well as James Cameron. The only two people who have come close are Richard Rodriguez in Alita: Battle Angel, which was executive produced by Cameron, so that probably doesn’t count; and Robert Zemeckis, whose 2015 film The Walk, about a man who tightroped between the World Trade Center’s twin towers, is a real sphincter-clincher.
But Cameron is simply on a different level — or in a different dimension. He doesn’t just set up a scene and film it with a gimmick camera, he designs the entire visual space in three dimensions. Time after time during the three hour-plus runtime of Avatar: Fire and Ash, I gasped at the visuals. At one point, I forgot to blink for so long, my contact lens fell out.
The scale of the forest moon Pandora feels truly epic. One of Cameron’s favorite shot compositions has the bottom third of the frame underwater, while the top two-thirds follow the action above the water. In those scenes, the ocean’s surface seems to flow off the screen and fill the theater with undulating waves. He generally avoids the “throw things at the camera to make them duck” gag that was already gauche during the original 3D fad of the 1950s. But when he finally does it, it’s with fast-spinning bolos. Ever see an entire row of theatergoers flinch in unison?
The story picks up right where Way of the Water left off. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), the space marine assigned to the Resource Development Agency’s (RDA) Avatar Project, now permanently inhabits his eight-foot tall, blue Na’vi body. He’s living with the Metkayina clan, the Reef People whom he helped save from the RDA’s space whalers, along with his Na’vi family, wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), son Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), daughter Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), and adoptive children Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) and Spider (Jack Champion).
Despite the recent victory, it’s a tough time for the Sullys. Their oldest son Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) died in battle with the human invaders. But it’s not so bad, since the Na’vi can access the spirits of the dead through Pandora’s fungus network/natural internet, so his brother Lo’ak can still visit and do what the Na’vi do best — frolic in nature. Meanwhile, Kiri is maturing as a shaman who can wield mystic powers over the forest network, but she risks death every time she tries, due to her hybrid nature.
Unlike the rest of the family, Spider is fully human. He’s the son of Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), the RDA commandant whose consciousness was permanently transferred into a Na’vi body when his human form died. Since the atmosphere of Pandora is almost, but not quite, like our own, Spider has to live his life in an oxygen mask. When a mask failure almost kills him in his sleep, Sully and Neytiri decide that he can’t stay among the Na’vi, and decide to take him back to the Avatar Project base, where he can live among his own kind. The decision is a fraught one, because Neytiri’s bitterness at the loss of her son at the hands of the RDA have made her hate all humans, a speciesist attitude that extends to her own step-son. The Sullys hitch a ride with the flying merchants of the air clan, but their great balloon ships are ambushed by the Ash People, led by Varang (Oona Chaplin, the real life granddaughter of Charlie Chaplin).
The Ash People live around a volcano that recently exploded, which shook their faith in Pandoran mother goddess Eywa. When Varang gets a look at the advanced human firearms Sully has been hoarding since the battle, she gets a bad case of megalomania. Eventually, she uses a Pandoran psychedelic drug to seduce Quaritch, who goes native like Sully, only in an evil way.
The biggest problem with Fire and Ash is that Cameron has less of a plot and more of a list of incidents. The climax is once again an air/sea/land battle to defend the Reef People and the tulkun space whales against the avaricious humans, only this one is much bigger, and features the Ash People mounting a counterattack inspired by Peter Jackson’s Ride of the Rohirrim from The Return of the King. Cameron throws everything he’s got into the finale, trying to outdo George Lucas (successfully) and George Miller (unsuccessfully). He even pauses the battle so that pregnant Na’vi Ronal (Kate Winslet) can give birth before dying heroically. It’s all quite spectacular, but you’d think that a film with six credited editors could get it done in less than 197 minutes. As it is, Fire and Ash plays like a Pandoran hangout movie. The story is a mess, but it’s fun to chill with our old blue friends for an evening, and maybe that’s enough.
Avatar: Fire and Ash now playing in theaters. See it in 3D if you can.