When James Cameron Titanic became the highest-grossing film of all time, it also managed to change the face of cinema. This not only increased the blockbuster fever in Hollywood, an ever-growing appetite for staggering budgets – sometimes met with even more staggering box office returns – but its plot points managed to get completely stuck in the spokes of pop culture.
Romeo and Juliet who? The new star-crossed lovers are Jack and Rose. What is a terrible, bloody catastrophe? After Titanic epic, Titanic, the ship was seen as something closer to a tragic romance than a heartbreaking story of industrial abuse.
Given that similar culture-changing statements could be made about Cameron. Aliens and his two Terminator movies, because of this, annoying truisms are constantly thrown at him. Avatar the films are getting sadder. For some of the highest-grossing films of all time, directed by one of the most influential artistic voices of the last century, it's incredible how little impact these blue cat people managed to make.
Now let's go back to thirds Avatar: Fire and AshIt is unlikely that Cameron will be able to refute these accusations. This is a debate, the arguments of which are put forward immediately after the release of the film: three years have passed since the release of the previous part. Path of Waterand 16 years from the first film, your ability to remember and understand what's going on may depend on how familiar you are with the other stories this one seems to be taken from.
Namely: why Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) once fought alongside the Space Marines (an American colonial metaphor trying to expropriate the natural resources of the planet Pandora) but has now aligned himself with the metaphor of the indigenous people, the Na'vi. As his daughter, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) is a reincarnated ghost of a human scientist, now gifted with a unique, albeit fluid, connection to a shared spiritual consciousness dubbed the “All-Mother.”
Why Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who is hunting Sally, is now also a Na'vi, although he is also obsessed with finding his human son Miles “Spider” Socorro (Jack Champion). How Spidey ended up sharing a dorm with Sally, but wearing a battery-powered mask 24/7 to cope with Pandora's toxic atmosphere. Why the tree-surfing Na'vi that Sully first teamed up with have since joined a group of seafaring people who themselves boast a strong connection to a race of intelligent whale aliens. (What the cool kids call “whales.”)
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And how and why all this complex weaving of the plot leads to further complex provocation Fire and Ash: Where the humans, now seeking to solve the toxic atmosphere of Pandora's colonization, have teamed up with a new, improved, fire-inspired group of Na'vi to more effectively kill everyone else.
Meanwhile, the Sullys struggle with an almost endlessly recurring series of identity crises – arguing over whether they are really human, really Na'vi, really sea Na'vi, or human again – to drive home the somewhat murky, sometimes offensive theme surrounding found families and the simple origins of xenophobia. Oh, and exploding boats and shootouts.
Agree, it's okay. The further we stray from the first film, the closer Cameron gets to the original story, although the more cluttered it becomes with intertwining, contradictory and subplots. Since this is a Cameron film, the effects are excellent; already locked in liquid physics Path of Waterthe Canadian director and his team only continue their achievements here – just try to ignore the abrupt and inexplicable shifts between standard and high frame rates that Cameron continues to play with.
Designed to give action sequences a sense of heightened realism, all they really do is give some scenes the feel of video game cutscenes and others the feeling that the operating system is struggling to render images.
As for the many, many performances required for what has quickly become an overwrought, almost bizarre space soap opera, no one is calling it a day. That is, with the exception of the unfortunately incredibly stupid Spider with the dreadlocked Champion and Weaver, painfully playing the role of a girl 62 years her junior.
Elsewhere, Worthington is believably intense as the frantic father while simultaneously serving as the patriarchal prop for literally every other character in Where Do I Belong? story arcs.
But the real stars this time around are Lang's Quaritch and Zoe Saldana as Sally's wife, Neytiri—in part because they're also the only two gifted with real narrative evolution. In the entire clumsily constructed epic, they are perhaps the only ones who finished the film without simply strengthening their belief system. In Quaritch's case in particular, it gives the script a much-needed injection of originality that otherwise feels too paint-by-the-numbers.
Outside of the action, the story moves from station to station like a conductor on a compressed workweek; first a road movie, then a family drama, then a war tale, strikingly similar to the first outing. It takes a while for Fire and Ash even running halfway to the previous two participants' rates.
It's not until halfway through that we arrive at a slightly contrived conflict involving an alien parasite and the future of human life on Pandora that we learn what's at stake or why we bothered to return to this world yet again. And while it clumsily advances the conceit of conquering forces literally appropriating the bodies of Indigenous people to become themselves (a sort of sci-fi I See No Color post-racist morality), it introduces a new, one-dimensional evil group of Indigenous people to sweeten the pot.
If they had the same deep knowledge and traditions as the Water Tribe from the previous film, this might have been forgivable. But as a result of a serious retreat from Path of Waterthe new tribe's fiery bond is reduced to a few random magic tricks, explained in a brief monologue. Combined with a clumsy attempt to pass the torch from Sally to his son Loach (Britannia Dalton) using a tone-deaf suicide plot, there's more than enough to complain about – and virtually nothing is likely to impact the future of the story other than how realistically the filmmakers can animate the water.
It doesn't do it yet Avatar: Fire and Ash bad movie. Considering the above, this would have been an unqualified success for any other director. But the huge expectations associated with such a large-scale production leave much to be desired. Because if this film, like its predecessors, goes down as one of the most successful films ever made, you'll want to have a reason to remember it.
