I do not think the original Avatar is good, but I’ll be the first to admit that Way of Water had me both hootin’ and hollerin’ as I watched genocidal whiteys get murked, and I remember thinking “oh man, I enjoyed that enough I’d watch it again.”

[Monkey’s paw curls]

Did that mean I wanted to watch the exact same film again, but as a sequel? Because I did not. 

Now, before you start quibbling here–there’s the fire Na’vi, multiple(!) whale councils, a fuckton more Spider, the climax which is whales vs. whalers again features more, bigger whales and even some squid too–I think I assumed that this film was going to, you know, not just feature the Sullys mostly hanging around and swimming in the same location of the previous movie. That there’d be some contrived reason for them to end up at a volcano, or among the fire Na’vi, and the film would be a feast of fire and particle effects the way Way of Water was for water physics.

No. In fact, the film does a hilarious thing where the Sullys have their contrived reason to leave the water Na’vi (“Unlike the audience, we don’t want Spider to die!”) and so they leave, get into complications on the way to their original settlement (literally due to the Fire Na’vi!) but within about twenty minutes they’re back with the water Na’vi.

What the hell?

The film does, briefly, go to a volcano so the OG antagonist Quaritch can enjoy a Far Cry 3 cutscene with the leader of the Fire Na’vi Varang, but we never learn anything meaningful about the Fire Na’vi or their motivations, they don’t do anything exciting (one guy Witness Me’s himself, so I thought that might be a thing, but he’s the only one that ever does it, so maybe he was just depressed or something) and Varang has them all move to the evil human settlement so she can be close to her boyfriend? I mean she basically tradwifes herself into irrelevance?

Fire And Ash is just so deeply unrewarding. Look, I’m not exactly hung up on the lore here or anything but the fact that the movie does absolutely nothing to move the overarching story forward feels like… a mistake. If you’re really reaching I guess there are some underwhelming revelations about Kiri and a glimpse of a big white rotating head (???) but I don’t get a sense of where that takes anything. And don’t get me wrong, I could watch whitey get killed in a variety of ways for hours, but it’s mostly the same stuff you’ve seen before, and the one death you’re waiting for–the evil whaling captain–is… nothing. You can’t have him get torn in half or something? At least if you do that he could come back with spider legs (come on, all together now [chanting] Spider legs! Spider legs! Spider legs!)

Speaking of Spiders… what was the deal here? James Cameron made a bet with George Lucas that he could make a human Jar Jar? I’m being unnecessary cruel to Jack Champion (it isn’t his fault) but it’s so weird to make your film about indigenous revolt that’s already about a white saviour end with every Na’vi in I guess all of history crowding round the one white guy that’s cool with them to say “congratulations!” like it’s Evangelion.

I’ve seen a few people say that they like this more than Way of Water, which… I mean, fine, I’d like to agree, but there’s even less narrative drive here. And even if Varang is hot or whatever (where are the thicc Na’vi tho? Am I right, fellas?) the fire dancing and ululation is wildly cringe no matter how desperately we’re all trying to pretend the allegory here has any distance at all.

If you’re “only” going to make five of these, and you’re 71, I don’t think you can piss an entire film and several years away on doing the same thing twice even if it’s still making bank in China and kept a lot of people in New Zealand employed.

*Sigh*

It’s weird that not only do I want these films to be good, I think they should be. “We should brutally kill the people who are making our planet uninhabitable. Like really fucking fuck them up. Real Drive elevator hours” is just the kind of message I can believe in, I guess, even with all this baggage.

Ah well, maybe next time. At least it still looked completely fucking stupid in high frame rate!

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