Review: Avatar Fire and Ash is a spectacle of CGI that signifies nothing |
There is no mistaking that Avatar: Fire and Ash is the work of a talented filmmaker. Pandora remains a lavishly imagined, technically immersive world, rendered with a level of craft few directors can rival. But to borrow a phrase, it is ultimately full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
James Cameron’s third iteration picks up precisely where The Way of Water left off. Following the death of his son, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his family remain in self-imposed exile among the Metkayina water tribe, still pursued by the indefatigable Col. Quaritch (Stephen Lang). The entire logic of this arrangement was meant to spare Sully’s original clan from retaliation. Yet, the film is oddly incurious about the moral contradiction at its core: Sully has no reservations about placing his gracious hosts squarely in Quaritch’s crosshairs.
Meanwhile, Sully’s adopted human son, Spider (Jack Champion), who we learn is Quaritch’s biological child, begins exhibiting the predictable symptoms of oxygen deprivation, the narrative consequence of the small logistical inconvenience that humans cannot breathe Pandora’s air. He is easily the film’s most interesting character, torn between blood and the family that actually raised him.
Though his voice has deepened since The Way of Water, Sully’s son Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) has not matured much beyond his previous incarnation. He remains a grating presence, communicating in the emotional register of a tween Disney Channel protagonist. The only other character of........