REVIEW: ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ Is Epic and Emotional

Since Avatar’s release in 2009, I had written off the series. The explosion of popularity didn’t hit the United States as it did in Asia or Europe, despite the many comic books we’ve seen in the years since. But with Avatar: The Way of Water, I found myself coming back into James Cameron‘s fold, and with Avatar: Fire and Ash (Avatar 3), I have come to understand why this story has resonated with me, at least with what we see now. 

Avatar: Fire and Ash is the third film in writer-director James Cameron’s science fiction franchise. Taking place on Pandora, the franchise follows the rapid colonization and destruction of the planet Pandora and its inhabitants, the Na’vi, at the hands of the RDA and its’ human Marines.

Where the first film brought audiences Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a human Marine who falls in love with a Na’vi warrior, Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), The Way of Water shows audiences what happened next. While their love, marriage, and subsequent family bring them hope, the RDA isn’t done with its colonial mission. If anything, it’s much, much more destructive now. 

Avatar: Fire and Ash is as emotionally resonant as it is visually beautiful.

At the end of the last film, the Sully family, which consists of Jake, Neytiri, Neteyam (Jamie Flatters), Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), and Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), and Spider (Jack Champion) suffered a significant loss when Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) killed their eldest son. Now, a family with adopted children, Spider and Kiri, the loss they feel is still palpable.

In Avatar: Fire and Ash, which takes place almost immediately after the second film, grief is the thread connecting everyone. It connects the antagonists as much as the protagonists and the secondary cast. The impermanence of life is central to the story that James Cameron tells with the goddess Eywa connecting everyone, alive and dead. 

But connecting to Eywa doesn’t change the reality that when Lo’ak flies on his ikran, his brother isn’t by his side. Or that when Neytiri calls out her son’s name, he isn’t there to respond. Each member of the Sully family processes their grief differently, some more destructively than others. 

Still, there is a war on, and the RDA is still hunting the Tulkun, the great whales that they murder and harvest to sell back on Earth; they have to find a way to survive. However, with Quaritch’s new Avatar body, the danger that the RDA poses is larger than before. 

Written by James Cameron & Rick Jaffa, & Amanda Silver, Avatar: Fire and Ash stars Sigourney Weaver, Oona Chaplin, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, David Thewlis, Jemaine Clement, Jack Champion, Brendan Cowell, Bailey Bass, Filip Geljo, Duane Evans, Jr., and Kate Winslet, in addition to its core cast that makes up the Sully family.

The most violent of the three films, Avatar: Fire and Ash, is James Cameron’s most overt push against imperialism. While the films have danced around the idea, growing bolder with each outing, Avatar 3 marks the first time that Cameron confronts pacifism and encourages his audience, like the Na’vi, to fight back. 

Avatar 3 is a stunning addition to James Cameron’s mythology.

Because of that, Avatar Fire and Ash showcases exactly why I fell in love with the video game based on the franchise. In Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, you confront imperialism, you blow it up, you confront your grief, and you are never asked to forgive the colonizer.

Here, Cameron says the same thing. Throughout the film, we see that hatred rots from within. However, unlike other pacifist takes on revolution, the Na’vi pushing back the Ash and the RDA are not painted as hateful, or even filled with rage. They are fighting for their world and their people, and vengeance dictates justice, but revenge does not. 

Avatar 3 is Cameron’s greatest film in the series because we are not asked to feel any sympathy for the “pink skins” (what the Na’vi call humans). Instead, the audience is shown to treat others as they treat you, and in the case of the RDA, that means engaging in war.

However, for people like the scientists on their side or Spider, James Cameron also tells the audience to take people at their actions—to believe people when they show you who they are, and that includes their kindness and love as much as hate.

It’s a difficult balance to preach against hate but also call for resistance in a media landscape that views any armed resistance as hateful violence. And that is why this film excels. Fighting back is the only option left, especially when the ones oppressing you don’t value your life.

Still, while I am in love with Cameron’s messaging on resistance, it is the relationships we see throughout Avatar 3 that solidify the beauty and heart of this film. What I mean by “beauty” is not that the relationships throughout the film are perfect. It’s the opposite. Whether it’s Lo’ak with his parents, Payakan with Lo’ak, Spider and Neytiri, or even Kiri and Eywa, everything is messy. Instead of being perfect, there are arguments, grief, anger, and sadness, but all of them end in love.

The characters in Avatar: Fire and Ash are complicated and emotional. They’re also in pain, and talking about that isn’t something they know how to do or are ready to do. As the film continues, at the start of the third act, all of our characters begin to talk and process their fears, grief, and frustrations. 

Faith and family, found and otherwise, are at the center of Avatar: Fire and Ash.

