Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025)
Directed by James Cameron
In the wake of the devastating war against the RDA and the loss of their eldest son, Jake Sully and Neytiri face a new threat on Pandora: the Ash People, a violent and power-hungry Na'vi tribe led by the ruthless Varang. Jake's family must fight for their survival and the future of Pandora in a conflict that pushes them to their emotional and physical limits.
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43 films that influenced Avatar: Fire and Ash
What critics say influenced Avatar: Fire and Ash
…a prison-break sequence evolves into an airborne pursuit, explicitly recalling the trench-run iconography of Star Wars…
The franchise is hardly the cultural phenomenon of a Star Wars or MCU entry…
Early on, they’re going to a market of sorts, and it felt like something out of a Star Wars movie (or series, even).
…the same lasting relevancy of Star Wars or Lord of the Rings…
Just as “Star Wars” was modeled on old outer-space serials, Cameron’s inspiration for “Avatar” obviously came from Westerns…
George Lucas once described the Star Wars prequel trilogy’s relationship to the original by saying, “it’s like poetry, they rhyme.”
Before stepping into the theater to see James Cameron’s Avatar: Fire and Ash, I joked that the movie would be “just like the last one but with fire instead of water,”…
Be warned: Fire and Ash picks up in the immediate aftermath of The Way of Water with virtually no overview…
This is less an expansion, more of a rehash: plots and story beats are virtually identical to The Way of Water, Cameron’s second Avatar movie, to the point where he might make his audiences impatient – a feeling he almost never inspires.
…there is a portion of Fire and Ash that does feel like it’s retreading familiar elements from the prior two films, but especially The Way of Water…
“Fire and Ash” picks up almost immediately after the aquatic climax of “The Way of Water,”…
Just three years later, Cameron is back on Pandora again with Avatar: Fire and Ash…
There is a key scene late in the film where Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), a uniquely spiritual Na’vi, attempts to commune with the planet’s deity Eywa and is met with awesome, unnerving imagery that is straight out 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Separate from her and connected to the planet’s natural magic is a psychedelic-adjacent moment that reminds of 2001: A Space Odyssey (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1968), my biggest “what is happening?” moment in the film.
…staging a surreal moment that evokes the cosmic awe of “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
In that sense, Fire and Ash’s big final battle reminded me of how Return of the Jedi’s Battle of Endor is like a souped-up spin on A New Hope’s grand finale.
…the much-maligned conclusion to another part-three space opera, Return of the Jedi…
But like “Return of the Jedi,” the third installment in the first trilogy of George Lucas’ space epic, it might make many feel that enough is enough.
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Cameron has always been fascinated by warriors who don’t know how to stop fighting. Here, that fixation finally finds some emotional consequence it skipped over between movies one and two.
…the Avatar films have always been my least favorite of his works…
The score is also a massive improvement over The Way of Water, whose score seemed to be more of a “best of” compilation from the first movie rather than its own thing.
There was tragedy in the first Avatar, sure, but Neteyam’s death felt harrowing and visceral.
In the third installment of the “Avatar” film series…
…following 2009’s Avatar and its 2022 sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water…
…he achieved that very pull, even against the Pocahontas, Dances With Wolves, and Ferngully: The Last Rainforest comparisons and criticisms…
Disney’s Pocahontas to be specific…
A version of the "white savior" myth (see: "Dune," "Dances With Wolves," etc.) with blue, cat-like humanoid aliens?
…not since the first Dune have I seen a popcorn movie that in fact felt this anxious to make sure that I felt every bit of its length…
The tuluns felt as if they could go into a “Dune” franchise direction similar to the Bene Gesserit…
…there's another setpiece toward the middle which looks like it's set in "what if the steel mill from the end of 'Terminator 2' was expanded into a 'Blade Runner'-like city,"…
…in the spirit of though not quite as bad as the tonally similar John Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which is the worst thing about the film, I felt…
In Fire and Ash, Spider is part of the family, and I found Champion’s performance to be fully endearing, resembling the combination of earnestness and obnoxiousness that Cameron brought out of Edward Furlong’s John Conner in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
Just as Terminator 2: Judgment Day hit most of the same beats as The Terminator…
James Cameron is responsible for two of the best sequels ever made, science fiction or otherwise. Aliens and Terminator 2: Judgement Day expanded the scope of their respective universes, creating inimitable action scenes and an emotional core that preserves them as classics to this day.
I’m also a middle aged man who remembers Terminator 2 and Titanic…
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…one, “I am Spartacus” scene…
“Spartacus” (1960)…
“Mad Max: Fury Road” (2015)…
This movie contains a setpiece involving the Windtraders which plays like a mixture of "Master & Commander," "Pirates of the Caribbean," and "Mad Max: Fury Road,"…