Writer/director James Cameron’s massively successful 2009 film Avatar grossed nearly $3 billion worldwide. It was always going to have a bunch of sequels, and Cameron was taking his good old time figuring out what those sequels were going to be. The third film, eventually titled Avatar: Fire and Ash was filmed simultaneously with the previous sequel, and was originally intended to be released in December 2015. But due to a million delays and upgraded technology Cameron wanted to use for the films, it took until 2022 for the first sequel Avatar: The Way of Water to be released. That film went onto gross $2.4 billion worldwide as well, so 20th Century Fox, now owned by Disney, had the pressure on Cameron to complete the next film as soon as possible. And it’s only been 3 years since The Way of Water, and by all metrics it looks like Cameron and Disney have another ridiculously lucrative box office hit on their hands. And Cameron still wants to make another two Avatar films. But should he?

Shortly after settling with the Metkayina clan (the water people), Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), his wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) and their children are still reeling from the death of the young Neteyam. Once Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) finds a way that Spider (Jack Champion), the human teenager who’s a part of their family, can breathe the air in Pandora without a mask, this changes the entire dynamic. The military wants to find a way to synthesize and monetize this. Jake’s eternal nemesis Miles Quartich (Stephen Lang), also Spider’s real father, learns of this and teams up with Varang (Oona Chaplin), the leader of the previously unseen Mangkwan tribe (the fire people), to destroy Jake and his family once and for all. 

The spectacle of the Avatar films is almost indisputably the most exciting thing about them. The joke that everyone likes to make about Avatar is how the franchise has grossed billions of dollars, but seemingly has close to no cultural impact or staying power. You never see people dressing up as the characters for Halloween, you never hear people quoting the films, you never see ongoing conversations dissecting the films and what they mean. And I don’t think Avatar: Fire and Ash will be the one that changes this. Despite the gargantuan 198 minute running time (these movies just keep getting longer), there’s surprisingly little here we haven’t already seen. It’s becoming increasingly clear Cameron had no great plan about what he wanted his 5 (FIVE!) Avatar films to be, but was hoping audiences would continue to vibe with the world of Pandora. And this is where he loses me.

There’s a reason why Sam Worthington never became a giant movie star outside of this franchise. He’s got almost no charisma or personality, and he still hasn’t mastered the New York(?) accent and still sounds suspiciously Australian. Since the last Avatar, Zoe Saldaña has become an Oscar winner (for one of the worst films ever made) and Cameron still doesn’t know how to capitalize on what she does best, and still doesn’t know how to write for women in general. In this one, Neytiri is a grieving and angry mother and that’s kind of all there is to her. There’s nothing going on here beneath the surface, and I found that frustrating.

The Way of Water also introduced an almost unrecognizable Kate Winslet as a leader of the water people. I still don’t see Kate Winslet at all in this character, so either her motion capture performance is just that good, or her performance has entirely been lost in the post-production process. We also see Sigourney Weaver return as Jake and Neytiri’s daughter Kiri, a clone of her character Grace from the first film. And it was weird last time, and it’s weird again now – it’s ridiculous to hear the 76-year-old voice of Weaver coming out of a character meant to be a wide-eyed teenager. There’s a moment involving this character at the very end that was intended to be a big emotional climax, that actually made me laugh. There’s a lot here that I found unintentionally funny, unfortunately. 

Stephen Lang was the villain of the previous two movies, and he returns now, as Jake’s nemesis who refuses to die. He is not a compelling enough villain to build three films around, and yet I suspect he’ll be back again next time. The only performance I found truly impressive here was that of Oona Chaplin, playing our new villain. She’s got a very menacing and ominous presence and she’s exciting to watch. Edie Falco and Giovanni Ribisi also return as the human military commanders overseeing what Quartich is doing, and if they seem like they’re in a different movie than everyone else, it’s because they are. The few human beings in this film acting opposite people in motion capture ping pong ball suits were always going to feel like an afterthought. 

And I don’t know if it’s always been this bad or if it’s gotten worse, but has James Cameron always been this terrible at writing dialogue? It feels like a 13-year-old boy could have written this script, and at best the dialogue is clunky, at worst it’s downright laughable. It’s also very unintentionally funny to see subtitled conversations between the whales, who we were introduced to in the last film. And structurally, Cameron’s screenplay is not really adding very much to the overall world building and lore of Pandora. The Way of Water felt like a meaningful expansion of the first film’s world, with stunningly gorgeous underwater cinematography and new characters and creatures. In Fire and Ash, we’re introduced to what’s essentially a cult led by Oona Chaplin’s character. It doesn’t feel like we’re learning about a new tribe of characters with their own backstory and lore, like we did last time. We’re basically meeting a cult leader and her followers, and I found that less interesting.

And of course I must talk about visual effects, which are largely the selling point of this entire franchise. The world of Pandora is still visually exciting, and there’s so much here to take in. But Cameron is using this odd high frame rate/motion smoothing technology that has looked like crap ever since filmmakers started using it, and unfortunately still does. If you’ve ever walked through Best Buy with the intent of buying a new television, you could easily imagine one of the floor models playing an Avatar movie. And also, because Fire and Ash isn’t really showing us anything we haven’t seen in the previous films, it’s ultimately less exciting visually. You can’t go to a fictional place like Pandora for the first time again, so it was always going to be a creative challenge to keep these films visually exciting. Cameron managed to do that in The Way of Water, but 12 years had passed between it and the first film. Only three years have passed between Water and Fire, and unfortunately it all feels very much like more of the same. 

James Cameron clearly has so much emotionally and financially invested in the world of Avatar. Walt Disney World has an entire Avatar theme park attraction, and the initial 2009 film, and the promise of its sequels, was a factor in Disney’s 2019 decision to buy 20th Century Fox. So, it makes sense why the people in suits who make the decisions about what gets made in Hollywood, would want this series to continue. But next time, Cameron will need to show us something we haven’t seen before, and give audiences a compelling reason to care about this world again.  I’m hoping the devoted fans of this franchise have a better time with Fire and Ash, and from what I’ve seen so far, they have. But for me, almost three and a half hours in the world of Pandora now feels exhausting rather than exhilarating.