AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH (2025) review

written by: James Cameron, Rick Jaffa, and Amanda Silver
produced by: James Cameron and Jon Landau
directed by: James Cameron
rated: PG-13 (for intense sequences of violence and action, bloody images, some strong language, thematic elements, and suggestive material)
runtime: 197 min.
U.S. release date: December 19, 2025

When “Avatar: The Way of Water” came out in 2022, it was quite a while after writer/director James Cameron debuted his epic sci-fi fantasy “Avatar” in 2009. As expected, he delivered something more epic, bigger in scope, and ground-breaking in its performance-capture technology. Still, despite the stunning visuals, especially the exceptional use of 3D, Cameron’s first sequel suffered from a repetitive, unimaginative screenplay with dialogue so cheesy and clunky that it felt like the characters should have drawstrings on their backs. Unfortunately, the second sequel, “Avatar: Fire and Ash”, isn’t all that different from the last movie. Cameron and his co-writers, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, are essentially regurgitating the same story as “The Way of Water, counting on viewers coming back for “more of the same, rather than offering them something new and different.

“Fire and Ash” reaffirms that you can deliver breathtaking visual effects and impressive sound and production design, but if the writing is woefully lacking, then there’s a significant problem.

What’s that? No one goes to a James Cameron “Avatar” movie for a compelling story? Sure, fine. But, if you’re going to spend over three hours in a movie theater, there has to be more than just visual spectacle. These movies are so immersive that it feels more like our passport is getting punched, rather than simply purchasing a ticket, but the story in “Fire and Ash” feels like Cameron decided to redo “The Way of Water.” Maybe that’s because at one point, the last movie and this new sequel were going to be one movie, so maybe “The Way of Water Part II” is more appropriate.

“Fire and Ash” picks up where we last left Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his family, licking their wounds after losing his son, Neteyam, in a devastating battle with the “Sky People”, aka the evil colonist forces of the Resources Development Administration (RDA). Jake and his Na’vi wife, Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña, who does a lot of crying here) vigilantly looks after their remaining son, Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), and their young daughter, Tuktirey “Tuk” (Trinity Blass), as well as adopted daughter Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), who has a powerful connection to planet Pandora, and the teenage human Miles “Spider” Socorro (Jack Champion), who is the biological son of their enemy, Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), a former human who Jake killed and become one of a handful of a handful of resurrected Avatar “recombinants”.

Jake and his family still reside in the turquoise reefs with the aquatic Metkayina clan, having left the Omatikaya clan that was Neytiri’s home. They are still being hunted by a vengeful Quaritch, who utilizes the military resources of General Frances (Edie Falco), and remains set on colonizing Pandora. This is concerning to Tonowari (Cliff Curtis), the chief of the Metkayina, and to his pregnant wife, Ronal (Kate Winslet), who knows the threat it poses to their clan. Meanwhile, the Sully kids are going through their own growing pains: Lo’ak has survivor’s guilt. At the same time, Kiri questions her immaculate conception as she reconnects with the planet’s superorganism, Eywa. Spider’s inability to breathe Pandorian air without a mask prompts Jake and family to take him back to the High Camp to get help from their human scientist friends.

Conveniently, the planet winds up saving the dreadlocked Spider, as Eywa offers the teen life-saving properties, which RDA executive Parker (Giovanni Ribisi) considers a scientific breakthrough that will make it easier to colonize the alien world. Jake is determined to prevent RDA from getting their hands on Spider, yet Neytiri sees Spider as a reminder of what the Sky People represent. Complications arise in the form of the volcanic-dwelling Mangkwan clan, led by Varang (Oona Chalpin), who is determined to bring strength and power to her kind and dominate other clans.

“The Way of Water” found Cameron expanding the world-building he had started with “Avatar, introducing viewers to a new clan that relies on the oceans of Pandora, respecting and fearing the creatures who reside in it. Calling the second sequel “Fire and Ash” would suggest that, once again, we would be introduced to even more new characters, perhaps ones who can control or manipulate fire. While we do meet the hostile Mangkwan clan, who they are and what they’re capable of is quite vague. That’s unfortunate, considering Cameron provides us with plenty of time on this planet. We learn they blame Eywa for a volcano that reduced their area of Pandora to ash, and they aren’t opposed to kamikaze moves when attacking other clans. So, do they want to destroy other clans using the same elements that destroyed their homes?

