25 Days of 2025 Movies: Avatar: Fire and Ash

I gotta say… wasn’t a big fan of this one. I’m not a huge fan of the Avatar movies plot wise… but I do think they’re beautiful visually and the first two I liked enough. There were some problems with them- but overall I was really excited to see this one- I thought it was going to be a fun movie… and I was disappointed.

I know there’s a lot of discourse about Cinefiles saying “this is a bad movie it’s the same as Avatar Way of Water… stop enjoying it.” And that is mostly what i’m going to complain about in this review… but if you enjoyed this movie I don’t think you should stop enjoying it just because I didn’t like it. I really wanted to like this movie and I think I want to watch it again when it’s available on streaming or before the next movie comes out if they make another one… but as of right now my first time watching the movie- I thought the plot was a less interesting version of The Way of Water and it didn’t add anything to the Pandora Universe that I enjoyed.

I think the thing I was most looking forward to were the Ash people I think they were referred to- who were basically the villains of the movie… and I didn’t feel like they were interesting at all and they really didn’t have much of a motive to why they were so awful to the other tribes. I think the weapons they used were less interesting too- not necessarily from this tribe alone but from the other villains. There were too many guns which I think kind of killed

the interesting part of the first movie. Everyone was using bows and arrows which was cool… but this was just guns and fire… and it just didn’t really feel as good.

They also didn’t really spend enough time with the children of Jake Sully to develop them enough… even with Sully and his wife they didn’t really develop. It just feels so abrupt that his wife was like “you have to kill spider because we can’t have other pink skins invading our world” and Jake was like “Spider is like a son to us we can’t kill him.” and then it flips immediately and Jake almost kills

him and his wife doesn’t want him to Kill Spider. The change of heart was very out of nowhere and it wasn’t earned.

I also don’t know if the delivery of the lines by the actor playing Spider was the best. He was much younger when this was filmed and less experienced acting in this- but I didn’t really feel for him when he called Sully “Dad” in the scene I just mentioned and then later on a similar thing happens with Quadritch and he refers to him as “Dad” but… I think he was just too young and inexperienced for me to feel anything from this. I don’t think he did a bad job but I just think he was inexperienced. A lot of people are saying he’s a bad actor… and while I don’t think I liked his performance- I don’t think it’s an easy role for a young man to capture and He gave a fine performance.

So overall… I don’t think I love any of the Avatar movies- but I liked the other two and I wanted to like this one but I just didn’t. I don’t know that I would watch a Fourth Avatar movie… if I do see it- i’d want to know that there was something interesting added to the world. So… if the trailer shows something good for pandora- i’ll rush and see it. If not I think i’d be okay saying this franchise is for a lot of people but maybe it isn’t for me… although i’d still go to any theme park attraction because so far I think that’s the most interesting thing about Avatar.

Bye-

PS- I wanted to talk about when I saw this movie because that adds to the experience a bit. I went to see probably the first showing on the Friday it opened in Imax 3D… I had just gotten popcorn and a soda for me and my boyfriend and I put some butter on it… we were running a bit late to the show- but when we got to the theater the movie wasn’t playing yet… so we were waiting- and then someone came in and let us know they were having some difficulties with the projector and if they were able to get it running they would just run it without previews. Well- it ended up getting canceled and they couldn’t refund our A List reservations- but we waited in line and they gave both of us 2 free movie passes that we can use up until 2027 I believe it said. They also offered to refund our snacks- but I was already eating the snacks and I didn’t really find that necessary.

Happy New Year!