Avatar: Fire and Ash Review — Stunning Visuals, But the Story Feels Hollow

James Cameron re-visits Pandora with his epic story of the elements, Avatar: Fire and Ash, the third part of the saga. The plot mainly revolves around the Fire clan of the Na’vi, a fierce and vengeful tribe, not at all like the blue-skinned natives we were introduced to in the previous movies.

Cameron’s world of Pandora never ceases to amaze with the stunning visuals — from the glowing Tree of Souls to the giant Tulkun whales — but the story moves on at a much lower pace and is not so thrilling. The themes of environmental destruction, human greed, and the fate of the natives are again in the middle, but the plot feels repetitive and systematic.

Zoe Saldana is a most talented actress in the role of Neytiri, she gives a complicated, and yet very sensitive performance, which reveals grief, love, and determination. The film brings up Mangkwan clan, the ones who survived a volcanic disaster and refuse to accept the tag of the goddess Eywa. Their leader, Verang, is an interesting new villain but her story arc is often loaded with lengthy social and familial drama and hence feels sluggish.

The film has a runtime of more than three hours but still a large part of it consist of replays of the action scenes that we saw in Avatar: The Way of Water. The grand finale settings are outstanding in visual terms, especially the underwater sequences with the Tulkun, but the ups and downs of the story are foreknown. Conversations are merely serving their purpose but have no spark and sometimes, they come across as over-calibrated and technical, just like Cameron was using a plot checklist rather than animating it through storytelling.

From a technical point of view, Fire and Ash is something marvelous. The combination of motion capture and CGI has made Pandora a place of unparalleled beauty, and the pictures taken in every scene are proof of the $2 billion outlay in the audience-engaging visuals. However, the story is not as deep as Way of Water or even other action-adventurous films like Dhurandhar, this leads to the spectators being amazed and impressed but not entirely involved.

In a nutshell, Avatar: Fire and Ash is a visual extravaganza but lacking in narrative content. Only true lovers of Cameron’s Universe will cherish the journey back to Pandora, but the rest looking for a good story might be disappointed by the movie.