'Avatar: Fire and Ash' Is Nothing You Haven’t Seen Before, But You Should Probably Watch It Anyway

Is there a movie franchise that has earned more at the box office while being completely forgettable and outside of the cultural conversation than James Cameron’s Avatar? It’s likely that more people will answer Aang or Zuko than Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) when you ask them who their favorite character in Avatar is. It seems like Avatar films usually dominate the theaters in December and promptly exit the public consciousness as soon as they finish their run. Avatar: Fire and Ash isn’t likely to break that pattern because it’s pretty much more of the same: humans bad, blue-skinned aliens good, they have a big battle, the end. This is the plot of the first movie, the plot of the second movie, Avatar: The Way of Water, and it’s the plot of this one. It’s almost like Cameron is trying to one-up the Star Wars franchise that rehashed destroying space stations across four movies.

But let’s get this out of the way: Fire and Ash is a film that should be seen in theaters. It’s precisely the kind of film that 3D and IMAX were made for, and should never be watched on a tiny television screen or worse, your phone. It’s a transportive theatrical experience that reminds people of why cinemas exist, and for that reason alone, Avatar: Fire and Ash is worth the trip to the movie house.

If you’ve seen Avatar or Avatar: The Way of Water, then you essentially know what happens in Fire and Ash because they’re all kind of the same movie. Except, it’s also not. It’s slightly improved, like a new Apple iPhone model, which is basically the same as the last one but just has a slightly better camera, a more powerful processor, and a new form factor. Fire and Ash follows exactly the same story beats as the first two films — Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) is hunting Jake and Neytiri’s (Zoe Saldana) family, greedy humans sent by a greedy corporation that wants something from Pandora and starts defiling the alien world, Quaritch captures some of the Sullys, the Sullys escape, and there’s a huge final battle with lots of military ships and Na’vi riding Pandoran fauna. And sure, just like a new iPhone, there are some improvements like the addition of a villainous Na’vi, Varang (Oona Chaplin) of the Mangkwan clan, or the fact that Quaritch’s son Spider (Jack Champion) can now breathe the poisonous Pandoran air. But otherwise, it’s just a reskin of the previous two films.

But what a glorious reskin it is. The Avatar films are the pinnacle of CGI, and Pandora is so breathtaking and immersive that it’s easy to forget that almost nothing you see on screen is real. The uncanny valley is virtually nonexistent, and the world is so realistic you can almost touch it, especially in 3D. The various creatures of Pandora are fantastic, and if you enjoyed The Way of Water’s underwater leviathans, the tulkun, there’s so much more of them in Fire and Ash. You’ll also get to see the medusa, gargantuan gas-filled creatures that allow the Na’vi to travel through the sky like air balloons guided by windrays. Every Avatar film is like going on an otherworldly safari, and it’s always worth the price of admission. 

That said, it feels just a little underwhelming that there are very few new things in Fire and Ash to even merit the new title. It’s better off being titled The Way of Water Part 2 because it’s pretty much set in the same location with almost the same fauna, and the humans even use the same hardware they used in the second film. There are no fire-breathing monsters and no new volcanic ecosystem to actually merit being called Fire and Ash, aside from the fact that the Mangkwan seem to really like setting things on fire, so there’s ash everywhere. Even if The Way of Water basically had the same plot as the first film, it at least took you to a new locale with new wildlife. Even the humans got new toys to play with. It would’ve been amazing to see another setting in Pandora, maybe a subterranean ecosystem with creatures that thrive in extreme temperatures. A species of snail actually exists that thrive in hydrothermal vents on the sea bed, enduring temperatures of almost 400ºC with a shell made of iron. Not having a Pandoran equivalent of such an extreme creature feels like a missed opportunity.

Even the final battle is something of a letdown, as it’s essentially a re-staging of the climax of The Way of Water, only with more boats and submersibles and more Na’vi on flying creatures. Yes, it’s bigger, and yes, it’s better, but it’s basically the same thing just supersized. It’s extremely disappointing to have Miles Quaritch as the main villain for about nine hours' worth of story and see almost no improvement to his character. His son Spider saved him at the end of The Way of Water, which almost seemed like a redemptive arc, but maybe Cameron’s point is that some people will always be racist jerks.

Speaking of racist jerks, the grieving Neytiri, who lost her eldest son in the previous film, lets the nasty specter of bigotry get the better of her as she lumps Spider along with the rest of humanity. To be fair, this tracks with humanity today, anyway, and the humans on Pandora act pretty much like every colonial, imperialist power ravaging new lands for resources. This lends Fire and Ash some new tension and dramatic gravitas as characters wrestle with their inner demons and come dangerously close to making choices they can’t recover from. But this is as far as Avatar: Fire and Ash gets to forging new paths because even the hostage scene from The Way of Water is irritatingly rehashed, again on a sinking ship, albeit with a new hostage. And just like in The Way of Water, the Sully family gets captured by Quaritch and his men in Fire and Ash. It’s infuriating. It’s a tiresome game of cat and mouse played over two three-plus-hour films.

It’s almost a colossal waste of time. Clocking in at three hours and seventeen minutes, Avatar: Fire and Ash is a true test of patience. Granted, it has some of the most spectacular and exciting action sequences of any film in 2025, and the special effects are second to none, but 197 minutes is a really long time to sit down with very little payoff. James Cameron has said that if Fire and Ash doesn’t do well at the box office, he’s ready to walk away from the franchise. The ending of Fire and Ash is satisfying — if somewhat lacking — enough that if it were the last Avatar film (Cameron’s vision was for five films), audiences would probably be fine, too. Besides, the world needs a sequel to Alita: Battle Angel more than another Avatar movie.

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