Avatar: Fire and Ash

REVIEW:

I was really hoping the third Avatar film would be the movie of the year, something to close things out on a high with a big-budget technical masterpiece. Instead, Avatar: Fire and Ash left me deeply disappointed. Unfortunately, this series continues to diminish in quality with each new instalment, relying more on spectacle than substance.

For a movie that runs three hours and fifteen minutes, it is surprisingly boring. The visuals are undeniably impressive, often jaw-dropping, but they feel empty. I found myself admiring the technical craft rather than being absorbed by the story, which is a serious issue for a franchise built on immersion.

The contrast with the first Avatar couldn’t be clearer. That film still remains the best, and after rewatching it recently, it genuinely feels massive. Pandora felt alien, dangerous, and alive. The story was straightforward: humans attempt to harvest Unobtanium, putting them in direct conflict with the Na’vi. Everything else, including the relationship between Jake Sully and Neytiri, grew naturally from that central conflict.

Fire and Ash has the opposite problem. It is burdened with far too many story threads and no clear narrative spine. Quaritch is hunting Sully again, Spider can suddenly breathe without a mask, Kiri’s powerful connection to Eywa is teased but never meaningfully explored, Lo’ak goes searching for the Tulkun, and we’re introduced to the new Ash tribe. Individually, these ideas could have worked, but together they turn the film into an unfocused sprawl.

Because of this overload, the film never gives you time to emotionally invest. There are simply too many characters competing for attention, and none of them are developed enough to truly matter. Scenes that are clearly designed to carry emotional weight end up feeling flat, because the film keeps rushing on to the next plot thread.

The title itself also feels misleading. Given the forest setting of the first film and the ocean focus of The Way of Water, I fully expected this chapter to take us somewhere harsher and more unfamiliar, perhaps a volcanic, fire-scorched region of Pandora. There is one brief scene where Quaritch goes to the Ash Tribe to make a deal, and they are shown living in a rocky part of Pandora with fire burning all around them, but the moment is fleeting and the location is never truly revisited. It only highlights a missed opportunity — why didn’t the film spend more time here? An aerial battle above an active volcano feels like the kind of bold, epic escalation this franchise desperately needs. Instead, much of the film unfolds in environments that feel visually similar to what we’ve already seen, making it feel like The Way of Water: Part 2 rather than a bold new evolution.

That sense of repetition is hard to ignore. Fire and Ash doesn’t meaningfully push the franchise forward, either narratively or thematically. It plays the hits again, but with less urgency and far less impact, which is surprising given the ambition behind the series.

In the end, Avatar: Fire and Ash looks incredible, but that’s where its strengths begin and end. I was expecting so much more, and instead I left feeling disengaged. Avatar: Fire and Ash proves that visual spectacle alone can no longer carry this franchise and right now, that’s all it has left.