Movie Review: AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: December 22nd, 2025 / 04:23 PM

Rating: PG-13
Stars: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Oona Chaplin, Kate Winslet, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore, Jack Champion, David Thewlis, CCH Pounder, Edie Falco, Gionvanni Ribisi, Brendan Cowell, Jemaine Clement, Jamie Flatters, Britain Dalton, Trinity Jo-Li Bliss, Bailey Bass, Laz Alonso, Filip Geljo, Duane Evans Jr.
Writers: James Cameron & Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver, story by James Cameron & Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver & Josh Friedman & Shane Salerno, based on characters created by James Cameron
Director: James Cameron
Distributor: 20^th Century Studios
Release Date: December 19, 2025

The original 2009 AVATAR was a marvel of special and digital effects, presented in a 3D format so realistic that it looked like viewers could simply leave their seats and walk into the projected image. The story was a bit like “Dances with Alien Pterodactyls,” with a hero who first goes undercover and then goes native on the life-sustaining moon Pandora. It was immersive and exciting, and if it got a little heavy-handed in its allegory, it was also heartfelt.

The sequel, 2022’s AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER, likewise looked amazing, with creator/director James Cameron inventing an entire undersea ecosystem to match the above-ground one he’d devised for AVATAR.

The new AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH has a few new visual innovations and characters, but it somehow feels less cinematic than its predecessors. Directed by Cameron and co-written by him & Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver, from a story they crafted with Josh Friedman & Shane Salerno (the same team that collaborated on AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER; Cameron wrote the first AVATAR solo), it broadens the world of Pandora and further complicates the lives of our main characters.

In AVATAR, we meet Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a Marine who winds up courtesy of military science with his mind in an “Avatar” body that matches those of the tall blue Pandora Na’vi natives. Jake is supposed to infiltrate the Na’vi. Instead, he realizes that their cause to protect their home from human invaders is righteous, and he joins them in driving the “sky people” from Earth off Pandora.

In the process, Jake falls in love with Na’vi woman Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña). By 2022’s AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER, Jake and Neytiri have a family. They are once more called upon (along with their neighbors) to defend Pandora, and its whale-like Tulkun inhabitants. Due to this otherwise victorious battle, Jake and Neytiri lose one of their sons, Netayam (Jamie Flatters).

In AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH, Neteyam’s younger brother Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) blames himself for his sibling’s death. Jake is inclined to blame Lo’ak as well. Neytiri, meanwhile, still loves Jake but resents his human origins and objects even more to the presence of Spider (Jack Champion), a human teen born on Pandora who has essentially been adopted into the clan.

Meanwhile, Jack’s biological dad, Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), Jake’s commanding officer from the first AVATAR, who died in that film, but whose memories were brought back in a Na’vi avatar body in THE WAY OF WATER, is still on the homicidal hunt for his AWOL man. Quaritch’s commanding officer, General Ardmore (Edie Falco), by now would just as soon Quaritch give up on his singular vengeful quest and get with the bigger-picture program of harvesting Tulkun and clearing Pandora for human expansion, but Quaritch is a single-minded son of a gun.

A new group of Pandora natives is introduced in AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH. These are the take-no-prisoners, fire-worshipping Ash people, led by bloodthirsty Varang (Oona Chaplin). They provide new makeup and story opportunities for the current outing.

Even so, plot-wise, AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH plays out a bit like the last few episodes of a season of a Syfy Channel series, with lots of interlinking subplots that are decent but are more familiar than engaging.

One strand stands out because so much is made of it, only to have it blur away. While the audience won’t need the rationale for a possible grim decision stated twice already in the dialogue, a character who is affected by it goes from complete ignorance to comprehension without either explanation or telepathy. Since having it told would provide big emotional moments for the teller and the listener, whatever one thinks of the impact that’s being aimed for, this is just plain sloppy.

Otherwise, AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH has the clashes that are a big part of the franchise, from primitive hand-to-hand combat to a variety of all sorts of handmade weapons to confronting the mechanized might of an intergalactic military operation.

Cameron is an expert at staging these, and the sequences are properly dynamic and varied. Newcomer Chaplin has (and contributes) a blast as the enthusiastically murderous Varang and everyone else is comfortable in their motion-capture skins, including Sigourney Weaver as Jake and Neytiri’s adopted daughter Kiri.

AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH, at three-and-a-quarter hours and with all those subplots, again, sometimes feels more like bingeing on a super-budgeted TV show than watching a movie. Overall, it is fun and energetic and spectacularly choreographed; it just doesn’t have the novelty of its predecessors.

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