‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ Review: The Best ‘Avatar’ Yet?

James Cameron is in no hurry. This guy has been working on Avatar in some shape or form since at least 1994, and the two Avatar sequels for the last 16 years. Compared to all of that, Avatar: Fire and Ash’s 197-minute runtime is like a drop in the ocean where Payakan (The Mighty Tulkun) roams. If spending three hours and 15 minutes in a theater intimidates you, stay home and look at social media on your phone.

It will be your loss. Avatar: Fire and Ash weds the best of cutting-edge moviemaking technology with old-fashioned Hollywood storytelling for a tale of the wild frontier (in space) told in high frame rate 3D instead of three-strip Technicolor. It’s got incredible visuals, jaw-dropping action, two pairs of mirrored heroes and villains, talking alien whales, and a space witch who entrances a man with interstellar LSD. It basically puts every other large-scale blockbuster of 2025 to shame.

I write all of this as someone who enjoyed but did not adore either previous Avatar film. Of 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water I wrote that “if the story occasionally seems a bit all over the place, well, there are worse things in the world than a filmmaker throwing every last morsel of creativity into his work.” Fire and Ash was the movie where this franchise finally clicked together for me, where the weight of all those decades of work off-screen — not to mention all the groundwork Cameron has laid on screen with his enormous cast — really paid off emotionally. By the end of the film, when three characters (who I will not name) were doing something absurdly cool yet incredibly intense (that I will not describe) my heart was practically in my throat.

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I will note here that I only saw The Way of Water once, and I did not revisit it before Fire and Ash and I had no problem re-acclimating to the otherworldly climes of the faraway planet Pandora and the various factions fighting over it. That includes human Marine turned Na’vi warrior Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) , his Na’vi wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), and their kids, including reckless Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), sensitive Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) and youngling Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss). The Sullys also care for a human orphan named Spider (Jack Champion), who is the biological son of Jake’s arch-nemesis Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), Jake’s former commanding officer (and former human) who he killed in the first Avatar. 

In The Way of Water Quaritch was resurrected in a cloned Na’vi body, which he now uses to pursue Jake and his family across the Pandora. This time out, he partners with Varang (Oona Chaplin), the feral leader of a fire-worshiping clan of Na’vi. While the previous Avatars mostly depicted Pandora’s alien residents as fractious but largely well-intentioned, Varang’s ash people are straight-up mean, and her collaboration with Quaritch scrambles the allegiances at play in Cameron’s sprawling story even further.

Cameron has once again surrounded that story with an astounding array of visual imagination, so much so that sitting here not long after the movie I’m struggling to remember all of the most interesting elements. There are new alien creatures to admire, like undersea monsters that are best described as squid sharks. There’s new technology and gadgets as well; bigger and more complex warships and exo suits. The amount of sheer imagination on display — much of it tossed off amidst massive set pieces or dialogue scenes — is staggering. I cannot imagine the amount of time and effort that went into designing the look and function of a human transport with wheels that can rotate inside their wells so it can swivel at will, and this vehicle appears onscreen for maybe — maybe! — 20 seconds.

The Fire and Ash press screening began with a recorded message from James Cameron insisting that despite its computer-generated imagery, the Avatar movies are the work of legions of artists. (At least as he defines these things, this is not an animated feature.) Behind-the-scenes footage showed Worthington and Saldaña performing in “The Volume” with little dots all over their faces side-by-side with their Na’vi characters in order to showcase the extent to which the cast’s acting comes through on the big screen in their alien counterparts.

There might be a bit of Mr. Cameron doth protest too much here (obviously there is a ton of digital artistry on display) but whatever alchemy of technical wizardry and human input makes it, the Na’vi are truly remarkable creations — and their performances are genuinely affecting, from Neytiri’s grief over her fallen son to Varang’s lust for power to Kiri’s wonder at the power of Pandora’s “Great Mother” spirit, Eywa.

Every time one of these Avatar movies comes out, everyone jokes about how they’re gussied-up cartoons and people online joke about how no one cares about them. Then the film actually arrives in theaters and it’s epic and exciting and gorgeous and heartbreaking. Would I be interested in a James Cameron motion picture not set on Pandora? Absolutely. But after Fire and Ash, which really might be my favorite of the Avatar films to date, I’m also okay if he just stays on Pandora forever.

RATING: 8/10