Well, well, well, the time has come for yet another review, and the topic of today is Avatar: Fire and Ash. The 3rd film in the franchise, Fire and Ash, was released on December 19th, 2025, just over 3 years after its predecessor. Filmed simultaneously with The Way of Water, the movie had a reported budget of between 350 and 400 million dollars and has thus far made 1.379 billion dollars worldwide, but considering the Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water are the 1st and 3rd highest-grossing films respectively, we’ll see how much more this one makes before its theater run ends. Now, I had never seen either of the prior Avatar movies until just before going to see this one, so everything was still very fresh in my mind when watching this movie, and before going too deep into the review just yet, I’ll say that I really liked this one, and it may in fact be my favorite of the franchise, but that may be recency bias. I highly recommend this movie to anyone who may be interested, but without further ado, let’s get into it.
As in pretty much all Avatar movie reviews, it must be stated just how spectacular the visuals in this movie are. It is an absolutely stunning film and a testament to what you can do with enough talent and budget. The world of Pandora is a great setting, and we get to see more of it in this movie, allowing for new areas to explore, and with them visuals to intake. Specifically, the desert wasteland of the Mangkwan and the RDA city, and in fact, I wish we got to spend a bit more time in these places, especially the desert, because a lot of the movie is spent in the forests and the beach village of the Metkayina which, while still stunning and fun settings, we already spent a lot of time with in previous films. Now, before getting into some of the other great things about this movie, I did want to discuss my main problem with it, as no movie is perfect. Mainly just how many, the end is a borderline repeat of the previous movie. Both movies’ big climactic ending is a massive fight near the aforementioned beach village, where the tide is turned after aid from a water creature native to Pandora (the Tulkun outcast in The Way of Water and various other animals in Fire and Ash). The main characters then end up on an RDA ship due to Jake needing to save his family, with some eerily similar shots even being in both. Kind of a “yeah you can copy my homework, just change it a bit” situation.
Despite this, there are a lot of good things in this movie. To give it credit, all of what I just said is still presented well in the film, and it doesn’t really detract from the movie-watching experience, at least in my opinion. Certain characters got more emphasis, specifically, I’m thinking of Kiri and Spider, and it was fun to see Jake and Quaritch work together. Speaking of Quaritch, he continues to be a delight to watch, and with director James Cameron having stated he’ll continue to be the villain in the next sequels, I’m excited to see him again. But really, there’s one thing that can be singled out as really elevating the movie. Varang. The introduction of Na’vi villains is the injection of life that will keep this franchise going, as while the RDA are good antagonists, it would have been boring if all movies featured them exclusively as the villains. But the addition of Varang and the Mangkwan raiders really helps flesh out the world and adds more intrigue to the movie, and adds tension for the coming movies, with Quaritch beginning to fall out with the RDA as he begins to form a relationship with Varang and her ash tribe. I’m excited for the next movie, and as I feel I’ve been giving movies too high ratings, I’m going to tone this back a little bit and give it a 7/10 and a high recommendation. Till next time!
