Said James Cameron which titled the new opus of Avatar fire and ashes as an emotional duet. After the fire, there is only ashes, and after the rage, hatred and violence, there is only mourning, pain and loss. A bit as if he were warning us that if his beloved franchise is now tinged with red, it is not to show its technological capacity to control any element, but to change course, abandon the depths of the ocean and conquer those of emotion.
It’s been sixteen years since the filmmaker invited us to explore a dreamlike extraterrestrial world and three years since he expanded his horizons underwater. Sixteen years dedicated to demonstrating what, as a species, we never tire of ignoring: that humans are disruptors of paradise, innate experts in destroying homes and ecosystems; and that any form of life that passes through us will meet only death and destruction.
But as the actor said Stephen Lang (Colonel Quaritch in fiction) “there is no Eden without its serpents”, and these are as old as our own species. Where God existed, there were those who defied him and, in this blue paradise, it was the People of Ashes, the new Na’vi clan of fire who arrived to show us that there is no place without evil -not even the idyllic Pandora-but human nature (in the worst sense of the word) in any being considered abandoned by his divinity.
Led by a magnificent Oona Chaplin -at the height of a Zoe Saldana which, from the first moment and until now, continues to be the greatest attraction of this blue saga, the fire na’vi become one more piece of the puzzle that is Pandora, clearly showing that the protagonists are neither one nor the other, but the emotional whole of this network that makes up the universe of Avatar. The one who ends his first arc with better delivery than the previous onebut with doubts about how it will manage to surprise us and interest us in the future.
In this third part, those who expect great pyrotechnic demonstrations to replace these spectacular maritime scenes will not find what they are looking for, because even if Cameron continues to explore this world that he created from utopian settings that continue to surprise – it only takes the first second of the film to remind us why we fell in love with Pandora -, This time the plot is not in the service of the image, quite the contrary.
This time, the great displays of effort and work of its actors lie not in controlling breathing under the sea so that we can discover the meaning of water, but in something much less visually striking, but much more difficult and interpretatively appealing: ask us to accompany them on this journey around grief and that we feel with them the pain of a broken family and that of believers who feel abandoned by Eywa.
This is, without a doubt, the great achievement of the filmmaker, who turns his own story upside down to demolish a family’s fortress, destroy everything he has built and tell us about the holes in this blind faith that he presented to us and which now finds itself confronted with what it means to be abandoned. Thinking that we were going to transport ourselves to an ideal world for almost four hours, we found ourselves with a mirror of reality in which the reflection sends us back a Pandora much darker and (this is food for thought) much more human than ever.
Qualification
Avatar: Fire and Ash
- Director
James Cameron
- Gender
Science fiction
- Country
USA
- Synopsis
Third part of the “Avatar” saga. It features the People of Ash, a not-so-peaceful Na’vi clan who will use violence if necessary to achieve their goals, even if it is against other clans.
- Scenario
James Cameron, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver.
- Duration
195 minutes.
- Distributer
Images of Walt Disney
- First
12/19/2025
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Distribution:
Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Stephen Lang, Oona Chaplin
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