Recommendations of the Editorial team
James Cameron was allowed to make a quasi-remake of his film “Avatar 2” with “Avatar 3” for hundreds of millions of dollars, even though the previous film was only released three years ago. Jack Sully has to keep his family together again. Once again Colonel Quaritch wants to snatch his own son, Newt aka Monkey Boy aka Jack, from his clutches. The Na’vi ride their battlebirds in Russian squat. And as usual, their fighting birds tear apart the attack helicopters of the “men from the sky”.
The set pieces in “Avatar: Fire and Ash” are the same as in “The Way of Water”, part 2 of the saga. Action underwater, in the air and on the deck of a tanker. Sneak up, aim the scope, free family members, risking their lives in the process. This film reveals even more clearly the realization that nature has to use violence to defend itself against colonialists. The Na’vi, even the whales, even the “mother” of the planet Pandora, the deity residing within the Earth and reminiscent of Kubrick’s Spacechild, have become bellicose greens.
When even a human marine biologist becomes a defector and uses a monster truck to demolish the steaming buildings of an industrial city out of desperation, it is clear that humans on that planet must be stopped.
Content overproduction instead of world building
James Cameron is filming his more recent “Avatar” films in parallel, which has not led to a differentiation of this world, but rather to more of the same locations. Perhaps the result of an overproduction of content that he simply dumped on top of his idea of Pandora. Cameron’s “There’s still a lot to discover on Pandora!” mantra turns out to be an empty promise. Maybe he’ll just send his Na’vi to the mines of Moria or to the icy Piz Gloria? A change of scenery as an escape from the jungle and Disney’s Sea World.
Of all places, the volcanic world of the “Ash People”, a newly introduced clan led by the Pazuzu-like Tsahik, remains almost undiscovered as new terrain. Tsahik is played by Oona Chaplin. She does it very well. Only she is just as difficult to recognize as Kate Winslet as Ronal. Sam Worthington, who no one knows anymore, can, if everything goes well, be happy to have starred in three of the five most successful films of all time.
But who is who here? “Avatar: Fire and Ash” lasts 210 minutesbut there isn’t even enough time to mourn the deaths of some not unimportant characters. In the middle of it all is the strangely ageless Giovanni Ribisi, an unintentionally funny company man as comic relief who is slowly getting a hump.
Impressive set design, boring protagonist
The set design of the human city built on Pandora, on the other hand, is impressive. A mix of Hong Kong, Giedi Prime and the build-your-zombie-shelter games that are thrown into your algorithm. Jack is held prisoner in the factory world. He sits in a glass cage and is supposed to await his execution. The people of the city stare at him and film him with their cell phones. He is an attraction, a celebrity. The soldier who turned into an alien and turned against his own people.
Sully is a pretty boring character. Homo Sapiens, who has become a Na’vi, has no doubt within himself as to whether humans can improve. Sully has become a different person; he has successfully suppressed his past as a paraplegic. The Na’vi are good at talking anyway. What is never discussed is that the three-meter giants on Pandora have no natural enemies. The nature lovers are never shown hunting and killing Pandora’s lovely animals.
Sully’s former superior Quaritch is different, whose transformation into an internalized blue giant takes place unconsciously and gradually. He’s a great anti-hero who’s doomed to walk on Pandora in live-die-repeat mode. A God who can never die. And a great guy who only talks in one-liners – like an evil brother to John “Commando” Matrix. His sole motivation alone – feelings of revenge for the renegade platoon member Sully over a cumulative feature length of around seven hours – is hair-raising.
All the noise in “Avatar: Fire and Ash” only comes about because a human boy on the planet can’t breathe and needs to be transported away. At some point he will be able to tolerate the air, but the settlers from the New World will never find out. So that they can never spread on the planet. Pandora is still poison for them.