Familiar spectacle

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, December 19th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: another sequel to the biggest blockbuster of all time … Avatar: Fire and Ash

It’s installment number three in director James Cameron’s multibillion-dollar science-fiction film franchise that combines over-the-top special effects with environmentalism.
Here’s arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino.

COLLIN GARBARINO: Let me begin by acknowledging that I’m not a fan of James Cameron’s Avatar movies. I’ve always felt—to paraphrase Jane Austen—they’re the kind of movies everybody admires, but nobody notices. Sure, the original Avatar and its sequel The Way of Water are the No. 1 and No. 3 highest grossing movies of all time. But does anyone actually remember them? No one’s walking around peppering their conversation with Avatar quotations.

They’re extravagant movies that rely on spectacle and special effects to compensate for weak plots. This latest installment Avatar: Fire and Ash hasn’t done anything to improve my opinion. Even so, I think this one is the best Avatar movie so far, if considered on its own. Of course the bar is pretty low.

JAKE SULLY: Look, I’m a marine. I’m not taking a knife to a gun fight.

The original Avatar came out 16 years ago. And it introduced audiences to the Na’vi, a blue-skinned forest-dwelling alien race. The Na’vi live in harmony with their planet and are devoted to their pantheistic mother goddess Eywa. In that first movie, a human marine named Jake Sully gets his consciousness uploaded into a Na’vi body. Jake ends up going native, fighting alongside the nature-worshipping Na’vi against the humans who are bent on destroying Pandora’s forests for profit. Subtlety is not Cameron’s strong suit.

Just in case you missed it the first time, in the 2022 sequel The Way of Water, we meet a tribe of green-skinned Na’vi who live on ocean reefs. Jake and his Na’vi family have to fight alongside this new tribe of nature-worshipping Na’vi against humans who are bent on destroying Pandora’s oceans for profit. See a pattern emerging?

NEYTIRI: All I have is my faith that this is the Great Mother’s plan.

In Fire and Ash, Jake is once again played by Sam Worthington, and he remains at the center of the conflict between Na’vi and humanity. Despite winning battles at the end of the previous two movies, he and his family are still on the run from the human military. Jake is trying to protect those he loves, but his wife Neytiri, played by Zoe Saldaña, is grieving for the son she lost in the second film.

NEYTIRI: I’m in this place where I have nothing. Not my people. Not my forest.

Fire and Ash deviates from the old avatar formula when a brutal clan of Na’vi known as the Ash People show up. They’re ruthless raiders who live on a barren mountain, and they delight in fire and cruelty. They’ve turned their backs on Eywa. Their leader only worships power.

VARANG: Your goddess has no dominion here.

In return for help in tracking down Jake and his family, the humans make an alliance with the Ash People, putting all of Pandora at risk.

QUARITCH: I’ll give you guns. I’ll give you coms. RPGs. Well, that’s strong magic.

The presence of the Ash People gives the Avatar franchise some much needed nuance. The first two installments were filled with eco-babble, nature worship, and preachy condemnation of the West’s military dominance. Those elements are still present to a lesser degree, but Fire and Ash questions the franchise’s simplistic moralism that viewed indigenous peoples as “good” and colonizers as “bad.”

AUDIO: [War calls of Ash People]

Folks are more complex in this movie, they’re both good and bad, having noble aspirations and painful regrets. But just because there’s more texture to the characterization doesn’t mean you should expect better dialogue. Also, Cameron has started including some Christian imagery in the story. I don’t think he’s becoming interested in the true faith. He’s probably just trying to inject some weightiness into this frothy pantheism he’s coupled with cliches.

LO’AK: What does Dad always say?

TUK: Sullys stick together.

LO’AK: No, the other one.

TUK: Sullys never quit.

LO’AK: That’s right. Sullys never quit.

As I said, in some respects this is the best Avatar movie, mostly because it’s not as preachy, but when watched alongside the other movies, it has some big problems. Viewers will get a sense of deja vu as they watch Fire and Ash. There’s some new material here, but overall, Cameron seems stuck in a rut. It’s a 195-minute film that recycles too many plot points and action sequences from the previous movies. For example, father-son tensions flare up once again. And many scenes in the final battle feel like they were lifted straight out of the previous movie. Someone should produce an unofficial cut that removes the redundancies and condenses the two films into one streamlined story.

James Cameron has promised to make five Avatar movies, so where does the franchise go from here? We have Na’vi who ride the wind. We have Na’vi who surf the waves. Now we have Na’vi who play with fire. Are we about to get cave-dwelling Na’vi who dig in the dirt? Whatever part of Pandora we head to next, I wouldn’t count on Cameron coming up with any fresh ideas.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

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