Avatar 3 Early Reactions Call It the Best One Yet

Avatar: Fire and Ash finally screened for the press earlier this week, and if their reactions are anything to go by, director James Cameron can just go ahead and pop a bottle of champagne (probably underwater) because his threequel got a largely warm reception. If Fire and Ash goes on to achieve the same financial success as the last two Avatar movies, he could also maybe pop [counts on fingers]… many more bottles of champagne.

If you’ve forgotten what’s happening in the Avatar franchise, the series follows Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a former human marine who becomes part of the Na’vi clan on the alien moon Pandora and dedicates his life to defending it from human exploitation. Avatar: The Way of Water continues the story years after the first flick, with Jake and his Na’vi lover Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) raising a family while the humans return in greater numbers, driving them into hiding with a new ocean-dwelling clan. Fire and Ash is set to explore deeper fractures within Pandora by introducing a fire-aligned Na’vi clan that is way more antagonistic, pushing the story towards a more morally complex struggle for the planet’s future.

Cameron is planning to make two more Avatar sequels after this, but Fire and Ash is set to conclude this particular part of the story.

“I don’t think of Fire and Ash as a sequel,” Cameron has explained. “I think it was a culmination of a saga. I like ‘saga’ better than ‘sequel’ because a lot of where we were going with the story was in the original architecture of the story. So if you think of this as the third act, I think that’s healthier. It’s a long game. And I went into it knowing that we’d be playing a long game and betting that the audience would come along with us and care about these people. Because they may be 10 feet tall and blue, but they’re people.”

Critics have described Fire and Ash more positively as a “knockout” that delivers on “an enormous scale.” Complimenting its “awe-inspiring” visuals, a few have declared it the best Avatar movie yet. However, some weren’t as impressed with Cameron’s latest, calling it “overstuffed,” “pointless,” and “mostly a repetitive bore.”

You can see some of these critical reactions below…

Avatar: Fire and Ash will be released on December 19.

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