Avatar: Fire and Ash reviewed – please, make it stop

In 2009, director James Cameron set the bar for immersive visual effects with Avatar, his alien world saga, but also set a worrying trend for jarring storytelling wrapped up in carny-style spectacle.

Sixteen years later, with NZ$9 billion in box office receipts, the third film, made largely by Wētā FX in Wellington, shows Cameron has learnt nothing over time about writing a script to match his team’s FX wizardry.

In this latest, which comes in at a bum-numbing three and a quarter hours – and feels every moment of it – Sam Worthington’s former-marine-turned-blue-skinned Na’vi Jake Sully and his clan are cracking under the weight of grief following his son’s death in the previous outing, Avatar: The Way of Water.

Family life is further complicated when they’re split after an attack by the Ash people, a fire-worshipping Na’vi subtribe entranced by the arrival of guns. They are led by terrifying shamanistic leader Varang, played with real menace by Oona Chaplin – one of the film’s few highlights.

But it’s here Cameron begins to lose his grip on proceedings, with competing storylines struggling to offer any emotional heft. Deciding audiences will be more invested in the children’s adventure – and their street-bro language – as well as one kid’s quest to find a banished whale-like creature proves excruciating, no matter that it ties into the peace-loving, tree-hugging vibe of the franchise.

There are also disturbing signs Cameron is suffering from a lack of creativity when it comes to the film’s third act. Fire and Ash’s denouement, a water-based battle, is more or less the same as The Way of Water’s finale, a cacophony of creatures fighting back and gunfire bringing it all to an end. It’s symptomatic of the rinse-and-repeat ethos that pervades much of Fire and Ash, and signals a worrying trend for the planned fourth and fifth movies.

Someone needs to ask Cameron what his end game is for Avatar. At the recent Wellington premiere, as well as railing against the growing use of generative AI in movies, he indicated the franchise’s future is no sure thing. But unless Cameron retools some of the essential elements of the story, moves away from the continual trope of the villain escaping at the end only to return in the next movie, and remembers how to tell a compelling tale rather than focusing on how cool his films look, it’s probably time this Pandora’s box was closed for good – for all our cinema-going sakes.

Rating out of five: ★½