Avatar: Fire & Ash is good ….. until it isn’t

I did not watch Avatar: The Way of Water. Why? Because it was during a tough period of uni and I was not THAT interested in seeing the sequel to Avatar. So why did I decide to go and watch Avatar: Fire and Ash? Honestly, because of what I would be able to see before the movie itself: trailer of The Odyssey and a “teaser” of Avengers: Doomsday. Regarding the movie itself, I didn’t have any real expectations, but I was hoping for two things specifically: 1. That the more than three hour runtime would not be a bore, and 2. that the 3D effects would not be annoying considering the length of the movie. I did watch videos about the second movie to bring myself up-to-date and to understand the premise and characters going into the movie.

Let’s start with the 3D aspect of the movie. Initially, my eyes had to get used to it. What I was seeing seemed sort of unnatural at first. No surprise considering that the last time I saw anything in 3D was …… more than a decade ago probably. But after a brief time at the beginning of the move, the 3D effects became more normal. That said, does the 3D aspect add anything to the movie? I’d say yes. The 3D effect is subtle, there won’t be any moments where you may feel something is coming out of the screen and at you. And that’s a good thing. The subtleness of the 3D adds more depth to a lot of scenes of the movie while keeping it real and “natural” if that some how makes sense. That said, in some scenes the 3D effects are stronger and are used to emphasize to exaggerate certain movements or shots. Because the movie is not trigger happy with these, the moments where the 3D effects are more prominent stand out in a good way and make them memorable. Plus, like I said, I don’t remember the last time I saw a 3D movie, nevertheless one where the 3D effects are seamless and blend well in the movie. So in this way the movie feels special as no other movies have done something like this and with the same level of polish.

The 3D effects aside, how does the movie itself look? To no one’s surprise the movie is astonishing in terms of the visual effects and how real they look. Interestingly though, that is not something that was going in my head as I was watching the movie. While the environments and set pieces are all realistic and believable, I never found myself in awe of what I was looking at. It should be impressive how they were able to create a world with so much detail and fluid movements, but you sort of quickly accept that is how the movie is and it become normal to you. This is not to take away from the huge amount of work that has gone into the movie at every step of its production, but it all goes into the back of your head instead of being something you actively appreciate and enjoy. Maybe the 3D effects were a necessity to keep bringing your attention back to the visuals and how they are constructed.

One thing that I did actually appreciate though is performances and how well they are captured and presented. I was taken off guard a few times by how emotive the faces of the characters are, by how so much small detail is in their faces and how realistic they are. I guess realism is more impactful when it comes to characters compared to environments. This is also where I must give credit to some of the performers. I think the best performance was that by Zoe Saldaña. Neytiri is mourning the loss of her son at the beginning of the movie and this is something that haunts her for some time, and it is shown clear as day by Zoe Saldaña. The rest of the movie she still keeps up the good performance by clearly conveying the different emotions and intentions. While I think her performance can be objectively considered the best, my favourites were those of Stephen Lang and Oona Chaplin. I remember really liking Quaritch in the first movie and feeling sad when he died. I was shocked when I learned they had brought him back in The Way of Water, but now I was looking forward to seeing him again. He has a good amount of charisma, with a lot of the audience laughs coming from his dialogue and performance. I had a good time watching him and seeing how he would react to events and change during the movie. Then there is the new addition to the franchise, Varang, the leader of the ash people. I was drawn not just by Oona’s acting, but by the design of her and the ash people. Their skin is covered with Ash and painted with red and black, with most of them barely having any hair, a strong contrast to the blue rift people and forest people. This goes for behaviour as well, since the ash people do not seek harmony in nature or peace, but rather it is chaos and turmoil that they want. They do drugs and their ceremonies are often erratic and entropy, and a brief backstory is given as to why they are the way they are. Varang herself acts like a leader and you can see why others would follow her.

