By The third film in James Cameron’s epic “Avatar” series has arrived with “Avatar: Fire and Ash” and it delivers an epic visual masterpiece and arguably the best film in the series.
Picking up shortly after the last film; Jake (Sam Worthington), is dealing with the loss of their oldest son while his wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) has become very dark and hostile towards humans; surpassing her previous hostility to them for what they have done to her people, family, and planet.
Quaritch (Stephen Lang) is obsessed with locating Jake to exact his revenge and retrieve something that he covets despite his rebirth in an Avatar body. He is still 100% focused on the task of eliminating Jake and spearheading the colonization attempt by the humans.
Into the mix comes the Ash people who are a very dark and dangerous group fronted by Varang (Oona Chaplin).
Quaritch decides to arm Varang and her people with the advanced human weapons and tasks them with helping locate and destroy Jake and his followers.
At this time Jake is dealing with various conflicts from his family, tribes, and his own complicated emotions as he struggles to deal with various issues.
The tension builds as numerous storylines build leading to an epic confrontation which is like the entire film; a visual masterpiece that had me in awe of just how amazing and imaginative the visuals were and how much Cameron continues to advance the modern 3D technology and visual capabilities.
Flying through the air or swimming into the seas does not matter as the deeply immersive world teaming with life was absolutely stunning to experience and truly gave them thrill and immersion of being a part of the action and was absolutely amazing to experience.
The film may be seen as an extension of the previous film as the storyline evolved to pushing seven hours and caused the need for two films. The over three hour run time passed quickly as I was so engaged with the visuals and characters as Cameron is not content just to wow an audience with his visuals but ground the film in performance driven characters who audiences can relate to and cheer for despite their alien appearance.
The movie was an absolute joy and captured many of the elements that make movies such a magical experience. While some may have some issues with elements of the film; I found it to be an amazing technical achievement which shows again that Cameron is in a class by himself when it comes to digital spectacles and how he has time and again proven to one of the best genre Directors of all time
“Avatar: Fire and Ash” is an epic masterpiece and one of the best movies of the year and the reason we go to movies.
4.5 stars out of 5
