AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH: As the Sully family retread familiar ground, Quaritch counters his blue balls with a hot piece of ash

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.

I find myself in a difficult position with the Avatar franchise. I enjoyed the first: the accusations of plotlessness don’t really ring that true in my opinion, and of course everyone knows it looks fucking incredible. The Way of Water, however, was decidedly NOT my thing, although seeing it on a small cinema screen was probably half of that battle – the plotting and dialogue issues stand out a lot more when you aren’t being visually assaulted by the landscape. Fire and Ash is basically a rehash of The Way of Water, although seeing it on a big screen in 3D allowed me to have a considerably more enjoyable experience this time around. Still, there is a big question that is never answered in the 3+ hour runtime: where the hell are these films going?

When we last left the Sully family, they were mourning the death of their son (don’t ask me to remember any of the children’s names) and living with the aquatic Na’vi. Fire and Ash starts with the Sullys travelling back to their own clan to deliver Spider (Jack Champion), the human son of villain Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) to a safer location. But on the way they are attacked by the Ash Tribe led by Varang (Oona Chaplin – yes, related to that Chaplin), who proves herself to be the hottest bitch around (quite literally). The children are separated, and after Spider nearly suffocates, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver inexplicably playing a 14 year old alien) calls on the god Eywa to save Spider’s life. When he wakes up he finds he can breathe Pandora’s air, which should be toxic to humans, and is growing a connector tail through his white boy dreads. Spider is now a hot commodity for the cartoonishly greedy one-dimensional human characters, who want to reverse-engineer the ability to breathe Pandora’s air and take over the planet more efficiently.

At this point Quaritch is by far the best character in this franchise, and possibly the only one with complex emotions. He hates the Na’vi but has been forced into an Avatar body after his death, basically becoming the blue version of the Austin Powers “Why won’t you die?” bit. Meanwhile he still seems to love his son and despises that Jake and his family have adopted him as their own. But this is all complicated further when he gets a hit of the good kush from Varang, who trippily induces him to provide her tribe with guns in exchange for help waging war on the Sullys. Turns out all you need to stop being racist is a really hot piece of blue ass… which possibly makes this the Neo Ned of epic space operas? Quaritch has finally embraced his own (blue) skin and is seeing the potential of his power, especially in the face of attempted subordination by the irrelevant Human Military Villains™ (a wasted Edie Falco and Giovanni Ribisi- wait, he’s still in these films?)

The rest of the story is pretty standard – military breakouts, chases, and a huge battle that is near-identical to the finale of The Way of Water, which does beg the question – why? With better planning I think James Cameron could have made this into a great trilogy, but he seems so caught up in relishing the visuals that he is happy to keep remaking the same film rather than actually driving the franchise towards any sort of conclusion. Not to mention that the script for this film is frankly abysmal. No, I am not watching Avatar for the sparkling dialogue, but it does get jarring when you have Sigourney Weaver delivering lines like “That really sucks. Now I’m even more of a freak” with the intonation of a bored Neil Breen. Some dodgy acting doesn’t help: Jack Champion was fine for the most part, but in a scene where Jake is about to kill him to protect his family, Spider only seems mildly inconvenienced by having a knife held to his throat. It’s not a comparison you desire when I am reminded of Keanu Reeves’ performance in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, staring at a sword shoved in his face as if he is being offered a breadstick. The entire sequence where Jake’s son petitioned for help from the alien whales was dialogically dire. Also, I don’t know why it so irrationally annoys me that the aliens call each other “Bro” but my God does it irrationally annoy me.