I know you're not supposed to review the movie you had in your head, you're supposed to review the movie you watched -- the one the movie-makers actually gave you -- but allow me a minute to indulge that destructive impulse of mine first. Because the second Avatar movie, 2022's The Way of Water, really made me think I knew what we were getting next (from a franchise I have mostly enjoyed, even while acknowledging that the films are obviouly very dumb) and I was excited about seeing it.
In WoW we see Kiri (the young Sigourney clone) start to exhibit, with wicked coolness, super-powers where she can telepathically command the strange creatures of the sea to do her bidding. Now if you know anything about Cameron's extra-filmic obsessions you know he's all about deep sea exploration -- back in 2012 he became the first human being to pilot a one-man submersible into the Mariana Trench for god's sake!
So anyway it didn't seem an extraordinary leap for my mind to imagine that the next film really would be capitalizing on Kiri's powers and taking us deeper into the ocean, allowing Cameron and his special-effects wizards to dream up an entire world of wild new creatures down there. Just imagine! I sure did. Deep sea life has been one of my obsessions since I was a wee little kid and saw my first image of a giant squid fighting a whale (pretty sure that's the image every kid sees first). I found myself giddy over the possibilities. Cameron using his seemingly bottomless access to hundreds of millions of dollars to deliver my childhood dreams? If the Avatar franchise is for anything that is very much what it is for. (Remember how the first movie really made us feel like we were flying on the back of a dragon like nothing had before?)
Anyway there's one scene in the disastrously boring and redundant Avatar: Fire and Ash where Cameron sort of goes there, unleashing a carnivorous pod of deep sea squid monsters -- well I guess it's two scenes since these creatures show up twice, but the second is really just more of the first. These creatures are very cool! And in so being only serve to highlight what the film is lacking otherwise -- imagination.
Because the entire story of Fire and Ash is been there, done that two times already, was sorta bored the second time so there's no excuse to be doing this all yet again, dude. We're introduced to a new colony of Na'vi, an aggressive deep-jungle tribe who worship fire and become obsessed with humankind's weaponry, hellbent as they are on killing everybody and becoming top of the heap. Which leads to a bunch of scenes we've seen a dozen times already with the kids getting in danger and fighting on sinking ships and yadda yadda so very many yaddas.
There is one other highlight -- Oona Chaplin absolutely murders it as the leader of the Ash people, Varang. Pure camp, slinking around, hissing and shrieking, being a total vamp (she fucks!), one imagines if the Avatar franchise ever comes anywhere near drag culture it will be to celebrate sweet psychotic Varang.
But as I said on Bluesky right after my press screening a few weeks back (seen below), all I could think wading through the unbearable sludge of Avatar: Fire and Ash's three-plus-hour runtime was the word "enough." I have had plenty. More than plenty. I am positively sick with plenty. James Cameron, we're begging you -- make something else! Cameron's ability with crafting an action sequence remains exquisite -- these scenes all look great and move great individually. We've just really seen enough of this blue shit, James! Enough for several lifetimes, and enough for several clone's lifetimes after those.
Oh guess that AVATAR embargo broke. I considered just writing one word: ENOUGH. I liked the first two but watching this one in a post-AI-poisoned world, a longing for reality overwhelmed me from the first frame & nothing rose above. Oona Chaplin and the squids are great. Otherwise... well, ENOUGH.
Posts
