Movie Review: Wonder and war in ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’

When I caught a cold the day after watching the third and final Avatar movie, “Fire and Ashes.” I half wondered if I had caught it on Pandora.

The promise of Cameron's 3D trilogy has always been immersion: immersion in a sci-fi world, in technological wonders, in the possible future of cinema. Avatar is more of a place to go than a movie to watch.

However, two decades have passed since Cameron embarked on this grim quest. The sparkle of novelty is absent, or at least less pronounced, as new technological advances must be contended with. Fire and Ashes features behind-the-scenes footage of how performance capture was used in the making of the film. The implicit message is: no, it's not AI.

With their visual wizardry and clunky, revisionist Western storytelling, the Avatar films have always felt most like a dive into a James Cameron dream. After all, the idea for these films first came to Cameron, he said: in bioluminescent vision several decades ago. At their best, the Avatar films felt like an otherworldly scene for Cameron, where he could juggle many of the things—massive weapons, environmental wonder, reckless human arrogance—that defined his films.

At over three hours, Fire and Ashes is our longest stay on Pandora and will likely leave you wondering why you came here in the first place. They remain epics of skill and conviction. You can feel Cameron's deep devotion to the dynamics of his protagonists, even when his interest exceeds our own.

This is especially true in Fire and Ashes, which, after the second part dealt with deep-sea family events, “Way of Water” opens a new chapter in the clash of cultures. It tells the story of a fierce rival Na'vi clan, whose fierce leader Varang (Oona Chaplin) collaborates with Stephen Lang's prosperous Colonel Miles Quaritch and human colonizers.

I suspect that for those who have followed the Avatar saga closely, Fire and Ash will be a rewarding experience. Quaritch, Pandora's answer to Robert Duvall's Bill Kilgore in Apocalypse Now, remains an incredibly charming character. And the appearance of Chaplin's Varang gives this part an energy that the previous two lacked.

But for those whose trips to Pandora were less impressive, Fire and Ashes is a bit like returning to a half-forgotten vacation spot, only where the local ponytail style is a little weird and everyone seems to have a supermodel waist.

Time has only reinforced the feeling that these films are hermetically sealed cinematic terrariums. They're like a $1 billion beta test that, for all its box office success, ultimately proved that all the design power in the world couldn't create a story with meaningful impact. The often noted slight cultural imprint left by the first two blockbusters only hints at why these films seem to evaporate after the end credits. It's the lack of inner life for any of the characters and the boring cutscene aesthetic. At this point in the trilogy, nine hours later, this emptiness makes Fire and Ash feel almost like a theoretical drama: more an avatar than a real article.

These films had to work very hard, every moment, to look believable. But in almost every gesture, every movement and every dialogue there was something unnatural. (The high frame rate is partly to blame.) Because of this, these creepy films are equal parts things you've never seen before and things you can't unsee.

“Fire and Ashes,” written by Cameron, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, picks up after the climatic battle of “The Way of Water.” The Na'vi and their seafaring allies, the Metkayin clan, heal their wounds and recover human weapons that have sunk to the seabed.

When a rival clan called the Mangkwan or People of Ash comes to challenge the Na'vi, these weapons pose an ethical problem. Should they use that kind of firepower in their local battles? This is a more difficult question, partly because the fire-crazed Mangkwan, led by their cunning sorceress Wanang (played with seductive sadism by Chaplin, Charlie's granddaughter), are especially bloodthirsty.

But their battle is only part of the great war of Fire and Ash. The focus of this third chapter (a fourth and fifth film was said to be written but not greenlit) is interspecies coexistence. As the lines between humans and Na'vi continue to blur, the question arises whether the human invaders will transform Pandora or whether Pandora will transform them.

This focuses on three characters in various in-between states. First there is Spider (Jack Champion), Quaritch's human son, who lives happily with the Na'vi, breathing through a machine to survive Pandora's atmosphere. (The Champion suffers the double misfortune of wearing a mask and looking downright insignificant next to the tall, slender natives.) But in “Fire and Ashes” he discovers that he can breathe without a filter, and this sparks intense military interest in a potentially hugely lucrative breakthrough in Pandora's assimilation.

Then there's Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), the former human who, along with Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), created the Na'vi family. The growing threat of human war causes Neytiri to question her connection to Jake. The prejudices of “Fire and Ashes” even penetrate into the home.

However, the most interesting of the three remains Quaritch. He may be furiously trying to subjugate Pandora, but he is also clearly enjoying his Na'vi body and his life on that distant moon. You can see him flinch when his commander, General Ardmore (Edie Falco), calls his Mangkwan allies “savages.” Meanwhile, Quaritch and Vanang get along like bandits.

“You have new eyes, Colonel,” one character says to Quaritch. “All you have to do is open them.”

The Avatar movies have done a lot to open eyes over the past 16 years. To new cinematic horizons, to the boundlessness of Cameron's vision, to the Papyrus font. But Avatar's most endearing quality is that Cameron believes in it so passionately. I might care less about what happens on Pandora, but I'm kind of glad he's doing it. There are worse things than dreaming of a better world where there is still a chance for success.

Avatar: Fire and Ashes, a film from 20th Century Studios, hits theaters on December 19th. The Motion Picture Association rated it PG-13 for intense violence and action, bloody images, strong language, thematic elements and suggestive material. Duration: 195 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.