With Avatar Fire and Ash, James Cameron proves again why he is the master of large-scale event cinema. Fire and Ash is a sprawling epic, with a stunning visual language that demands being seen on the biggest screen possible. Throughout all of this however, Cameron stays laser-focused on his environmentalist and colonialist themes, told through sharp character-driven storytelling about family, betrayal and loyalty.
Since the first Avatar film, Cameron and his team of over 3,000 animators, artists and designers have proven they are deeply gifted at bringing to life a visually stunning world with Pandora. What’s more impressive is that with Fire and Ash, they prove in striking detail how it is intricately realised in a way that feels paradoxically foreign and familiar at the same time. Every frame is filled with plants, landscapes and creatures that even in the distant corners of the screen feel fully realised in a way that is totally believable, totally full of life and wholly mesmerising. It is a world that you want to live in because it is beautiful.
This is an impressive feat specifically because it manages to buck the trend of sci-fi films that often equivocate alien worlds with being dystopic, dark and somewhat undesirable. Implying that the very concept of something deeply foreign must look antithetical to what our blue planet earth looks like. From Villeneuve’s Dune to the Star Wars franchise, audiences are offered alien planets that are in their own way beautiful, but almost always harsh in some manner, either because they are desolate (as with most sand planets) or because they are dark and technologically advanced in an overwhelming fashion. Of course, these worlds can be sleek and desirable as well, but with Avatar: Fire and Ash, Cameron does the opposite.
The alien planet of Pandora is the idyllic world filled with flowing water, glowing jungles and tranquil landscapes. While the RVA bases created by the humans of the RVA serve as the harsh, industrial, grey-washed dystopian structures that primarily form prisons, hostile workplaces and lifeless tactile hunting warships. One particular highlight of the film was the second act which mainly takes place on the RVA bases. For the first time in a while, we get to see a whole host of human interact with the Na’vi. It’s exciting because it recontextualises the wider story that Avatar takes place in, a colonial human army sent to pillage the natural resources and take over another planet.
These scenes provide us with the harsh imagery that the RVA soldiers live in every day, filled with gigantic industrial weaponry, steel-grey fortified military bases, and human beings covered in tactical gear and masks in a planet they are neither welcome nor comfortable in. These extended scenes offer a great contrast to the previous film, Avatar The Way of Water which almost exclusively took place in the water-based tribes of Pandora, immersing the audience only in the landscapes and culture of the local species.
This return to the human colonised parts of Pandora remind us again why Cameron is the modern master of science-fiction, exceeding particularly when it comes to depicting militaristic dystopian futures. The Terminator remains a defining diatribe against the dangers of predictive policing, artificial intelligence, and large-scale automatic militarisation. Here, Cameron has a chance to treat us to the grotesque and overwhelming imagery of the gargantuan machinery and weapons humans have brought to Pandora, which is strikingly repulsive when contrasted against the natural and peaceful world of the Na’vi. The sickness of the resource-deficient earth has spread to the lifeless human bases the RVA has created on Pandora, serving as the dystopian alternative to the idyllic foreign planet they are colonising.
Cameron does not lose sight of the focal point of his story. Those being the colonial-native war over resources, and the inter-personal rivalry and complex familial betrayal between Jake, Quaritch and Spider. The result is a narrative that is both epic in scale but sharply focused on telling one specific corner of the story. Rather than get lost in the vastness of a story which involves a human-invasion of a foreign planet spurred on by a resource-defection earth, Cameron dials in further on the familial bonds, personal rivalries, and vast array of alien creatures and history introduced in the first two films. Here, we get further explanations of the genetic history of important characters like Kiri and Spider, the introduction and return of new and existing creatures including the Ikran, the wind traders, and the fire people, as well a pivotally important expansion of the spiritual world of Pandora including the divine powers and physical manifestations of the higher power Eywa.
Even still, Cameron pulls in larger than life aspects such as the religious connection to Ewya. Through this, he spiritraul world of Avatar to be more rich in how it operates, how it helps the characters heal and win against the humans, and deepends the vastness of Pandora as a foreign planet with its own history, mechanics, and cosmic foundations. As such as the visual feast of flora and fauna is deeply sci-fi in itself, the connections to Ewya and a higher power are the most overtly science-fiction aspects of the film, given they explicitly depict a divine force. Noteworthy here is the wonderful homages that Cameron pays to 2001 A Space Odyssey, which draws a cosmically beautiful link between the world of Avatar and arguably the most monumental science fiction film of all time.
What all of this also allows for is a deeply rich thematic discussion. The first theme boils down to colonial politics about invading native traditions, and moralistic arguments whether passive resistance or aggression is acceptable, offering an examination of deontological thinking. The second theme unpacks complex ideas about found family, cultural integration and adaptation, and utilitarian arguments around the trolley problem. Quaritch is caught between worlds, the stoic military general in him holds deep distrust of the native people and remains committing in righting the wrong of betrayal that Jake Sully committed so that he can see through the full human colonisation of Pandora. Concurrently, he’s being pulled toward accepting the Na’vi way of life s he falls under the influence of of the fire Na’vi Varang, who he’s made a political alliance with. fire tribes that come with some interesting romantic intermingling as well.
In all, Cameron proves again why he is the master of large-scale event cinema. Avatar is a sprawling epic, with a stunning visual language that demands being seen on the biggest screen possible. Throughout all of this however, Cameron stays laser-focused on his environmentalist and colonialist themes, told through sharp character-driven storytelling about family, betrayal and loyalty.
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