If proof were required that the most successful and popular films are not necessarily the best, look no further than James Cameron’s Avatar series. The three biggest earning movies of all time are Avatar (2009) (US $2.92 billion) Avengers: Endgame (2019) (US $2.8 billion) and Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) (US $2.34 billion). With two of the top three highest grossing films (three out of four, if we add Titanic (1997) US $2.26 billion!), Cameron can do no wrong in the eyes of studio executives.
Looking back at what I wrote about the Avatar sequel of 2022, I could virtually reprint that review, changing only a few dates and details. Like its predecessor, Avatar: Fire and Ash is excessively long. At 197 minutes, it’s five minutes longer, but no better at justifying the time we spend sitting in the dark, wondering when it’s all going to end. I’m not reflexively opposed to long films, only boring, self-indulgent ones, and the latest Avatar, like all Cameron’s movies, is a vanity project. Weighed on the scales of overall satisfaction, the brief excitement of the action sequences doesn’t cancel out the deficiencies of plot and dialogue or compensate for the movie’s monstrous pretentions.
As with the previous film, the opening scenes create the disconcerting impression that we’ve arrived somewhere in the middle of the story. Cameron and his co-writers seem to believe the fans have immersed themselves so completely in his fantasy of the planet Pandora and the blue-skinned, two-metre-tall Na’vi, that no introduction is necessary. We don’t need to meet Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), the soldier from earth who has thrown in his lot with the Na’vi, or his wife, Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), or the kids, because it’s assumed we already know them. We’re supposed to be acquainted with Spider (Jack Champion), the earth boy who considers himself part of the family; or Jake’s arch-enemy, Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who has been brought back from the dead in the body of another towering, blue-skinned avatar.