Humour me for a second: despite its big, flashy, expensive exterior, I believe Avatar: Fire and Ash to be the perfect Christmas family movie — kind of like the first Die Hard, another fun Christmas family movie.
Strip away the action, and Avatar is about overcoming odds, keeping the family together, forgiveness and redemption, with a little bit of unexpected magic near the climax. Isn’t that exactly what a Christmas movie is all about?
In Fire and Ash, the magic comes courtesy of Eywa, the spirit of the alien planet Pandora that resides in everything and commands the wildlife. One connects to Eywa through tendril-like organic connections called “queues” at the end of Na’vi hair, which provide neural links to control animals and access the spirit realm, where souls of every dead person on Pandora reside (after their bodies are absorbed into Eywa’s soil).
A happy family reunion of glowing auras, warmth and forgiveness with those who’ve passed away occurs early and late in the movie — but a good three hours before that, writer-director-producer James Cameron lets hell loose on the Sully family… which they should have grownaccustomed to by now.
Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) was once a paraplegic marine who took on the artificial alien Na’vi body (his “Avatar”), when his identical brother passed away. Since then, Eywa has made his artificial body real.
Avatar: Fire and Ash, the third film of the series,plays as an extension of the first, with a bigger, better villain, a stronger character and story arc
Married and with kids, Jake, like every dad in the universe, has his hands full. His young son Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) remains unruly and something of an irresponsible nincompoop when it comes to obeying house rules and orders. His adopted daughter Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) cannot connect to Eywa because of her artificial origins. Jake’s other adopted son, Spider (Jack Champion) — the human son of his enemy Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) — lives in a perpetual state of danger; since Pandora’s air is lethal to humans, he’s always one oxygen mask away from certain death.
As if breathing weren’t Spider’s only concern, his adopted mother Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) still doesn’t “see” (ie acknowledge) him. In fact, she’d happily see Spider drop dead (she’s a racist who hates humans), while his actual father, Quaritch, still wants him back.
Then there are the tensions with the reef-dwelling Na’vi clan Metkayina who, despite accepting Jake and his family as refugees and acknowledging them as saviours, still consider their ways alien and hostile.
The clan, led by Tonowari and his pregnant wife Ronal (Cliff Curtis and Kate Winslet, respectively), also believe Payakan — one of the intelligent, whale-like Tulkun — is a threat to peace. As in The Way of Water, the Tulkun are hunted by humans for their brains, which produce a rare, expensive anti-ageing liquid.
Quaritch, meanwhile, finds an ally in Varang (Oona Chaplin), the fierce, vengeful and unhinged leader of the Ash tribe. Varang is a cruel, calculating villain — and one of the best things about Fire and Ash.
For the most part, the third Avatar film plays as an extension of the first, with a bigger, better villain, a stronger character and story arc, clearer motives for Jake, and expansive worldbuilding. We see new tribes, new creatures, and a plot point pushed firmly to the forefront for future instalments to exploit and derive conflict from. Everything is expertly laid out in a semi-fast-paced, three-hour-10-minute-long film that’s a feast for the eyes and — most importantly — never boring.
Cameron, who co-writes the screenplay with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, positions the film as a grand spectacle, placing action at the spearhead. Every story beat leads into an action sequence, followed by solid, character-driven drama. The grand climax runs a staggering 36 minutes, yet somehow the length and quality of the big action sequence — and Fire and Ash as a whole — pale slightly when compared to The Way of Water.
Both films are enormous in scope but — and this may be entirely subjective — the previous instalment took its time to stop and smell the roses. Fire and Ash’s quieter moments, effective as they are, often feel like rehashes of what we’ve already seen.
One wants a little more from the story — though that may be asking too much, especially when the film is visibly chopped down in the edit to avoid a four-hour runtime (notice the many small, abrupt trimmings and jump cuts). Even so, Cameron and his technical team have somehow found a way to inject greater emotional nuance into their performance capture. Of course, the visuals are fantastic.
Despite its length and the reuse of ideas, Avatar remains a solid franchise — and Cameron continues to prove that some experiences are simply better felt in cinemas.
Avatar: Fire and Ash, released by HKC and 20th Century Studios, is rated PG and is suitable for families looking for that perfect big Christmas (action) movie
Published in Dawn, ICON, December 28th, 2025
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