Sadly, the only character in this new claim we get to know is the feral Varang, who is intriguing thanks to the acrobatic antics Chaplin employs, but her contribution is limited to getting in the sack with Quaritch. That’s right, for some reason, Cameron loves Lang’s Quaritch probably more than any other character in his series. He’s had the most jarring, odd, and somewhat tedious character arc out of anyone. He should’ve died in the last movie, but here we are with Cameron turning the Quaritch into a laughable horndog, who at first teams up with Varang as a way to empower his pursuit of Jake Sully, but ultimately he winds up becoming a horndog for Varang, getting nookie whenever possible. So much for learning anything interesting about anthropology or these fiery folks.

That’s only one of the many problems that “Fire and Ash” presents. There were elements introduced in the last movie that could potentially cause stress in the Scully family dynamic, and they continue here, yet don’t go anywhere. The vision quest Kiri began continues here, yet nothing of substance is added to it; in fact, if anything, it gets unnecessarily convoluted. The strained father/son relationship between Jake and Lo’ak remains, well, strained. Then there’s Spider, one of the more annoying characters in the series, who is given more screen time here, with Quaritch and the RDA fighting over him, the latter for biological studies and the former to form some family bond. None of it is very compelling or convincing. It’s crazy to think that Cameron has over three hours to get us to care or at least stay interested, and he ultimately gives us a repeat of what came before.

Cameron and co-writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver want to include everyone and everything, but juggling subplots isn’t one of the director’s strengths. He can deliver an epic feature that’s visually compelling, but what matters is storytelling. One might say that he’s never been especially good at nailing convincing dialogue, but what we have here makes the lines in the Star Wars prequels sound like poetry. There’s almost as much clunky dialogue as there is performance-capture in “Fire and Ash”, especially when it comes to the words that come out of Quaritch’s mouth and the lines uttered by the young protagonists. It all goes from unintentionally humorous to downright eye-rolling, pretty fast. These lines might be good for a drinking game, though.

The sequel also gets a little silly with its motivations, as Cameron makes certain characters cartoonish who were already one-dimensional, at best. Ribisi’s Parker returns to throw threats around. Brandon Cowell’s whale-like tulkun hunter returns, having lost an arm to the young Payakan in “The Way of Water, and he’s as ridiculous as before. There’s a bit of an about-face for marine biologist Dr. Ivan Garvin (Jemaine Clement), who is opposed to killing the mighty tulkun and deliberately shows support for Sully and company. The only problem with that is it’s all too brief with minimal build-up. Again, that’s because the focus is solely on the spectacle that the sound and vision offer.

The running time of “Fire and Ash”, as well as the previous Avatar movies, is excessively long. If you are going in solely to experience gorgeous visuals, you won’t be disappointed. But, when is more of the same enough? How many times does Cameron think audiences are going to come back to see the same old formula play out? Characters get captured and freed, and tribal warriors ward off human aggressors in their machines of death. It’s all been done before, and what’s worse, it’s all been done by Cameron before.

Cameron has stated that starting work on the fourth and fifth installments is dependent on the success of “Fire and Ash.” That said, this movie nicely ties things up at the end, which could be either a contingency plan or a smart exit strategy. So, he can easily end it all here. Please and thank you.

Cameron had already presented a viewing problem in his last two Avatar movies that continues here, one that hampers rewatchability. These movies are best experienced in a theater in 3D, but what happens after that? Clearly, Disney would love to see more Avatar movies, given all the money it’s invested in an immersive section of the Animal Kingdom theme park in Orlando, Florida. The problem with that is, once you’ve literally walked around Pandora, experienced it in person, and ridden an exhilarating ride, watching another movie just isn’t all that.

RATING: **