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James Cameron returns to Pandora in Ash with nothing new to say, but at least it looks expensive
James Cameron's latest return to Pandora is visually lavish and emotionally earnest, but also stubbornly resistant to surprise.
Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Oona Chaplin, Kate Winslet
Director: James Cameron
Rating: ★
British filmmaker James Cameron’s Avatar franchise has always behaved less like a film series and more like a belief system—one that demands reverence rather than engagement. The first Avatar dazzled in 2009 by convincing audiences that technological spectacle could pass for cinematic progress. The Way of Water doubled down on that logic, stretching a thin story across an ocean of pixels. Avatar: Fire and Ash, the third chapter, finally exposes the limits of that philosophy. Bigger than ever, longer than ever, and yet astonishingly hollow, the film is a reminder that scale cannot compensate for stagnation.
Set once again on Pandora, Fire and Ice resumes the endless conflict between the Na’vi and the human “Sky People,” a battle that now feels less urgent than contractual. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) continues his reluctant-warrior routine, Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) remains permanently poised between rage and grief, and Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), resurrected yet again, lumbers back into the narrative like a villain who refuses to take a hint. The new wrinkle comes in the form of Varang (Oona Chaplin), leader of the Ash People, a fire-worshipping clan whose arrival promises moral complexity but delivers little beyond louder hostility and more elaborate violence.
The good
If nothing else, Avatar: Fire and Ice looks expensive. James' digital craftsmanship is relentless, with volcanic landscapes rendered in punishing detail. Oona Chaplin brings a welcome sharpness to Varang, briefly cutting through the franchise’s default solemnity. A handful of action sequences are competently staged, and the film occasionally stumbles into moments of genuine tension. But these are isolated sparks in an otherwise over-engineered void.
The bad
Nearly everything else. The film is bloated beyond reason, stretching a wafer-thin narrative across an indulgent runtime that confuses length with importance. The dialogue is relentlessly earnest and frequently laughable, weighed down by faux-spiritual aphorisms that sound lifted from a corporate mindfulness seminar. Characters repeat the same emotional beats from the previous films, learning nothing, changing less, and existing primarily to shuttle audiences from one effects sequence to the next. Even the much-vaunted visuals begin to betray themselves, appearing oddly artificial and motion-smoothed, like a high-budget demo reel rather than a living world. By the third hour, Fire and Ice no longer feels immersive—it feels anesthetic.
The verdict
Avatar: Fire and Ash is a triumph of resources and a failure of imagination. James has perfected the art of overwhelming the senses while leaving the mind untouched. What was once sold as cinematic revolution now plays like an aggressively polished screensaver—loud, long, and profoundly empty. The most unsettling thing about Fire and Ice isn’t how bad it is, but how completely uninterested it seems in being better.
