Tripwire Reviews Avatar: Fire And Ash

Empty Vessels

Tripwire’s editor-in-chief Joel Meadows reviews James Cameron’s second Avatar sequel, Avatar: Fire And Ash, in UK and US cinemas from this Friday…

Avatar Fire And Ash
Director: James Cameron
Stars: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Oona Chaplin, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Edie Falco, David Thewlis

Seventeen years on from James Cameron’s original Avatar, which was a massive box office hit and three years from its first sequel, The Way Of Water, audiences are introduced to a second sequel, Avatar: Fire And Ash. Running time of 3 hours and 17 mins is very similar to its predecessor as is its plot (in fact more than similar, it’s almost identical). Jake Sully and family including children Tuktirey, Kiri and son Lo’ak have to come to terms with the loss of their son Neteyam in The Way of Water while facing a new threat in the shape of the Ash people led by Varang (Chaplin) who has teamed up with the malevolent Qu’aritch (Lang). The sky people, those aliens from outside of Pandora, have also returned to slaughter the Tulkun and take the substance Amrita, which stops the human aging process.

As with The Way Of Water, Fire and Ash is a beautiful looking and immersive film with Cameron’s evolution of what can be done with digital and 3D technology astounding. Watching it on the most high-tech modern cinema screen, you are struck by how visually ambitious the director’s work continues to be. Unfortunately, that ambition falls far short when it comes to Fire and Ash’s plot and script. The fall-out of the loss of Sully and Neytiri’s son at the end of the last film does offer a little emotional resonance and adopted daughter Kiri’s origins here are a little thought-provoking. But Qu-aritch is a truly two-dimensional villain as are all of the humans hell bent on the wholesale murder of Pandora’s giant whale-like analogues. Also, the plot to obtain the Amrita just feels like a lazy retread of the story of The Way of Water.

Cameron and co have created what could be a genuinely interesting setting in alien planet Pandora and the detail and care that the film makers have taken in bringing the different tribes of the Na’avi to life, shaped by their environment, is admirable and unmatched by any other sci-fi film of the past twenty-five years. However, unlike his earlier efforts like Aliens, Terminator and Terminator 2, Avatar lacks the humour and the warmth of Cameron’s better works. So it comes across as merely a technical exercise in how much a production can push the envelope and the plot feels very much like an afterthought to frame a series of empty set pieces with cartoon protagonists and antagonists. There are moments when Fire and Ash tries to connect with the audience like the scenes where Qu’aritch and Spider, who may or may not be the soldier’s son, have a head to head and the sequences when we see Kiri questioning her parentage does feel touching. But most of it just feels like Cameron waving his technical prowess in our face.

The 3D does make the viewing experience impressive at times but with such a paper-thin plot, it doesn’t really matter.

Cameron’s last two Avatar films have cleaned up at the box office and this second sequel is likely to do the same as they seem to be critic proof. But it is a shame that a director who showed himself to be so inventive earlier on in his career is now treading water.

JOEL MEADOWS

Avatar: Fire And Ash is in cinemas from this Friday 19 December.