James Cameron’s Avatar Saga Grows Hotter and Louder, but Not Smarter

Try not to get burned by Avatar: Fire and Ash, another supersized chapter in James Cameron’s visually astonishing but narratively hoary blockbuster franchise. Superfans who do their word processing in the Papyrus font and vocally hiss at their foes will not be disappointed by the Oscar-winning filmmaker’s patented more-is-more approach. Uninitiated viewers out there starting their Avatar adventure with this threequel are guaranteed to be colossally confused.

Avatar: Fire and Ash
★★★ (3/5 stars)
Directed by: James Cameron
Written by: James Cameron
Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Kate Winslet
Running time: 197 mins

Those who commit themselves to their third helping of 22^nd-century Pandora pandemonium should know what to expect: a lather-rinse-repeat approach to in-peril/out-of-peril action involving those galactic blue-skinned slendermen the Na’vi, and their struggles against Earth’s most persistent interstellar mining company, the greedy corporation blandly named the RDA (otherwise known as the Resources Development Administration).

Unobtanium, that insanely precious magnetic superconducting rock unique to the planet Pandora, is still a thing — as is Amrita, the jaundiced neurocrine goo (extracted from the brains of whale-like creatures called the Tulkun) which stops the aging process. Pandora may be 26 trillion miles away from Earth, but its rare minerals and biological elixirs are worth trillions of dollars for those who harvest them. The lush, verdant world of Pandora would even be a prime candidate for Earthlings eager to flee their dying home planet, if only the atmosphere weren’t lethally toxic.

And that’s where Fire and Ash throws a curveball with Miles “Spider” Socorro (Jack Champion). Spider, the goofy teenage dreadlocked white boy who wears an oxygen mask and little else while living among the Na’vi, might just be improbably sitting at the center of a narrative web that will inform the next two planned Avatar movies. Because, in a twist of fate that involves the planet’s magically interconnecting spiritual consciousness Eywa, Spider can now (spoiler alert!) breathe on Pandora without a mask.

Backstory: The orphaned child, technically the estranged son of franchise villain Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), was adopted by Avatar savior Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) after she supposedly shot Quaritch full of arrows. But, this being a sprawling epic by James Cameron, the man who never met an antagonist he didn’t bring back eight or nine times and who literally invented the notion of the unstoppable monster with The Terminator, Quaritch was resurrected from the dead, after the RDA revealed that it had uploaded all his memories before his demise and downloaded them into a newly recombinant Na’vi version of himself. Quaritch got Sully’ed! They both live in their avatar bodies, which kind of doesn’t make them avatars anymore. Come to think of it, no one in the Avatar sequels are actually avatars. But I digress.

There’s more story. For Cameron — the Charles Dickens of cutting-edge sci-fi cinematic 3D action spectacles — there’s always more story and always more world building. As established in Avatar: The Way of Water, Jake and Neytiri led what was left of their jungle tribe the Omatikaya to the oceanic atolls of Pandora and the reef people the Metkayina. They live in harmony with the Tulkun, who speak in humpback moans (helpfully translated with subtitles in Papyrus) while the Na’vi use whale sign language in front of the leviathans’ multiple eyes.

But now  all of the others are under threat from the Mangkwan clan, a beige-skinned people with red-and-black body paint who live in a volcano-decimated society that reveres—you guessed it—both fire and ash. Best of all, they have a delicious new baddie named Varang (Oona Chaplin). She is fantastically psychotic, the kind of sexy pyromaniac that lights up any room she enters.

Quaritch sees in Varang a kindred spirit as well as an opportunity to triangulate between them and the rapacious humans so they can all exterminate the peace-loving Omatikaya, the Metkayina, and the Tulkun. Even better, after trying to kill Quaritch, she basically roofies him as part of her seduction, and Quaritch can’t get enough. Raping and pillaging is their love language, and he gets more progressively native the more he hangs out with her.

Meanwhile, back at the RDA base, stalwart corporate jerk Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) — who, in a hilarious throwaway line, mentions that his dad is RDA’s chairman — grits his teeth and barks at everyone for not having wiped out all these annoying Pandora denizens. His military chief, General Frances Ardmore (Edie Falco, reduced to a Marines-inflected “Oorah” walk-on role) sneers at her staff while they both wander through a pool of holographic topography. They’re literally knee-deep in tech!

They desperately want to reverse-engineer Spider’s lungs to exploit the secret of humans breathing on Pandora, so Quaritch does his best to capture his son while also lassoing Sully. Varang just wants to burn it all down, which is just fine with her kinky inamorata Quaritch. And Sully, one of the most forgettable heroes in pop-culture history, just tries to keep his immediate family alive — including the weirdly revivified Sigourney Weaver as the immaculately conceived and somewhat mystical Kiri, who technically is the daughter of Weaver’s deceased character Dr. Grace Augustine, after her own comatose avatar was suddenly found pregnant.

Am I describing Avatar or As the World Turns? Turn off your brain and you’ll have a lot more fun. Just enjoy the fact that this $400 million interstellar soap opera has eye-popping scenes of kinetic destruction and rollercoaster GoPro-style camerawork to thrill the lizard brain in everyone. Plus squid attacks! Ruthless whaler Aussies! Also Kate Winslet if you squint hard enough. Never forget that, even in the distant future, on a distant planet, people will still be saying things like “That was insane, cuz!” and “That’s right, buttholes!” as well as “They’re starting to arrive for the calf communion.” In space, no one can hear you chortle.