If James Cameron movies always advance the technical framework of action filmmaking, for once, this accompanying sequel built alongside Avatar: The Way of Water, feels comfortable to work in the mode of the last movie, rendering it as more of an iterative addendum than an entirely new movie with its own momentum. That’s how it starts: Our first thought is, this is the same film. And it broadly is, as Fire and Ash represents a continuity of storytelling, and not a technological reset. If the first Avatar revolutionized motion capture (and for better or worse, legitimized stereoscopic 3D formats), and the second Avatar reset the table again for realistic motion capture and computer generated environments, Fire and Ash is more of the same, which is to say, its production has led to even more nuanced motion capture and a wider range of awe-inspiring digital environments. Whether the iteration, which is meaningful but about nuance now and not profound jumps forward, still holds the weight of a 3 hour fantasy, that offers a conclusion to the prior movie, is now up for debate.
The work of the two Avatar sequels so far has been about addressing the criticisms of the first film. That carries over in Fire and Ash, a film where emotive expression in motion capture is the highlight, and the crux of its expression, is about creating higher emotional stakes for its characters. At this, James Cameron remains unique, in that he writes goofy stories with silly dialogue that resonate beyond the words, due to the power of his cinematic ambitions. What is addressed in this third outing, is whether we care about the characters, and Cameron spends all 3 hours of the picture ensuring that we will care about them by the end.
Fire and Ash introduce the Ash Clan of Na’vi, warmongering outsiders whose homeland has been devastated by volcanic fallout. Previously, the Na’vi have been peace-loving, and shown faithful belief that all life is interconnected, that through balance and connection to Eywa, their culture is entirely in harmony. This new conflicting tribe shows that, even for the Na’vi, there are hierarchies shaped by the social and environmental conditions in which they live.
When Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña)’s home is set ablaze by the attacking clan, led by the ideologically feral Varang (Oona Chaplin), Cameron’s motivations become clear. Fire and Ash warns us that even through resistance, endless fighting eventually eats away at compassion, and turns victims into violent oppressors, too. Varang brings gravity to the character relationships and solves for a problem the first movie had, that the Na’vi were two-dimensional, and required outer conflict to define their characterization, whereas their interior lives seemed to be flatly projected as one kind of experience. Meanwhile, Cameron leans more heavily on Spider (Jack Champion) as our human insert, as Fire and Ash explores the possibility of human convergence with Na’vi traits; Spider’s dreadlocks are converted into neural queues, which allows him to breath on Pandora, and attach to the consciousness of all beings on the moon.
Family legacy is the main theme in Fire and Ash, as Sully and Neytiri grieve the loss of their eldest son in the last movie, and embrace Spider as one of their own, growing to overlook his species and his father’s crimes against the Na’vi. Also heavily explored is the father-son relationship between series antagonist Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) and Spider, as Quaritch finds common purpose in the witchy, sexy evil of Varang, and enlists her tribe to help the aims of the humans in assimilating Pandora, so they can plunge the planet for its wealth of resources.
Depending on how you look at Avatar — finally, or already, the story has run its course. The initial trilogy is complete, leaving a couple more films to make, for James Cameron or for someone else, if the action auteur does not want to spend the rest of his career making these things. Likewise, our ability to be mesmerized by near-reality in high-frame rate 3D has hit a likely ceiling. It’s still astonishing when you consider objects within this world and that mostly it’s all come from computers. Some of it is realer than reality, still straddling the line of some uncanny valley, or having just passed that bar, without hardly any other place to go. So, what’s next? You can reach photorealism in these environments but it’s beginning to stand in contrast to the deep stylization of the wider fantasy art style. What lives and breathes on the screen is the purity of the action. When Cameron keeps things moving, he still claims one of the few computerized success stories at capturing the glory of what action filmmaking can be, at its best. Pairing that with deep focus on emotive animation, the series still carries this sense of being cinema’s most costly “tech demo,” but it’s still just thrilling enough to get away with it.
A few movies in, we’re left with something like apathy about the future of Avatar. The present, of course, is good and fine. Imagining what it’d be like to wait many more years for more of this story, and where else the technology is pointing, though, feels like an endless expense that comes at a higher cost, if this is all we ever see from James Cameron again. After a good and well-rounded trilogy where we seem to have hit a technological ceiling, maybe it’s time to pass the baton, and go do something new. Until then, Cameron has given us another good reason to go back to the cinema.