By 
Fresh out of the movie theater, Outposter I Die Hard reviews Avatar: Fire & Ash.
Avatar: Fire & Ash
Well that was cool. Main takeaways, that will include minor spoilers.
Graphics and Framing
I never thought I’d see like a full blown JRPG final fight somewhat logically depicted in something approaching reality.
The finale is quite the culmination of the advancement in image quality. The entire film is indeed a significant jump from the previous… but not as big as the ridiculous jump that Way of Water was.
Lighting was huge, water was better, and the scenes in the Ash People (or whatever) village clearly got the most attention. Then they start tripping balls and it looks pretty darn accurate if I do say so myself. The 3D helped sell it.
Only those that have actually tripped, and tripped recently would know how to get it so close. Very effective.
Several classic frames I won’t forget.
Action
Top notch but a bit redundant by the end. The smaller battles are arguably more interesting. .. but I kept thinking of Return of the Jedi during the big battle before the awesome JRPG punch out.
It’s the same as the end of the first Avatar, even the setup for the battle is the same, as is the resolution. Jedi through and through; bigger and better but… a redux.
Sound & Gimmicks
My theater had the volume too low for my taste… but it got better when I moved up a couple rows, abandoning my moving chair.
Don’t get it twisted though, the chair-ride thing is very cool and not a distraction at all. The problem is those special rows are too far back.
The score has always been underwhelming for these movies, but this was the best effort yet. Some James Horner-ish hype-moments marbled throughout helped with the mostly adequate but vanilla score.
The 3D is pretty darn perfect… but some rows are better than others. There’s an awesome escape sequence like towards the end that almost had me believing I was watching a stage play when I was trying out the third row.
I ended up on the 4th, but one more back would have been ideal(it was full).
My moving seats were row 7.
Story & Themes **Spoiler Warning**
Once you get the gist of where things are going, you basically have the movie figured out. Again, this has a lot in common with Return of the Jedi.
What I did not anticipate was actually seeing Eywa. Spirituality is a bigger theme this time around, as we finally get some resolution with the lil’ Weaver spawn which is very satisfying.
My prediction about her and Spider was correct, but there’s some new stuff with Spider too! Neat idea because it ties directly into the motivations of the outworld antagonists.
Raised the stakes and gave him solid resolution.
The antagonists? The Ash Tribe is scary as fuck. That matriarch bitch is a perfect combination of sexy/psychotic.
Because she and her people were cutoff from their planet-god thanks to a volcanic eruption, they just fuckin trip balls all the time and go on raids.
Her soldiers borrow more than a little from The Warboys in Mad Max: Fury Road / Furiosa. Meanwhile she enjoys mind-raping her victims right before scalping and murdering them.
It’s savage as fuck and she uses this rape-ability for just about every single new person she encounters. Meanwhile her little army of simps enjoy her mind-rapes while snorting psychedelics. She fucks them as a gift. She’s fkn awesome-scary.
We continue with very welcome family themes, multiple sides. We continue with complicated themes about how both tradition and change is required for a people to survive.
The ground-level experience of the next generation is necessary, it just needs to be filtered and approved through tradition. They handle this well.
Side note – this had me thinking about the current communist/gender mania of our youth while watching.
That ain’t natural, they were coopted and given purpose by evil olds using even more evil philosophy to trick them into even more evil iterations. Very different than what I’m talking about regarding “required change witnessed by the youth.”
Motherhood was huge. There’s a very dramatic birth scene.
Maybe one of the best ever depicted for a number of reasons including being in the middle of a fuckin battle… more to it than that and I was very impressed by how they did it.
Conclusion
Remember when trailers were 18 minutes? Well mine were like 30, and a movie this long needs a goddamn intermission.
Not just to piss but just to take a break! They say they won’t because it eats up screen time… okay well then use 12 minutes of those trailers then instead of front-loading them!
If you don’t want it to distract from the movie make it relevant. Like in this case it could be a 12 minute “save the rainforest” pitch or whatever.
I no longer believe we need an Avatar 4 & 5… yet. I would rather we return in like 15 years again long after James Cameron is done making movies.
This will give him time to do something else before he goes, and us time to really anticipate it again.
I’ve seen enough for now, and I think it’s a brilliant trilogy. Leave it like this, keep the scripts and hand it off to Robert Rodriguez or whoever.
Overall I think much like The Dark Knight Rises or Return Of The Jedi.
This might be the least of the three movies… but it’ll be the most rewatchable.
The post An Outposter Reviews AVATAR: FIRE & ASH appeared first on Last Movie Outpost.
