James Cameron’s Sci-Fi Saga Continues

If the title One Battle After Another weren’t already taken, it might be a tidy fit for the third installment of James Cameron’s sprawling “Blue Man Group” sci-fi adventure, Avatar: Fire and Ash. Yes, the movie offers gargantuan-scale spectacle, imposing technological wizardry and virtually nonstop action involving over-qualified and mostly unrecognizable actors in motion-capture suits. But it’s easily the most repetitious entry in the big-screen series, with a been-there, bought-the-T-shirt fatigue that’s hard to ignore.

That leaves way too much time over the movie’s ass-numbing three-and-a-quarter hours to wince at the risible dialogue coming from the mouths of Na’vi folk on the distant moon, Pandora. Or to stew in envy over their absence of body fat.

The 13-year gap between Avatar and its first sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, allowed time for a renewed sense of awe at the scope of Cameron’s bio-diverse worldbuilding, enhanced by the introduction of a new clan, new creatures and a distinctive new environment. The third movie arrives just three years after its immediate predecessor — and in narrative terms, a few weeks after the events of that film — with the novelty now wearing thin.

Firstly, it’s not a great idea in a film with such an epic run time to have a character urgently shouting, “I’ve gotta take a leak!” To be fair, it’s understandable given that the full bladder belongs to human dude Spider (Jack Champion), revealed in The Way of Water to be the son of vicious Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang), sired before the latter was killed and transformed into a new breed of hybrid human/Na’vi soldier. To my knowledge, Spider never does get to pee, unless he just goes in the Metkayina Clan’s bioluminescent aquatic ecosystem, like some filthy kid at the pool.

I suppose given his ex-Marine, pre-avatar origins, we can even buy Quaritch’s nemesis Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) greeting his wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) when she ignores instructions to stay home and watch the kids during a skirmish, instead leaping into the fray with her killer archery skills: “Baby, I don’t know whether to kiss you or yell at you!” But that doesn’t make it sound any less silly, especially with Worthington’s Australian accent.

And would a young Na’vi really be checking in after a fiery clash by asking his comrade in arms, “Bro, you good?” Surely this biologically and spiritually advanced civilization should have evolved beyond skateboarder vernacular?

All due respect to a groundbreaking franchise that has thus far raked in over $5.2 billion in theatrical grosses and remains the gold standard for the large-format 3D viewing experience, but Fire and Ash is sound and fury signifying nothing. Or at least nothing excitingly new. (Now might be a good time to clarify that I enjoyed the first two movies.) In the absence of fresh narrative inspiration, Cameron and co-writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver simply pile on the lore and multiply the clashes, to numbing rather than invigorating effect.

Even the Darth Vader/Luke factor of honorary Na’vi Spider’s conflicted feelings for his hard-ass father on the side of the Military Industrial Complex oppressor — known as the RDA, or Resources Development Administration, led by Edie Falco’s stiff-limbed and humorless General Frances Ardmore — goes to few places not already explored in The Way of Water.

Having been forced by the human invaders to flee the lush green forest home of the Omaticaya people, Jake, Neytiri and their family continue to live among the reefs and islands of the Metkayina clan, headed by tribal chief Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and his pregnant wife Ronal (Kate Winslet). But the loss of Jake and Neytiri’s first-born son Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) remains an open wound for the family, especially for his impulsive brother Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), who blames himself. 

When Quaritch resurfaces with a personal vendetta, Jake refuses to take a knife to a gun fight, instead loading up on military weapons salvaged from the last “Sky People” assault, which goes against the traditional Na’vi way. The women argue that the divine entity Eywa will provide, blathering on about having faith in “the Great Mother’s plan.” But they haven’t seen Edie Falco crab-walking in an industrial-grade exoskeleton suit.

Jake, for one, is not buying the Eywa assurance; he has too much at stake protecting his wife, their surviving children Lo’ak and tween sister Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), as well as adopted daughter Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), the offspring of scientist Grace Augustine’s avatar body, who develops a direct line to Eywa, even if she can’t yet control it. How much you invest in all that will depend on how much you care about moon dwellers plugging their braids into nature’s light sockets.

When the nomadic Wind Traders led by Peylak (David Thewlis) drop by in their monster jellyfish-powered airships with Amazon packages, Jake decides Spider needs to be sent back with them to the science research facility to live with his fellow humans. His best pal Kiri is devastated but Neytiri, whose hatred of humans has intensified since Neteyam’s killing, insists Spider will never be one of them so has to go.

Before the Sully family can get him back to the base, a savage air attack rains down on Metkayina territory. Only this time it’s not humans but the barbarian Mangkwan Clan, firebombing the Wind Traders’ vessels and laying siege to the peaceful community below. Their leader is bad-bitch warrior Varang (Oona Chaplin), who ululates in triumph every time she “scalps” another Na’vi — which means hacking off the ponytails that are their power source, like Ariana Grande’s topknot.

The Mangkwan, aka Ash People, are a bunch of godless warmongers who basically turned on Eywa when a volcano reduced their homeland to barren ash. Varang is their evil queen. She wears a black and red feathered headdress, a micro-kini and stripes of red war paint over what looks like full-body Kiehl’s Mud Mask, while swooping around on a scary dragon called a Nightwraith.

When she starts demanding to be taught how to “make thunder,” she’s not talking about rumbling flatulence, even if that might describe much of the action. Instead, she means advanced military firepower. Varang teams up with Quaritch and gets a whole arsenal of weaponry at her disposal, which is bad news for the Sullys, the Metkayina and the highly intelligent whale-like Tulkun that inhabit the oceans, especially as their annual shallow-water “calf communion” approaches.

Varang is the most interesting new addition here, and Chaplin plays her as a bloodthirsty sorceress, her yellow eyes aflame with rage as she shrieks about ripping out hearts. But the writers give her no complexity beyond being a relentless WMD. She and Neytiri hiss at each other like territorial cats whenever they get close. But the promised Na’vi-on-Na’vi chick action gets sidelined when the injured Ronal goes into labor, with poor Winslet forced to utter the lament of mothers since the dawn of time: “I am dying, but first I will push out this baby.” You got this, girl!

The escalating chaos is so littered with talk of Na’vi arcana, exotic Pandoran creatures and military jargon, that keeping up with the over-mythologized videogame plotting becomes more of a chore than a challenge. Not that narrative deficiencies are likely to hurt the movie’s box office or keep the geek faithful away. The battles may become routinely episodic, but there are plenty of them, which might be all many audiences care about seeing through their 3D glasses.

In the first two films, the sincerity, respect and sheer wonderment with which Cameron captured the Avatar world — and the faith that Indigenous traditions and the purity, spirituality and balance of nature could prevail over rampaging human destruction and military technology — was transporting enough to overcome the dumb dialogue. Here, it all starts to sound like empty bluster, retreading the same ground with just one new face that makes an impression. There’s certainly nothing in the story to justify the bloated run time.

The knowledge that Cameron has at least two more of these in the works might be great for the New Zealand economy — not so much for anyone who cares about original movies. Great Mother, save us.