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Since acquiring 20th Century Studios from Fox in 2019, Disney has had its hands full managing legacy IPs. We’ve seen the studio struggle to find its footing with some franchises, but if there is one golden rule in Hollywood that has remained undefeated for nearly 40 years, it is this: Never. Bet. Against. James. Cameron.

For over a decade, the internet echo chamber loved to shout that Avatar had “no cultural impact.” Nobody cared about the Na’vi. Nobody cared about Dances with Space Wolves. And then The Way of Water dropped, silenced the haters, and casually grossed $2.3 billion. Now, as we stare down the barrel of the third installment, Avatar: Fire and Ash, it’s clear that Cameron isn’t just making movies; he’s crafting a generational mythology. Before dissecting whether or not Cameron managed to catch lightning in a bottle for a third time, a look back is required.

Avatar (2009): The Blue Blueprint

In 2009, James Cameron decided to change cinema forever, and he succeeded.

Avatar introduced Jake Sully, a paraplegic Marine who took his brother’s spot in the Avatar Program. The mission was simple: infiltrate the Omaticaya clan, gain their trust, and convince them to move so the RDA could mine their Unobtainium. But Cameron doesn’t do simple.

• The Turn: Jake fell hard for Neytiri and the spiritual depth of the Na’vi. He realized that while Earth was dying, Pandora was living–and worth dying for.
• The Big Bad: Colonel Miles Quaritch. The guy drank coffee while piloting a mech and wanted nothing more than to burn Hometree to the ground.
• The Climax: Jake went full native, tamed the Toruk to become Toruk Makto, and united the clans to send the Sky People packing. He transferred his consciousness permanently into his Avatar body, leaving his human life behind.

A visual masterpiece, Avatar set the stage for Cameron’s incredibly ambitious plans.

Avatar: The Way of Water (2022): The Resurgence

Fast forward 13 years. The “no cultural impact” crowd was loud, but Cameron was louder.

Jake and Neytiri had been busy raising a squad: Neteyam (the dutiful oldest), Lo’ak (the rebellious second son), Tuk (the adorable youngest), and Kiri (Grace Augustine’s mysterious daughter with a God-tier connection to Eywa). They even took in Spider, a human kid who–in one of the franchise’s best twists–is Quaritch’s son.

And speaking of Quaritch, the RDA brought him back as a Recombinant Avatar. He’s blue, he’s angry, and he’s hunting Jake.

• The Shift: Realizing his presence put the forest in danger, Jake resigned as leader. The family fled to the Metkayina, the reef people. This was a bold move by Cameron, taking the Sullys and the audience out of the familiar forest and forcing both to learn the way of water.
• The Heartbreak: The RDA wasn’t just hunting Jake; they were hunting Tulkun (sentient space whales) for Amrita, the new immortality serum. In the final, brutal confrontation, Cameron delivered a gut punch that grounded the spectacle in real, raw loss when Neteyam was killed.
• The Lesson: Jake realized that running is a fool’s game. “This is our fortress.” The Sullys are done hiding.

We’ve seen the forest, and we’ve seen the ocean; now, Cameron is dragging us into the fire. If Avatar: The Way of Water was about protection, Avatar: Fire and Ash is about aggression. And aggression is a central and organizing theme of the third installment in the franchise. Avatar: Fire and Ash introduces the Mangkwan clan– the Ash People–a volcanic tribe who have suffered greatly. Unlike the forest and reef clans who live in harmony with Eywa, the Ash People have been twisted by their suffering to become vengeful and aggressive, a far cry from the Metkayina. Radicalized by their suffering, the Mangkwan and their leader, the Nightsister-coded Varang, hold a deconstructivist mirror up to the prior installments in the franchise, proving that not all Na’vi are inherently good and allowing for the exploration of how experience can shape morality.

Heading into Avatar: Fire and Ash, the heroes and villains of Pandora find themselves much changed from their original selves and those changes and the chaos that has accompanied them drive the film’s first two acts.

Mourning a son, Jake and Neytiri find themselves challenged by grief and rage, with each of them handling things differently but, unfortunately, separately. Having been saved by Spider, Quartich is still out there, carrying a heavy grudge. As awful as Quaritch is, he’s really nothing more than Jake’s nemesis, whereas the RDA–now establishing a permanent footprint in Bridgehead–has begun colonizing the planet and doing what humans do worst. And, of course, the wildcard in the mix is Kiri, with her inexplicable connection to Pandora’s super organism/goddess, Eywa, still serving as a potential game changer.

To speak bluntly, Avatar: Fire and Ash does not spin the most compelling or surprising yarn, often repeating beats from Avatar: The Way of Water. The plot, while not poorly conceived will neither surprise nor disappoint; however, it’s predictable nature at no point detracts from the enjoyment of the film. In my screening, I found myself less-than-engrossed in the story for only one ten-minute stretch of the 190+ minute movie and that’s because, as you might expect, Cameron‘s inclination to prioritize spectacle is on grand display. Ancient Tulkun that dwarf what we’ve seen before, battles over sky and sea that captivate and hold stakes and set pieces worthy of the Dolby experience Cameron intends audiences to have all make Avatar: Fire and Ash exactly the type of film that demands to be seen in a theater.

It’s not all eye candy, though. For its lack of a truly surprising plot, the third installment in the franchise does allow for its main characters to grow. With war upon them, the Sullys must choose whether to be consumed by their grief or repair the rift that remains from the death of Neteyam. It is to this end that the Mangkwan serve as a wonderfully conceived foil for everything the audience has come to understand about the Na’vi and the Sullys. In the case of Neytiri, Oona Chaplin‘s Varang is less of a dark shadow of who she is and more of a projection of who she may become if she allows her own personal fire to burn what she still has to ash.

While Cameron has plans for another pair of films in the franchise, there’s no guarantee those will come to fruition. If that becomes the case and Avatar is  ultimately a trilogy, Fire and Ash ensures that Cameron will have accomplished everything he set out to do. Not only has he continued to push the boundaries of technology in film, he’s created a series of parables that have spread his message of conservation, family dynamics and the universal desire to belong. If there’s one point among those that Fire and Ash makes most salient, it’s the final one and it does so in a way that’s reverential to the entire trilogy while also serving as the perfect conclusion to the Avatar story if it does not continue. Its a beautiful and fitting end cap to what’s been a beautiful and fitting examination of our time.