Nerdly » ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ Review

19th Dec2025

‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ Review

by Matthew Turner

Stars: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weavseqer, Stephen Lang, Oona Chaplin, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Edie Falco, David Thewlis, Jemaine Clement, Giovanni Ribisi, Britain Dalton, Jamie Flatters, Kate Winslet | Written by James Cameron, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver | Directed by James Cameron

Director James Cameron returns with Avatar: Fire and Ash, the third instalment of his epic sci-fi adventure series, following 2009’s Avatar and its 2022 sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water. This time round, the film lacks the novelty that accompanied the ground-breaking technological advancements of the first two movies, and the plot seems decidedly familiar, but there have been significant improvements in terms of pacing and action.

The story picks up some time after the events of the second movie, with Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) still reeling from the loss of their son and determined to protect their remaining children, which includes their adopted human son Spider (Jack Champion). However, after Spider develops the ability to breathe Pandora’s air, it puts Jake and his family at risk because the humans target him, hoping to reverse-engineer the process and conquer the planet.

Meanwhile, the avatar of Quaritch (Stephen Lang), Spider’s now-dead human father – don’t ask – allies himself with the Mangkwan clan, a rival tribe of fire-loving aliens led by the fierce warrior Varang (Oona Chaplin), and trains them in the use of human firearms, intending to mount an all-out attack on Sully, his family and the peaceful Metkayina clan, the water-dwelling tribe with whom they have made their home. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the humans are also planning to capture and kill hundreds of the whale-like sea beasts known as the Tulkun, which would have a devastating effect on Pandora’s ecosystem.

If you haven’t recently rewatched the second movie, it does take a fair few minutes to catch up, in terms of who all the characters are, what has happened to them and what they actually want. However, once that’s out of the way, Cameron maintains a surprisingly brisk pace, ensuring that that potentially bottom-numbing running time zips past at a remarkable rate.

It’s also fair to say that Cameron knows his way around an action sequence. There’s a constant stream of them here, ranging from flying creature races to epic battles to shoot-outs to carefully orchestrated escape plans, and each one of them is executed in thrilling fashion.

The script, by contrast, is on less solid ground. It’s bad enough that the teenage male aliens call each other “bro” (the dialogue is generally weak), but there’s also an awful lot of Pandora-based spiritualism that it’s difficult to invest in, on an emotional level. That said, you can’t fault Cameron’s environmental sensibilities – his metaphors may be clumsy (the Tulkun stuff is basically a Save the Whales campaign), but his heart is clearly in the right place.

The performances are solid across the board, with the state-of-the-art effects work (including sophisticated motion-capture tech) ensuring that the characters all convey suitably moving facial expressions. The stand-out this time round is Oona Chaplin, who takes Varang and really runs with her, pretty much stealing the film as a result. That said, her relationship with Quaritch definitely raises more questions than it answers, and those questions are not exactly 12A-friendly.

The main problem, this time round, is that it never really feels like we’re seeing something we haven’t seen before, as was the case with the previous movies. To that end, even some of the shots and sequences are a little derivative, and you can’t help wondering just why Cameron thinks we need another two more Avatar movies after this (presumably Wind and Earth-based, after covering Fire and Water).

In short, Cameron’s assured direction ensures that Avatar: Fire and Ash maintains a cracking pace and delivers plenty of action, but it’s hard to believe that audiences are as invested in these characters and this world as much as he clearly thinks they are. Let’s hope he has something surprising up his sleeve for the fourth movie, because this one is really just more of the same.