Avatar: Fire and Ash

It's true that 2025's AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH recycles many of the plot points of the previous two entries.  Right up to the climatic, seriously action packed battle between the Na'vi clan and the humans bent on exploiting their home exomoon known as Pandora.  A rich environment of bioluminescent forests and oceans.  To say nothing of the mysterious material known as unobtainium.  If you've taken the earlier journeys, there's little here that won't ring familiar.  Director James Cameron has never broken any new narrative ground with these movies, but the visuals are so jaw dropping many don't really care.  Myself included.  It is no exaggeration to state that Cameron is the world's best living action director.  An overseer of astonishing detail and sweep.

The introduction of Varang (Oona Chaplin), leader of the Mangkwan warriors, is a welcome addition to this immersive world.  This fierce and fearsome matriarch of the Na'vi clan really cuts a swath through this familiar tale, and lends some (minor) complexity to what continues to essentially be a battle between Marines Colonel Miles Quatrich (Stephen Lang) - who you may remember died and returned as a Na'vi - and Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), who also became one of the blue people.  In between them is Spider (Jack Champion), Quatrich's biological son who was adopted by Jake and his wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). Varang and Quatrich will eventually join forces.  She is especially fascinated by the weapons humans use.  Machine guns and flamethrowers and such.  So much more effective than primitive Na'vi tools.  And Chaplin creates a formidable villain.  A hissable force. 

FIRE AND ASH was the first in the series I did not see in the theater.  This is a shame, but the film still looked and sounded awesome at home. Leapt off the screen. The (technical) depth of Cameron's achievement is impossible to miss, in every frame.  In one respect, this is what movies are all about.  A total visual embodiment.  Sucks you right into this world like few other movies do.  Enough for me to overlook any carps about simplistic storylines and juvenile level dramatics.  Those inclined to unearth allegories will clearly see parallels (via The Colonel and his new squeeze) with how the United States made deals with the devil across the world, and of course how Americans seized land with little regard for cultures or ecology. Such explorations in the screenplay by the director, Rick Jaffa, and Amanda Silver are not what you'd call deep.

There are two more AVATAR adventures in the works, scheduled for 2029 and 2031.  As much as I enjoyed the original back in 2009, I never would've imagined that I'd be willing to travel back to Pandora so often for new adventures.  But honestly, Jim, can we get at least one different movie out of you before we all connect to the spirit trees?