Film Reviews

December 19, 2025

There is a scene in James Cameron's "True Lies" (1994) in which members of an archetypal terrorist organization gather around in a circle and shoot their machine guns in the air as an act of solidarity. The men are supposedly from some unnamed Arab country and exist chiefly as the bad guys to Arnold Schwarzenegger's good guy, with little to no character development or insight into their motivations or hardships. Granted, "True Lies" is meant to function as a silly action romp, and so I suppose we can forgive it for being superficial, but a similar scene takes place with the bad guys in Cameron's "Avatar: Fire and Ash," a movie I imagine he wants us to take more seriously given its scope and earnest messages about family and nature, and while this series continues to show Cameron's ceaseless passion and successful execution for pushing filmmaking standards and leveraging state-of-the-art technology, it also shows he hasn't grown much in the "making generalizations" and substance departments, and at this point in time, "Avatar" is in need of some substance.

Of course, "Fire and Ash" is incredibly sensational, with its exquisite sounds and images still having the ability to take our breath away, especially in IMAX 3D, and we recognize the improvements upon the original "Avatar" (2009) and "The Way of Water" (2022), which remain striking in their own right. Each of these films surrounds us, mesmerizes us, and makes us feel like we're living on the otherworldly moon Pandora, with its lush green forests, crystal clear waters, and floating mountains, and among its lean and tall native inhabitants, the Na'vi. The sharpness, depth, and beauty of the "Avatar" movies will always be noticed and unparalleled, which is an impressive feat.

But just as it started to wane in "The Way of Water," the overall reach of the "Avatar" franchise has diminished more with "Fire and Ash," and it's mostly attributable to a distractingly derivative and often juvenile screenplay. It's curious that Cameron's benchmarks for technology and filmmaking could be so high yet what he's willing to settle for when it comes to story and characters can be so basic and rudimentary. He and his co-writers, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, have unfortunately concocted a script that almost seems plagiarized because of the number of stale narrative devices and tropes it employs. Unfortunately, it's gotten to a point where the lackluster plot makes the digital rendering of the "Avatar" world feel like a waste.

Essentially, the story of "Fire and Ash" is like a game of "Cowboys and Indians" on a continuous playback loop. It's one battle after another between our peaceful, blue-skinned, yellow-eyed Na'vi protagonists and either the greedy and cartoonishly aggressive and heartless humans or a new combatant Na'vi tribe called the Mangkwan, who apply ashen paste over the bodies. There are some interesting developments along the way, but these are mostly in service to generic action and further confining the characters into rigid categories of either good or bad. It's a shame, too, because we can imagine how much more interesting the "Avatar" movies could be if they simply expanded beyond simple black and white storytelling.

This expansion happened somewhat in "Water" when it brought the Omatikaya/forest clan of Na'vi from the first film into contact with the sea-dwelling Metkayina, which gave us some wonderful underwater sequences and a wide range of new creatures. The overall story of "Water," though, was just adequate, and it ended in tragedy, with the death of Jake (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri's (Zoe Saldaña) eldest son, Neteyam (Jamie Flatters). When "Fire and Ash" opens, Neytiri is still paralyzed by grief while her other living son, Lo'ak (Britain Dalton), is overwhelmed by guilt, and he believes that Jake blames him for his brother's demise.

Meanwhile, Jake and Neytiri's adopted daughter, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), is struggling to figure out how she fits into this universe, given her anomalous connection and ability to "speak" to Eywa, the goddess, or Great Mother of the Na'vi. She's also trying to protect her younger sister Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss) and continues to help acclimate the human boy Spider (Jack Champion), who still relies on an exopack to breathe, to Pandora's environment.

One of main plot engines revolves around Jake and Neytiri, alongside Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and the pregnant Ronal (Kate Winslet) of the Metkayina, deciding it's no longer safe to harbor Spider because he'll always be sought after by his bellicose father, Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang), Jake's nemesis and former commanding officer in the Marines whose body perished in the first film but whose memories have been uploaded into an avatar of his own. Indeed, Quaritch's lust for vengeance and power lead him to form an alliance with the female warrior Varang (Oona Chaplin), leader of the Mangkwan, who resents the other Na'vi clans for worshipping a supposed deity who allowed a volcano eruption to claim the Mangkwan’s homes, families, and ways of life. Hence the film's title, the Mangkwan have embraced fire and ash to drive their urge to invade and conquer, which is conveniently in line with that of the "Sky People," or humans, from the nefarious Resources Development Administration (RDA), among them General Ardmore (Edie Falco) and Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi), who are still hellbent on colonizing Pandora.

All this should tell you that "Fire and Ash" more or less adheres to the same digestible structure as "Water," not to mention the original "Avatar," which is to say it's composed of traditional action movie fights, chases, captures, rescues, escapes, heroes disguising themselves as the enemies, counterpart characters facing off against each other, etc. It's not a spoiler alert to mention that all three Na'vi clans and the humans' military-like soldiers eventually engage in a climactic battle sequence.

There's no denying "Fire and Ash" looks and sounds great, but its straightforward and routine conflicts undermine the production values. It's perplexing and frustrating that a movie that's been crafted with such sophisticated resources could simultaneously paint its characters and their situations with such broad strokes, the likes of which we've seen before in so many movies about natives fending off invaders. Not long into it, the arcs and events of "Fire and Ash" become all too easy for us to call out before they happen, and for most of the three-and-a-quarter runtime, we're simply watching the movie do what we suspect it's going to do, and where is the fun and excitement in that? I can imagine Cameron and his co-writers sat down and said, "Let's not make this complicated," and so we're subjected to stale conventions such as a "Braveheart"-inspired speech; the protagonists walking toward the camera in slow motion; and bad guys shooting but never hitting anything, sometimes at impenetrable objects such as bulldozers. We even get a generic horror movie-like ending in which the antagonists may or may not be dead.

Perhaps Cameron figured that because it's "Avatar," and the presentation is so advanced, with its seamless CGI and performance capture, audiences wouldn't want to be bothered to think, but instead only marvel. I would argue the opposite; the state-of-the-art design and execution should be met by an equally complex story. But even the dialogue is lame, with such lines as, "The strength of the ancestors is here"; "Stay away from my mom, bitch!"; and "That's right, buttholes." One doesn't typically go into a James Cameron movie expecting to roll their eyes so much, but here we are.

For the record, I was hopeful about the direction "Fire and Ash" might take early on, when Jake says to the Quaritch, "You've got new eyes, colonel; all you got to do is open them." This could have been the opportunity for Cameron and his team to steer "Fire and Ash" into new territory, and to not have it unravel into a series of standard battle sequences and rehashed plot threads. But it simply chooses not to go there, which is odd given the enormity of these movies' return on investment, and Cameron's reputation for pushing the envelope.

All this being said, because they are so well made technically, I believe the "Avatar" films can bounce back narrative-wise, and that maybe "Fire and Ash" was the filmmakers' way of getting the platitudes and lingering plot developments out of their system. Hopefully Cameron and company can now open their own eyes before the screenplay is locked for "Avatar 4."