Avatar: Fire and Ash
Took this one in with the roomie yesterday morning.
If you saw the second one, this is almost literally the same movie. A few things are changed up and it more or less feels like a natural progression of events that would follow The Way of Water, but I think that is to the movie's detriment.
Humans are still trying to conquer the planet, still whaling, still being generally awful and still losing what must be tens of trillions of dollars to natural disasters, environmental retribution and blue skinned giants wielding mostly archaic weapons. At some point, when does a corporation cut its losses and run? I know Earth is fucked but if that's the case, where are they producing the resources to wage this wasteful war that they've now lost all three key battles in? I understand that, on some level, Cameron has to make his movie. But at some point, is no one from Earth saying 'okay, maybe we just need to give them some blankets because this mecha assault is not getting it done'?
The acting is good, especially Oona Chaplin (yes, Charlie's granddaughter and the actress that played Talisa in Game of Thrones) as Varang, the batshit crazy witch of the Ash people that absolutely infuses her performance with the right amount of seductive witchy insanity. 12 year old boys gooning over the navi in 2009 have found their queen. Zoe Saldana still kills it as Neytiri and she brings an impassioned performance to this character every time. Overall, I'd say all the performances hold serve and the alien species in this film, even the animals, exhibit a remarkable amount of personality. They, and the planet, are very much characters in this story. What you think of that story is where your mileage will vary.
The effects are top notch, as one should expect from a Cameron film. The only problem is that after the obvious leap in technology from the first film to The Way of Water, there just isn't as much that can be done between the second film and Fire and Ash in this respect. The film still looks great, but there is nothing new here. This is to the film's benefit in some ways, since I am sure the first two weren't cheap to make and the third one largely leans on the technological advancements from the second film as a solid but too familiar architecture.
I think this movie may be the first one in the franchise that will not cross the 2 billion dollar mark, but I really don't think it needs to in order for us to see another one. Ultimately, I am left with a film that feels almost procedurally generated from the second one rather than an earnest effort to do something new with it. I would have much preferred the third film to be about the differences between the various navi tribes, which gives the humans time to try a new approach for the fourth film and come back with something fresh that we haven't seen before. What about if they made a fake navi tribe completely of avatars with their own manufactured mythology to trick everyone?
Of course, that leaves us with a conundrum: the film's most interesting character, Steven Lang's increasingly conflicted marine Quarritch, might be left out of a movie that doesn't involve humans, which would be a tremendous blow to the series' overarching narrative since he is the beating heart of its tension. As the story has gone on, Quarritch has gone from hating the navi to being stuck in one of their clone bodies to learning he has a son that hates him and who he finds himself increasingly unable to connect with. Especially since Jake Sully (still affably played by Sam Worthington as the simple man that wants simple things he was denied when he lost his ability to walk as a human being) is now raising that child as his adopted son. I always thought the best way to go with Quarritch was to put him in an avatar body and 'do Sully's mission right': infiltratre a clan from within to learn their secrets, only to slowly have his own eyes opened to this planet and all of its mysteries. One could argue 'but Taiso, isn't that also 'the same story'? Well...yes. But at its core, these films are about environmental awareness and given all of the other complexities of Quarritch's role in the story, it's only natural that he, like Sully before him, seek to reclaim his own lost humanity by becoming something other than human.
I know that this analysis is deeper than most of you care for, since it's fuckin' Avatrar, but unlike many, I find Cameron's ability as a director to be the incredible way in which he makes complex ideas simple, relatable and universal. Is he my favorite director? No. But do I think he's the best Hollywood big budget filmmaker of all time? Yes. And it's not even close between him and #2. Still, I think that Avatar: Fire and Ash underachieves for him as a man uniquely positioned to do what he wants, when he wants, how he wants.
3.5 out of 5. There is a loot to see here, but if you've seen the last movie, you've seen it all before.
