Avatar: Fire and Ash

Scott Hardie: “It was ok.”

The reaction to this movie baffles me. Guillermo del Toro called it a masterpiece. Michael Mann called it one of his favorite films of the year. To me, this feels like the most perfunctory Avatar film yet. If the original told a complete story that didn't need extending, and The Way of Water was an unnecessary follow-up that nonetheless had its own conclusion, then this feels like an unnecessary further follow-up that may as well be called The Way of Water 2 for how closely it follows that second film. It's the same characters again, taking the same sides in the same battle again, learning more or less the same lessons again, with only one drug-fueled hallucination sequence to offer any new images. There's a new sub-plot here involving fire Na'vi who are far more prominent in the marketing than in the film itself, and there's a theme about the uselessness of vengeance and hatred, but otherwise you've seen all of this before. And without the novelty, it's a slog. Is this the same visionary, highly kinetic director who once made Aliens and The Abyss and Terminator 2 and Titanic, with their indelible images and roller-coaster-rush action sequences? He feels asleep at the wheel here, tamed either by age, or by the vastness of this multi-sequel enterprise, or by the pointlessness of this entire mega-movie's existence beyond corporate balance sheets. Ten years and vast sums of money have been spent to make something that doesn't feel like it has a reason to have been made.

− October 8, 2026 • more by Scott • log in or register to reply