150 Word Review: 'Avatar: Fire & Ash' (2025)
Na'vi gazing
James Cameron’s Avatar had one thing going for it: novelty. In 2009, no one had seen such groundbreaking CGI. The sheer spectacle overpowered the cliché-riddled screenplay.
The third chapter, Avatar: Fire and Ash, maintains the quality of the effects, but there’s no novelty. We’ve seen it all before—glowing Pandora, robot suits, blue cat people riding flying dragons. The plot is the same: colonialism is given a sci-fi glow-up. Sam Worthington’s once-human Jake Sully and Zoe Saldaña’s Neytiri are still fighting greedy Earthlings.
Oona Chaplin’s villainous Varang, leader of a fire-obsessed Nai’vi tribe, is captivating. Stephen Lang returns as an evil Marine in a mega-smurf body. The four-eyed whales are back, but the murder squids are new. One scene is surprisingly Biblical. There are 45 minutes of intense, brain-jostling action out of three-plus hours. Cameron is a brilliant filmmaker who’s been stuck making the same sci-fi epic for almost sixteen years.
I really don't feel like spending any money to watch another Avatar. I found the first one boring to death already.