Jake and Neytiri begin to hold onto each other and understand what their family has become, even as they struggle to embrace Spider and what he means to the RDA. Lo’ak is racked with guilt over his brother’s death to the point that he contemplates suicide, but still, despite the weight and worry in his heart, he lives. But the film’s most striking element is Cameron’s ability to connect Lo’ak to his brother Payakan in the water. 

The approach we see to exploring conflict and its merits is filled with heart. Instead of empty revenge or angry decrees, the Tulkun want to survive, even when the elders in their pod want them to continue the old ways. It’s up to the young to follow Payakan and to rise up together. Yes, these are space whales, but they’re also remarkable creatures that do more to represent struggle than other science fiction stories attempt to tackle. 

Additionally, Avatar 3 confronts religion and what happens when you pray and no one answers. For the Ash clan, they cling to the only reality they know: fire and violence. Since Eywa left them, they are set on pulling every single Na’vi they meet from the goddess as well, cutting their queue and breaking their ability to be a part of the Mother. “Hurt people, hurt people,” but for the Ash and Varang, she will decimate them. 

For Kiri, however, whose unnatural birth has blocked her from connecting with Eywa, she clings to hope. More importantly, she holds onto people; she holds tight to her family and, through them, tries to connect to the goddess. And for the Tulkun, they need a god who doesn’t ask them to be slaughtered to preserve peace, but instead rises up. 

When all of these visions of faith conflict with each other, the other reality of Pandora comes into focus: the RDA brings steel, and with that, with the power that comes with guns and bullets, they invite the Na’vi to turn away from their lives and their traditions. Where Varang and her clan embrace the power to make thunder, the others 

From a visual standpoint, Avatar 3 is breathtaking in every single way. Where people often hold motion capture as a different category of acting, every single Na’vi in this film, from Neytiri to Ko’ak, Kiri, and Varang (Oona Chaplin), highlights the wonders of special effects work done right. 

The action builds throughout the film’s runtime and pays off beautifully.

Every emotion is clearly visible on their faces, and, more importantly, every strand of hair and piece of fabric looks as if it were real rather than animated on screen. Avatar: Fire and Ash is gorgeous in every way, but its standout elements are that they never seem detached from the film’s emotional core or humanity, despite being set on Pandora. 

The character models sing with depth and life that are becoming increasingly hard to find in modern CGI work. Lightstorm Entertainment and Weta FX, no detail is too small. The environments, the Na’vi and their culture and customs, and even the RDA are given perspective through what they wear, how they speak, and how they interact with the world around them. 

But it’s not just emotion. Avatar 3’s large-scale battles, hand-to-hand combat, and aerial sequences are stunning. The film’s pacing builds slowly into its apex, adding layers upon layers of slightly larger action set pieces until it pays off in action that never loses the emotional elements and narrative stakes that are set up. At over three hours long, this was a film I didn’t want to end. 

Avatar: Fire and Ash is bigger than the past two films in the series, but it’s also the most heartfelt. Watching the family be torn apart by the grief of losing Neteyam hits hard, and it does so right from the beginning. But the grief is what moves characters forward and pushes them toward a fork in the road. 

For Varang, the grief of losing her land and her people has driven her to a festering hatred that aims to attack a goddess who abandoned her and her clan. For Neytiri, her grief threatens to push her toward hatred as well, only for the love in her life to pull her back from the brink. Comparatively, Varang is too twisted, too angry to see the world as what it is; however, it is all that she knows. 

It’s through this grief that Cameron also builds the world of Pandora larger. It’s how he expands his understanding of the Tulkun and how they take council, their matriarchal society, and their family systems. We see the increasing differences in the regions of Pandora and the Na’vi who live in them, from the barren lands to the lush forests, to the wind traders and the Metkayina Clan’s beautiful oceanside dwellings. 

The world of Pandora is extravagant, epic, and emotional.

Avatar 3 effortlessly expands the world of Pandora. There are still magical blockbuster moments in cinema, and you can see that here. While it is rare to see a film that takes full advantage of Dolby IMAX and 3D, this franchise has become a reminder of what is possible.

Like The Way of Water, the last film in the franchise, I was able to experience 3D without it triggering my vertigo and motion sickness. Instead, I was totally immersed in Pandora and put Avatar 3 among the top theatrical experiences I have had the pleasure of having. 

Avatar: Fire and Ash is a cinematic wonder and highlights what can still be done with computer-generated special effects when care and love are poured into it. At a time when this kind of effect keeps getting worse from the small to the big screen, this film gives me hope that there is life in the medium. Still, with epic storytelling and even grander visuals, James Cameron’s work becomes a beacon of hope. Even now, mythologies can still be created on screen, and, more importantly, they can tell us to fight back. 

Avatar: Fire and Ash is available in theaters everywhere December 18, 2025.