Review: Cameron’s ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ – An Intense Pandora Sequel | FirstShowing.net

Review: Cameron’s ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ – An Intense Pandora Sequel

by Alex Billington
December 18, 2025

“You said you could protect this family.” “I was wrong!” There’s only one way forward for the Na’vi – it’s time to fight! I have been waiting for his epic battle for the last 16 years. And now we finally get to see them confront the RDA head on and bring the fight to them. It’s the end of this story, the end of this saga with the Sully family (as far as we know), but not the end of our time on Pandora. However, that’s a conversation for another day… (Will they still make Avatar 4 & 5 one day? Who knows?) Now it’s time to dive into Avatar: Fire and Ash – the third epic Avatar movie created by sci-fi director mastermind James Cameron. As we all know, it’s all he has been working on the last 20 years. Avatar 3 is actually, really the sequel to the first Avatar it’s just the 3rd movie because during production they decided to extended the story with the Sully family and add the second movie inbetween. Knowing that, following this trilogy from start to finish, this is the better of the sequels. It is another powerfully emotional, visually astonishing thrill-ride around Pandora – introducing one mean new villain in the form of Na’vi warrior woman Varang and her Ash Clan.

No need to waste time introducing the concept of Avatar and the moon known as Pandora anymore – I’ve been writing about this movie for the last two decades already (here’s my Sound Off thoughts from 2009). This time, after meeting the entire Sully family in Avatar: The Way of Water 3 years ago, we’re following up with them and their especially unsuccessful attempts to “peacefully” ignore all of the RDA humans. This unfortunately led to the tragic death of Sully’s son Neteyam. Now they’ve regrouped at their new home with the Water Clan and are deciding what to do next. Cameron’s reality about this situation is clear even if it has taken 10 hours of movie time to reiterate it – no matter where they go, where they hide, what they do, or what they don’t do, the humans will always come after them. And just because he’s a fan-favorite character and Cameron can’t get rid of him, Quaritch is still around and still angry and still specifically trying to hunt down Jake Sully and capture him or take him out or whatever he wants to do with him. Even by the time he catches up with him in Fire and Ash, he doesn’t really know what to do with him, because by this point he’s become a full-on Na’vi himself and can tell both sides of the fight aren’t happy to have him around anymore.

With three years since The Way of Water opened in 2022 (and with a few recent rewatches before going to see Fire and Ash), I’ve had time to rethink and analyze that movie further. And I’m not the biggest fan. Introducing the Water Clan and all the water creatures is really cool – the best part about it – but everything else is pretty dull. What bothers me the most is that I had to wait 13 years and watch 3 hours of a movie to see them fail because of course this plan to protect the family and not fight would fail. This is, ultimately, the entire point of the Avatar 2 screenplay because Cameron and his writers wanted to tell this story before getting into the full-on “we must fight them” story. Which is why finally watching Avatar 3 it really hit me – Avatar 2 is actually a rehash or retread of Avatar 3, and not the other way around (as many other critics are complaining about). Not only is this literally how the production went when they started filming and writing and designing these sequels a decade ago, it’s ultimately the thematic storyline following through to where it needs to end up and where it was always going to go. The Na’vi have to fight them, they can’t not do this, and just like in Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, and all the other great epics, there’s no other way out than ending with a gigantic battle where violently going after the bad guys is the only realistic way to stop them.

The most exciting new revelations and storyline developments in Fire and Ash are with the whale creatures, known as Tulkun, and specifically with Payakan who is first introduced in The Way of Water (and is still my favorite new character – I love him). While the scenes with the Tulkun debating whether to participate in the battle remind me a bit too much of the funny Tree Ents from the Lord of the Rings movies, they are especially worthy of this complimentary comparison because they’re just as awesome and unforgettable as the Ents. And yes they have the exact same attitude – they don’t want to fight, this isn’t their battle, they’re pacifists, they usually ignore everything and just go about their own way. But just like the Ents – they realize they have to fight, because if they don’t these greedy, vicious humans will continue to slaughter and harvest and destroy them (and the rest of Pandora). This good vs evil idea is something Cameron has put into the Avatar movies since the first one in 2009. Yes I do feel it’s getting a bit redundant to wait 16 years for this to be the main plot point over & over, however it is the major lesson of these movies. And I personally find it invigorating to see Cameron stick to that theme that, yes, the Na’vi do deserve and have moral justification to fight back & get rid of them. I just keep waiting for them to finally push the RDA off of Pandora entirely.

Avatar: Fire and Ash has a screenplay written by James Cameron, Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver (the duo best known for writing the recent incredible Planet of the Apes trilogy from Matt Reeves before moving to Pandora). Story by credits on Avatar 3 go to James Cameron, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Josh Friedman, Shane Salerno. In this trilogy, The Way of Water still has the worst screenplay. Yes it’s nice to meet the new Sully children and watch them grow up a little bit, but the dialogue is especially bad. The dialogue and story in Fire and Ash is better, but it’s still not where it really should be. Some of the dialogue still is cringe, but I brush it off as “big Hollywood blockbuster” cheesy as every one of my favorite blockbusters has cheesy lines in it. And yes, folks, it can’t be denied – it does repeat the same story structure as The Way of Water. First spend time with family, then spend time with Payakan, culminating in a big battle on the water against one of the RDA’s big ships with one major death. And still, somehow, by the end of three movies they haven’t fully defeated the RDA and moved to push them off of Pandora for good. We do get an awesome look at, and an incredible set of action sequences, set in the city they’ve established on this world and it is massive. It’s going to take a lot more firepower to defeat them if they ever actually do want to unite the Na’vi and try this.

