As the summer blockbuster season winds down, there’s only a few true blockbuster films left on 2025’s slate. But one such flick, expected to be a theater-packing spectacle, is that heavily anticipated return to Pandora. James Cameron is back, and it didn’t take over a decade this time, as Avatar: Fire and Ash looks to continue this bizarre saga of blue cat giants. Filmed back-to-back with its predecessor, The Way of Water, the 3rd Avatar installment has the benefit of picking up quickly where the 2nd film left off just three short years ago.
While refraining from delving too far into spoiler territory, the previous sequel ended on somewhat of a stalemate. Series villain Colonel Quaritch’s (Stephen Lang) newfound life in a Na’vi body has added a new wrinkle to the series’ ongoing narrative. Not only has the character placed himself on an equal physical playing field with his enemies, Jake (Sam Worthington) & Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), but on a social level he has thrown a wrench into the tight-knit family dynamic of the protagonists – by way of his still developing relationship to his son, Spider (Jack Champion). That core conflict is just one of the key story threads expected to continue here, and the official synopsis gives us some insight into where this morality play is headed next:
One year after settling in with the Metkayina Clan, Jake and Neytiri’s family grapples with grief after Neteyam’s death. Eventually, they encounter a new, aggressive Na’vi tribe called the Ash People, led by the fiery tribe leader, Varang, who has allied with Jake’s enemy, Quaritch, as the conflict on Pandora escalates to devastating consequences.
Look, I’ll just say off the bat, calling them the “Ash people” is crazy work, but cultural sensibilities are a little bit different on Pandora. Varang (Oona Chaplin) is an interesting antagonist to add to the fray. We’ve seen in the sequels that James Cameron has previously directed that he has a knack for adding key characters that either raise the stakes or change the stakes. With Varang introduced as a powerful ally to Quaritch, you can already see breadcrumbs being laid down for where this alliance will lead, and how that will affect Jake and Neytiri. That’s one of the many storylines teased in the recently released trailer, as seen below:
One thing that jumps out to me is that this isn’t in keeping with how the previous Avatar films have been marketed. For both the original and its sequel, the first glimpses of their imagery have occurred in teaser trailers with very little audible dialogue. But this, our first look into Fire and Ash, is a full-blown trailer with a plethora of dialogue. Both approaches show confidence in a property, but for different reasons. Nonetheless, the reason for the change in approach could just be that Disney feels the audience is more familiar with the franchise now and, in conjunction with the predecessor just being a few years ago, perhaps feels that the less is more approach isn’t necessary this time around.
The trailer itself is a visual feast and action-packed… perhaps too much so. At this point, I don’t know if I would even want to see the eventual trailer 2, for fear of having too much of the movie exposed. The aesthetic and camera movements of the film are closer to Way of Water than they are to the original, which shows the effects of the two movies being shot back to back. While much of what we know about the plot is almost entirely tied to the ongoing Jake-Quaritch beef, I’m just as interested in where they take the character of Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), her parentage, and how they further explain her symbiotic relationship to Eywa and the core of Pandora. I’m not quite as interested in the coming of age of Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), the son of Neytiri and Jake, but I’m willing to have my mind changed. The character will no doubt experience some form of survivor’s guilt in relation to his sibling. That potential plot thread mixed with his natural ability to bond with some of Pandora’s wildlife leaves the potential to send the character on an interesting arc of maturity, communication, and strength, but we’ll see how it’s executed. There will be a great focus on the character regardless, as it’s been reported that Lo’ak will serve as narrator of this installment, breaking tradition from Jake Sully’s usual role.
Avatar films have their own vibe about them, for better or worse. They’re such eccentric expressions of Cameron’s sci-fi-obsessed brain and appeal to ethics, but I’ve grown to quite enjoy them despite their flaws and various idiosyncrasies. I don’t know if Fire and Ash will be good, yet, but I do believe the journey to find out will be worth it. Cameron seems determined to raise the scale and personal stakes with each sequel, an admirably ambitious view that will get harder with each sequel as audiences become more familiar with this universe. So for Fire and Ash, we should ask and anticipate what’s new that Pandora has to show us that we haven’t seen before. Can this film raise its own visual bar, get us further swept up into the drama of the characters, and does the billion-dollar man still have some tricks up his sleeve?
Avatar: Fire and Ash sets course for December 19, 2025.