While I did like her, I was disappointed by her role in the movie. She is in the movie a good amount but she starts feel like like a secondary villain after a certain point. She is not THE adversary to overcome, but rather another obstacle for the antagonist to overcome in their war against the humans. She has less and less agency as the movie goes on and feels less active as her moves are determined by others. She does develop a relationship with Quaritch, but it is a relationship built out of mutual need. They could’ve taken this relationship in an interesting direction but they don’t do anything with it really. I was also hoping that we would get to explore a new location, the ash people’s homeland and see what type of animals or plants would even be able to thrive there and how the ash people have been able to adapt to their surrounding. But we don’t get any of that. We get a glimpse of their environment and that’s it. We don’t even see that much, just their base and its surrounding area. It is obviously hostile compared to the home environments of the other groups, but it is not explored in the slightest. I get it that a fire has burned everything and nothing is left, but something could’ve been added to make it interesting or at least something more than just empty.

While those are big issues for me, they start to bring their head out in the latter 1/3 of the movie. The first 2/3 of the movie is decent. The story and how things are set in motion is not particularly interesting, but there are good action scenes to keep you company. Different characters take different path and have their own subplots. Something are established that are obviously supposed to lead somewhere later in the movie. There are some shots and cool scenes but other than those, the movie is overall decent during this time. The plots move forward at a good pace to avoid stagnation and while there was nothing mind-blowing, I found myself mildly entertained most of the movie.

Emphasis on most of the movie, because the finale and the ending are awful. This is where the long running time of the movie becomes its downfall. After more than 2 hours of sitting through the movie, now I had to sit through the finale, which felt like it took an entire hour, even though it may not be true. The final fight was taking so long and it just didn’t seem to want to end. Yes it is good for a grand battle to have phases and be dynamic, but up to a certain point. There are so many explosions, set pieces, booming sounds, colours, etc, back to back without a break that I just started feeling numb toward it all. Not only does the action start to become meaningless, but so do the characters. There are characters with some depth and there are some that I like more than others, but I wouldn’t say I was so invested in any of the characters that I would fear for their safety or care about their fate. Maybe the worst part of the final fight is that nothing in it surprised me, and I mean nothing. A lot of things do happen but none of them were able to move me in any way. A big part of this is how a lot of these beats feel similar, sometimes borderline identical to things we’ve seen before. It feels as if you are seeing something you have seen before but set in a different locations with some different characters. I couldn’t help but think in my head “I feel like I’ve seen this before”. The situation isn’t helped by the fact that my eyes were starting to get tired and a few times I had to take the 3D glasses off and give my eyes a bit of rest and rub.

Let’s look past that final fight and see how the movie ends. It sort of ends flat. See, some things the movie obviously leaves open and sets up for sequels. These I didn’t like as I felt that they deserved an end or some type of conclusion. On the other hand, the status quo, how and where the characters are is different than the start of the movie. That is progression and it doesn’t feel like you have seen the movie for nothing. That said, I didn’t feel satisfaction or any other type of emotion. The finale of the movie and the long runtime had done their damage, I was tired and just wanted the movie to end. It is a shame because if the end of a movie sucks, it paints a bad picture of the movie as a whole in your head. This was made worse by the fact that I was thinking about the 30£ I had spent and weather it was a waste of money or not. I left the cinema not thinking much about the movie, but thinking about The Odyssey and how I can’t wait for that movie to come out.

Overall, I am still happy that I went and saw the movie. There are a lot of good, general qualities about it that make it a decent action-adeventure blockbuster movie such as the action, the pace, the CGI and visual effects, and the performances. The 3D aspect, while I wouldn’t consider necessary, adds something to the movie and makes watching it a unique experience. That said, there are some areas where the movie is lacking, these include character attachment, a dangerous and compelling villain, and interesting story. While these are flaws that may be cancelled out by the goods, it is the runtime of the movie that breaks the camel’s back. The movie could’ve been 30-45 minutes shorter and I think it would’ve benefited from that greatly. Some movies can “handle” a long runtime if they have certain qualities that can keep the viewer fully entertained and invested during that time, but Avatar: Fire and Ash has a few flaws and makes some decisions that prevent it from doing so.