This brings me around to the next big development in Fire and Ash: the revelation that the Sully’s adopted human child Spider can breathe the air on Pandora with a little help from Eywa – the Great Mother. “This world is much deeper than you imagine,” Jake says at one point, hinting at the mystical, magical powers of the planet/moon, an analog connecting to the great power of Mother Earth here on our planet. It’s amusing that after audiences hating the concept of humans trying to harvest “Unobtainium” from the first Avatar, Cameron and his writers had to introduce another MacGuffin high value unobtainable resource in The Way of Water: the Tulkun whales have a substance called amrita in their brains. Now in Fire and Ash they’re switching things up again and introducing the next high value unobtainable resource to hunt: the scientific understanding of how humans can possibly breathe the air on Pandora (with the hint that this means they’ll colonize the planet fully not just send a few ships to mine these resources). This is why Spider is so valuable and becomes the central focus of this story. Even though it is a tad ridiculous this is the conceit introduced this time around, I don’t mind it, because it’s very cool to see Spider evolve this way as a character. And the scene where Eywa integrates into him is one of the most spine-tingling magical scenes in the whole movie.

I don’t care if others seem to hate him – Spider is one of my favorite characters in the Avatar sequels. He’s the real heart and soul of this movie. I get that his dreadlocks and “bro” attitude are annoying to some, but I think this is exactly why I dig him – he’s different yet thoughtful and caring. He’s also really the crux of these movies & represents the integration theme within the sequels. Cameron created him because he’s the ultimate inbetween character representing both Na’vi and humanity all in the same package. Even moreso than Jake and Quaritch, because they’re fully in Na’vi bodies now. The idea of a tiny human being growing up pretty much believing he is a Na’vi creature within the Sully family, of course, is very much Jungle Book inspired but also, interestingly, an example of how the two worlds (Earth/Pandora) can intertwine and can interact peacefully. Therefore, it makes sense that the plots from both Avatar 2 & 3 involve him and rotate around his actions. No one is fully satisfied with him – Neytiri doesn’t like him because he’s not Na’vi and he brings too much danger and Sky People-alienness to their family. Quaritch (even if he is his son) doesn’t like him either because he’s loyal to all of the Sullys and loyal to the Na’vi natives because he appreciates & understands them in a very natural way. This dynamic is essential to all the ideas in the sequels and I posit it’s shallow to write him off or complain about him as the worst character. He just doesn’t deserve any hate.

As much as I enjoy the spectacle or Avatar and returning to Pandora, there are still flaws with Fire and Ash. Cameron’s pacing is a bit more problematic this time. Because he could let the story play out slower in The Way of Water, he has to cram so much more into this third movie to get the trilogy to the end point they originally envisioned when starting on the sequels to Avatar. There are some parts of Avatar 3 that go on & on when they should be trimmed down, there are other parts that fly by so fast when they absolutely needed more time to breathe and play out with precision. Framing this third one around Jake’s son Lo’ak (played excellently by actor Britain Dalton) as the narrator of the story is, at first, kind of exciting. However, I do feel like he doesn’t achieve much by the end, he’s almost entirely a distant observer watching it all play out. This is most evident in his connection with Payakan, which is extremely important and emotionally relevant in this storyline but it’s also what keeps him on the side the entire time. I’m glad he speaks up to the Tulkun (hell yes, break the rules, speak the truth!!) and gets them to join the fight. But if I’m honest – I don’t enjoy having to now wait another 3 or 5 or 10 years to watch him grow up and maybe one day become the leader of Pandora who finally tries to get the RDA bastards kicked off their beautiful world forever. Is that even his destiny? Well, for now his destiny is hanging out with underwater homie Payakan, which is also fine by me.

Anyway, to wrap it up before this review ends up with a 3-1/2 hour runtime – Avatar: Fire and Ash is more emotionally intense, more exciting, more spectacular than The Way of Water. But it doesn’t extended all the way out to where it should and it does stumble a few times in getting us to the final battle. Even that final battle isn’t really the final, final battle yet. They may have defeated the RDA at this point in time, but they’re still on Pandora, and will be back. And the Sullys and the Water Clan still have to deal with Varang and her clan, and they will still need to prepare for retaliation from the RDA. On and on we go. I respect that some people wanted Avatar 3 to do something completely different and go down entirely new paths. Even though it has taken 16 years to get here, it’s clear this is where Cameron wanted to take the Sully’s storyline in these sequels, even if that is a bit frustrating. Whether we see more after this – who knows, only time will tell. But for now, it is in my humble opinion extremely satisfying to see the Na’vi and the Tulkun team up and finally take the fight to the RDA and give them one helluva Pandora slapping. This is their home. Stop trying to destroy it, then maybe they’ll leave the humans alone. Until then, well, I’ll always be on the side of the Na’vi.

Alex’s Rating: 9 out of 10
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