If you check the archives, you’ll find I’ve already written two scathing reviews of the previous Avatar films, so it hardly seems worthwhile to type out a third one for Avatar: Fire and Ash.
They’re all the same film anyway, with minor changes. Writer-director-egomaniac James Cameron seems to feel that if it ain’t broke, financially speaking, don’t fix it, so he spends sickening amounts of money ($400 million for this installment) realizing his insipid sci-fi CGI visions, knowing they’ll make even more sickening amounts of money and guarantee further bloated sequels. As it stands today, Fire and Ash has already made more than $800 million worldwide.
Every time audiences turn out for these movies, it’s always the same: We arrive on the planet Pandora, a natural paradise rendered in slick pastels and populated by tall, trite-adage-spewing noble savages who are under attack by human colonizers seeking resources to exploit, the hyper-militarized “sky people.” Though the noble savages are always hopelessly outgunned, they inevitably channel their warrior skills and oneness with nature just in time for the big battle, when the sky people are defeated. Until the next sequel comes out, in which we’ll do it all over again.
And the usual suspects return for their big paydays: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Kate Winslet, and the gang.
This has been going on since 2009, when the first Avatar was released. The twenty-first century has been so harrowing, sixteen years feels like five lifetimes, at the very least. Even Cameron seems to acknowledge we’re now all in hell together, so this time he adds a bit of spice to this second sequel in the form of what we might call the “ash people.” Unlike the bland blue-skinned Na’vi “forest people” and the bland aqua-skinned Metkayina “water people,” the volcano-dwelling Mangkwan are a fierce offshoot of the Na’vi who have been literally burned by nature, their main…
Auteur: Eileen Jones
