After the loss of one of their own in The Way of Water, the Sully family is still grappling with their grief as they continue to settle in with the Metkayina clan (“the Water tribe”). Shortly after, though, the family decides to relocate Spider, the human friend to the family, who is almost like a brother to Sully’s kids, due to his depleting supply of oxygen masks. However, on their journey home, they are attacked by a group of Na’vi simply known as the Ash people (more specifically, the Mangkwan clan), and are all separated. As the Ash people unite with Jake Sully’s nemesis, Colonel Miles Quaritch, things get more dire, especially since Kiri has found a way for Spider to breathe air on Pandora without a mask, which, if discovered, could inevitably lead to colonization by humans on the planet.

James Cameron has said on record that both Way of Water and Fire and Ash were intended to be one big story, and it’s pretty clear that this was indeed the second half of that story. It’s much more grand-scale and epic than either of the first two films were, with greater stakes, and it really feels like if this is, in fact, the last Avatar movie, the culmination of the trilogy. It also has a very noticeable darker tone to it, not only because of the Sully family dealing with the tragedy of a loved one, but also because with the nature of Spider’s new ability, the film honestly gets pretty heavy with some of its scenes involving him and what the future could entail, if in fact, the humans did discover how to breathe Pandora air.

My favorite thing, by far, about Avatar: Fire and Ash would absolutely have to be the Ash people. I think they are, without question, the best villains that we have gotten out of these movies thus far, and they really fit the darker tone of the movie. Unlike the other tribes of Pandora, they are more of a cult and less of a tribe, and some of the things that they do are just downright creepy and unsettling in the best possible way for a movie like this. They are also definitely the most imposing villains we’ve gotten, too; I like the previous two Avatar movies, especially the second one, but to be honest, the human villains were never a highlight for me.

Varang is also a terrifying and just plain awesome new villain, who really sort of shows the dark side, if you will, to the world of Pandora. As far as the first two movies go, the Na’vi have really only been shown to be the good guys, and the humans the bad, but in Fire and Ash, Cameron clearly shows that not all the inhabitants of Pandora are that way. One thing I found about Varang, in particular, is that she is sort of a great contrast to Neytiri. They are both full of hate, bitterness, and can be downright savage at some points, but Neytiri is driven by her faith in Eywa (the spiritual force on Pandora), while Varang has rejected that faith due to her clan’s past losses and trauma.

This film probably has some of the best action in the series, as well. Just like the tone of the movie, the action setpieces are a lot more epic and huge, and they make for some really entertaining scenes. Even the first action sequence involving the Ash people of the movie is one of the standouts, but I also thought the movie used the sort of gravity and physics of the planet to really make for some epic scenes. I think this, along with the Ash people as the villains, are the two things in this movie that top the other two for me.

The last thing I’ll touch upon in this section of my review is the character Spider, who is kind of the main character, or at least the character with the most prominent arc in Fire and Ash. As much as I really liked the Sully family in the last film, and as much as I liked the idea of them having a human friend that really is sort of family to them, I never found the character of Spider himself to be all that compelling. He really kind of just came across as angry the entire movie, which was understandable because of the situation he was put in, but still, that didn’t help his case for me to actually really care all that much about him. By the end of Fire and Ash, however, I really like his character and think that he might honestly be one of the best in the series. This film adds a lot more depth to him, especially with the stakes that he adds to the story, and he’s also just a much more, well, human character; not in the sense that he is an actual human, but in the emotional sense. You see a lot more of the conflict inside of him, being attached to Colonel Quaritch and the humans, but wanting to be a part of the Sully family, even though the Sully family kind of rejects him, not as a friend, but as a member of their family.

For the mixed, the one I came up with would definitely have to be the Sully family being split up for most of this movie. One of the strong points of Way of Water for me was the theme of family, and that theme is a little bit lost here. It’s not as bad as it sounds, though, which is why I put it in the mixed, because it helps to add more tension and greater stakes to the story overall. Now, one thing that definitely leans more in the negative direction, that I still wouldn’t say is a downright negative, is that since Spider is kind of more of the main character, none of the members of the Sully family really get a super prominent character arc. A lot of them definitely do undergo change, but it’s not very focused on and can feel a little bit rushed at times. The biggest example of this is easily Lo’ak, the younger Sully's son, who blames himself for the tragedy that happened in this film’s predecessor. At first, it seems like it’s going to be the central character arc of the movie, but inevitably, the story kind of loses focus on him, as it gravitates more and more to Spider.

When it comes to the negatives, by far the thing that disappointed me the most, and the reason I gave it a lower score, is that I would say roughly half of Fire and Ash feels like a complete retread of the first two films, and especially Way of Water. One of the bigger themes of Way of Water was the environment, specifically when it comes to the ocean, and that’s still kind of one of the central themes here. I feel like Way of Water got everything it needed to say about that out, so having it in this movie really made it feel heavy-handed. There are also a shocking number of scenes that honestly just feel like remixes or remakes of scenes from the first two movies. I’m not going to spoil any of them, but it was honestly kind of jarring to me how much they felt like a cheap copy of what we’ve already seen previously.

Adding onto that, despite the runtime, there really isn’t a whole lot of new lore or worldbuilding that was added. Really, all we get is the whole situation regarding Spider and the inclusion of the Ash people. Besides that, there isn’t really anything of note that made this movie feel very expansive in that department. I was also disappointed in the visuals a little bit. The CGI is just as good as it was before, don’t get me wrong, but this was also another aspect of the film where not a whole lot was added. Aside from some cool stuff with a new tribe not called the Ash people, a tribe that was really only in the first act, and some of the visuals in the climax, it really just looked and felt the same as Way of Water. I was also disappointed in this because the trailers really made it look like this wasn’t going to be the case, especially with the Ash people and where they inhabit.

Speaking of the Ash people, yes, I said they are my favorite villains of the series thus far, but they are also hardly in the movie at all, like at all, after the first half. Instead, the story decides to go back to the much less interesting humans, which I really didn’t care for. This leads to the third act, where they are literally just trying to do the same thing that they did in the climax of Way of Water, and in fact, the scenery, at least leading up to the very end, looks almost identical. The third act, as a whole, I found to be quite underwhelming as well, as the conflict with both the Ash people, as well as Colonel Quaritch, was super anticlimactic, at least to me. The movie also kind of ends in a bit of a “That was it?” way.

So overall, Fire and Ash is definitely far from being a bad movie, but I think it’s easily James Cameron’s weakest film. It has some great action, I really like the tone, and the Ash people were really cool, but by the end of it, I found myself pretty underwhelmed. I wish that James Cameron would get away from “Avatar land” and go back to other, new things.