'Avatar: Fire and Ash' Will Be the Last James Cameron Epic Without AI
The last stop before Hollywood’s most advanced filmmaker crosses the AI threshold.
Avatar: Fire and Ash (Avatar 3) should be the last film in the franchise. The film is visually stunning, as were the first two. There are some standout performances, most notably Oona Chaplin (whose grandfather is the silent film legend Charlie Chaplin) as the co-antagonist Varang. She breathed so much life into the character that it was difficult to believe this was the same person who played the demure Talisa Stark in Game of Thrones.
Having said all that, if someone told me that Avatar 3 had been directed by a James Cameron protégé, I would not have been surprised. It feels derivative, rather than something that meaningfully advances the story. In fact, the film plays like an echo of Avatar: The Way of Water (Avatar 2), and mostly repeats the themes and beats from the previous film. From a performance standpoint, it’s a solid ensemble film, despite Edie Falco (Mayor of Kingstown, The Sopranos) being criminally underused. However, Chaplin’s fiery performance is possibly the only new reason to enter this world if you’ve already gotten your narrative fix from the first two installments in the franchise.
If you’re just in it for the visuals, then it’s a must-see. Somehow, the film looks even better than Avatar 2. And there are many small touches that are aesthetically groundbreaking, but are executed with such effortless flair that nothing calls attention to the fact that you’re mostly viewing an artificial world.
I must also add special mention of the character Spider (played by Jack Champion), who I’m going to call Space Tarzan. Through some kind of fungal planetary magic, he (SPOILER) becomes the first human who can breathe the planet’s air without an oxygen mask. OK, that’s sort of interesting. But the character is constantly and annoyingly in need of saving (think Lois Lane or Olive Oyl), has a weird cross-species flirt fest with his giant Na’vi adoptive sister, and really only serves as a living MacGuffin plot device to get the evil Colonel Miles Quaritch (played by Stephen Lang, Don’t Breathe) to chase the Na’vi family around the planet.
Space Tarzan is irritating and unnecessary in the same way that Jar Jar Binks was many years ago in the needlessly rebooted Star Wars universe (another Disney franchise being squeezed beyond reasonable limits). Every line Space Tarzan speaks is cringe, and you’re embarrassed for everyone in the scene, and in the theater. It’s like Keanu Reeves’ character from Point Break adopted the speaking style of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and then teleported to a planet full of giant, sorta hot blue aliens. “Dude, I can breathe Pandora air now! Whoa, totally awesome!” I spent a decent amount of time hoping and praying that the character would be killed off, or at least somehow given less prominence.
Alas, Avatar 3 effectively makes this skinny, blonde dreadlocked kid the main focus of the film. I guess that’s supposed to help us, the human audience, relate more to the world of Avatar. But all it did for me was take me out of my desired suspension of disbelief mode necessary for such science fiction epics. Instead, Space Tarzan reminded me I was watching a Disney film that, in this installment, was definitely geared toward children. An AI-generated pet character would have been more tolerable, but more on that later.
