It’s a cold take to affirm that Fire & Ash, despite many critical misgivings with its well-worn story, is one of the best looking movies of the past decade, and maybe of all time. A visual feast and an overwhelming audio experience, the threequel is just as awe-inspiring on a technical level as James Cameron promised many years ago, when hyping up these sequels. But for such an elongated saga, now on the 3rd entry of a potential 5 movie odyssey, it’s fair to question just how much the story itself is advancing, and if this is the best such gorgeous movies can do on a narrative level. This time around, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) & Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) are back. Once again trying to bring together a misfit family, amidst heavy grieving from the lost of their eldest son. Once again on the run from Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) and the RDA, the Sullys find themselves having to adapt further with the aquatic Metkayina clan. As the latter feels Jake’s propensity to use guns is antithetical to connecting with Eywa, creating a spiritual clash of culture.
Jake & his son Lo’ak take turns blaming themselves for Neteyam’s death, while Neytiri struggles to deal with the weight of Neteyam’s absence. All this occurs while Neytiri has an uneasy relationship to the family’s surrogate son, Spider (Jack Champion). Boy is Champion having a great time in this part, but we’ll get to that. As the heroes try to exist underneath crushing grief, a new clan of Na’vi, led by Varang (Oona Chaplin), makes a power play against our protagonists that threatens to tip the scales on the Na’vi-human conflict. The ash people, as they’re called, are violent and very angry about their lack of connection to Eywa. Feeling abandoned by Eywa, Varang has allegiance to no Na’vi clan besides her own people, this antisocial and psychopathic disposition eventually finding common ground with Quaritch. The two team up, become lovers, and vow to help each other in Quaritch’s goal of capturing Neytiri & Jake, and reconnecting with his biological son Spider.
As visually impressive as this and every Avatar has been, I still have lingering questions about the specific acting strategy that goes into such a complicated motion capture process. I think it’s fair to say the Avatar films’ acting performances exemplify a wide range in terms of quality, from stiff and uncharismatic to colorful, animated, and intense. For as far as the motion capture tech has come, there’s still a barrier performances must overcome where there’s a CGI makeover to your own facial features. Thus, it’s more difficult to emote and for the camera to capture all the nuances of your facial expressions. Combine that with Cameron’s dialogue often being very blunt, banal, or flat out strange and it gives reasoning for why there’s such a large spectrum of performances. Stephen Lang is by far the best performer in this movie, Cameron’s dialogue somehow sounding natural coming from Lang, and the latter never stops his face from acting. Lang is classically trained, with a background in live theater, which helps explain his ease with the material. His voice has a memorable tenor, and he seems to put real thought into where he will place certain emphasis in his words – something I’m not sure most of the rest of the cast knows they’re allowed to do.
Even Sam Worthington, who is almost notoriously stiff in these movies, does his best work here when he’s opposite Lang. The former actually remembers the importance of voice inflections and switching up your emphasis so certain words stand out, something he seems to forget to do whenever Lang isn’t present – it’s very strange, but a sign of Lang being capable of making his cast mates better. Saldaña has done better work in the previous two films, whereas here many of her emotional scenes see her facial expressions partially obfuscated by very distracting dirt and war paint, making it unclear how much of Saldaña’s performance we’re really getting to see. Like Lang, however, you still get the sense that she knows how to handle such cumbersome tech being an obstacle for her performance. Jake’s voice-over narration, a staple of the first two films, is replaced here by his son Lo’ak’s inner monolog. Unfortunately, The boy has inherited his dad’s dry personality.
I don’t even see much point in the voice-over device at this stage – Lo’ak spends the movie laying down some very basic information and exposition, and he doesn’t seem to be all that passionate about what he’s describing nor do we get interesting insight into what he feels about it. He just plainly states things like his father’s processing of grief being through action instead of dialogue. Speaking of action, I think it’s noteworthy how much Cameron doubles down on this aspect here, and visually is the biggest differentiator between this and the previous two movies. A big part of the spectacle of the prior films isn’t just the war scenes, weaponry, or powers, but the more understated moments where we bear witness to the majesty of Pandora’s illuminating design. There’s less of that wonder and awe here, as the film comes off more like an action thriller than a sci-fi epic. The glimpses we do get of that visual wonder is usually interrupted by some subplot that requires the movie to explain some sci-fi jargon to you, rather than just getting lost in the wonder of Pandora’s visage.
Thankfully, the villains are captivating enough to make up for some of that wonder, as the Ash people take center stage and form a tenuous alliance with Quaritch. Varang is a 9ft tall glass of fiery cool who is basically an amalgamation of every fighter gal Cameron’s pen has ever conceived. Chaplin and Lang’s chemistry is immense, and the film’s most outstanding section is a montage that starts with experimentation with some of the most mind-blowing fictional drugs in history, to a Bonnie & Clyde like sequence that signals that Quaritch has finally met the woman that can match his entire energy.
Now on to Spider – I mean I’m not sure entirely what’s going on with this character or this performance. I feel as if we all collectively looked befuddled at Spider’s whole thing in The Way of Water, but we let it slide because Payakan was doing Payakan things. This time, Spider takes up even bigger real estate in the narrative, his tense relationship with his father Quaritch and Spider’s tenuous status among the Na’vi clan gets greater focus. The themes this conflict touches upon in terms of assimilation, finding connection with a group that isn’t your blood, and what does a healthy family dynamic look like, are worth exploring. But this still remains a bizarre performance by Champion, turned up to 11 this time as he’s given even more freedom to really go over the top with his persona. His delivery of “I’M BREATHING THE AIR!” is one of the most astounding line readings of this century. If this doesn’t become a meme, we have failed as a society.
What’s funny about Spider is how he has such respect and reverence for so many people, yet half the cast is trying to kill him. He can usually only muster as a defense something along the lines of “Wait, no! Don’t kill me!” My guy, you don’t have to go out like this. There’s not a lot of nuance in Champion’s performance, ironically since he’s one of the few human characters so his performance is not encumbered by the motion capture tech. The character itself, at least on paper, is earnest and pure-hearted enough that you still want to root for him in his quest to become fully Na’vi. However, this subplot would be so much better served with a stronger performance at its center.
Despite all these flaws and misgivings, Fire & Ash finds a way to be entertaining and a good time in spite of itself. I do think this is the weakest Avatar film, and maybe the weakest of James Cameron’s career (I’m not counting him getting fired on a disaster of a Piranha production). But that speaks to a very strong filmography, if this is the “worst” of the bunch. The criticism is true that the 3rd act here is “The ending of Way of Water… but worse”. It makes you wonder about the process of how this initial trilogy was elongated into a 5-film saga in the screenwriting room, as if Way of Water and Fire & Ash were at one point one movie stretched into two.
If there is eventually an Avatar 4, it really needs a strong (for blockbuster standards) screenplay that isn’t so derivative of itself or other movies. The tech and R&D that has gone into these films are of great admiration, but that makes it more frustrating when the writing can’t be taken to another level to elevate the material. This is an impressively expansive universe with intriguing lore and a host of characters that are on unique journeys of self-discovery. Complimenting their extraordinary adventures with better written characterization and arcs should be the main goal of the concluding chapters. Can Eywa answer that call for us? And please give Neytiri a new song to sing, there has to be more than one hymn on Pandora!
