If you’re planning a return visit to Pandora, bring your imagination and your patience. Producer-director-writer-editor James Cameron’s latest labor of love occupies three hours, fifteen minutes. It’s a technically dazzling, three-dimensional visual experience weighed down by a one-dimensional story, too many perfunctory scenelets, occasionally choppy editing and awkward tonal shifts in the scoring.
This third entry in the Avatar franchise reintroduces the members of the Metkayina clan, notably Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a former human become a part of the Avatar Program, and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), his wife, still grieving the loss of her biological son in the previous film, now harboring an admittedly “racist” attitude toward all humans. Also helping to populate Pandora, the lush, luminous moon in the Alpha Centauri star system: Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), doubling as the doctor’s spirit and as Kiri, the daughter of her avatar; Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), a former human military commander, previously killed by the indigenous Na’vi people and here brought back as a “recombinant” and sworn enemy of Jake; Varang (Oona Chaplin), the fierce leader of the volcano-inhabiting Mangkwan clan; and Ronal (Kate Winslet), a free diver of the reef-dwelling Metkayina and the pregnant wife of its chieftain (Cliff Curtis).
Much of the overdrawn plot involves inter-clan warfare and the pursuit of Miles “Spider” Socorro, the (temporarily) orphaned son of Quaritch and later the adopted son of Jake and Neytiri. His body may harbor an organism which, with reverse engineering, could permit all humans to survive in Pandora’s atmosphere.
Avatar: Fire and Ash delivers plenty of that title content, but relatively little in the way of meaningful dialogue or emotional depth. Cameron and his co-writers, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, could have benefited from more narrative discipline. Too many lines are trite (“We cannot be broken”) or telegraphed; too many situations are predictable and repetitive. While the screenplay introduces many of the director’s recurring themes (obsessions), it largely submerges them with an excess of action.
James Cameron, a marine explorer and inventor as well as a pioneering filmmaker, again embraces Big Ideas about family, humanity and ecology. The Resources Development Administration (RDA), now commanded by Quaritch’s successor, General Frances Ardmore (Edie Falco), represents the worst of militaristic capitalism run amok. Families and clans, including the aggressive Mangkwan and the pacifist Tlalim (Wind Traders), fail to acknowledge their common enemy for much of the story. The wonderful array of creatures–squid, whales, and multiple bird-like species for transport, hunting and defense–rival their human cohabitants for loyalty and resourcefulness.
Not surprisingly, Avatar: Fire and Ash excels in its technical aspects, just like the previous two films in the franchise: Avatar (2009) and Avatar: The Way of Water (2022). The motion capture of the actors, mapping their facial expressions and physical movements, remains impressive. The placement of the camera to track the action–in the air, on the ground and underwater–makes admirable use of the 3-D technology. (One of the most impressive moments in the entire movie takes place in a control room on board the RDA’s flagship vessel, with a character simply walking through the frame.) The color palette and visual effects demonstrate a wealth of imagination, with credit going to cinematographer Russell Carpenter, an Academy Award winner for Titanic. Paradoxically, though, all of this cutting edge technology betrays another of the picture’s major weaknesses, depending upon your taste in imagery.
Cameron, like Sir Peter Jackson in his Hobbit trilogy, employs a high frame rate (HFR) here much of the time. The airborne and underwater scenes play out in 48 frames per second, twice the standard rate (reserved in this case for the straight dialogue portions). Cameron defends his artistic choice as “immersive” and “more real” as a viewing experience–one that enhances its three-dimensional qualities. Personally, it strikes me as too clean, too smooth, too pretty, lacking the texture that this physical universe and its frequent conflicts demand. It imparts a disconnected, layered effect throughout the depth of focus, calling too much attention to individual images amidst much larger compositions. Honestly, the production registers as a brilliantly realized video game. No offense to talented video game developers, but this Avatar should really meet the eye differently and more cinematically.
After a final, protracted battle scene with echoes of Jaws and Apocalypse Now, Quaritch disappears into the flux (awaiting his next resurrection, no doubt) and young Miles receives his Na’vi initiation. As for James Cameron, he will surely be vindicated at the box office for this spectacle, and he will be encouraged to continue work on two more pictures in the series, already in production. For now, you can prepare to immerse yourself in the brilliant, flawed excesses of Avatar: Fire and Ash.
