The Media Tourist

Third installment of the blockbuster sci-fi franchise is big and blue and in a zone all its own

Avatar: Fire & Ash
Starring Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Zoe Saldaña & Oona Chaplin
Directed by James Cameron
Rated PG-13

In theaters Friday, Dec. 19

Welcome back to the distant moon of Pandora, some 26 trillion miles from Earth—but as close as your local movie screen!

In this third installment of director James Cameron’s Avatar adventure epic, the peaceful Na’vi tribe is stirred to action by a much more aggressive clan aligned with militaristic human invaders plotting to take over Pandora and line their pockets exploiting it.

If you’re an avid Avatar-iac, a diehard fan of the billion-dollar blockbuster franchise, you’ll feel right at home. If you’re new to the wonders of Pandora, well, hold onto your pointy ears, your tail and your dreadlocked hair. You’re in for one far-out ride, one that lasts nearly three and a half hours.

Using his pioneering motion-capture technology to put digital “makeup” onto real actors, Cameron has crafted another spectacular, not-of-this-earth saga. Your eyes know what they’re seeing isn’t 100 percent “real,” but it’s not quite fake, either. It’s a whole ‘nother sprawling universe, existing in a new realm of artificially heightened movie reality with a pantheon of exotic creatures and 10-foot tall Pandorans sweeping and swooping around the sky riding dragon-like lizard birds, swimming in the sea alongside massive leviathan predators, and running like goosed gazelles through the dense jungle.

You’ll see some familiar digitized faces (some more than others) in characters carrying over from the two previous Avatars, in 2009 and 2022, including  Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Zoe Saldaña, Kate Winslet and Stephen Lang, while Giovanni Ribisi and Edie Falco also reprise their real-people roles as humans, no digitization required. Jack Champion, playing “Spider,” the adopted human boy raised by the Na’vi, has a critical role in the story and a much bigger part than in previous films.

But the movie’s real splash is made by Oona Chaplin as Varang, the shamanic leader of the warring Ash People, so known because they live in a volcano and can control fire. If the last name rings a bell, it’s because Chaplin is the granddaughter of silent-film pioneer Charlie Chaplin, who died, alas, more than half a century before seeing what his li’l lumpkin spawn would look like all grown up and digitally enhanced as an impossibly lanky blue humanoid wearing war paint, a flaming red headdress and a skimpy, strapless two-piece Pandora-kini. If Bob Mackie designed costumes for Cher for a ’70s TV show somewhere in a faraway galaxy, she might look something like Varang—who I kept wishing would break into a Pandoran cover of “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves.” She’s one bewitchingly sexy, seriously terrifying villain, especially when she hisses and sneers.

It’s a mega-load of deep-dish sci-fi on steroids, but it also has some resonant real-world themes about spirituality, the evils of colonization, the importance of family, reverence for the mysteries of nature and creatures great and small, and the great connectedness of our world, no matter which planet—or moon—we call home. The Ash People are regarded as “savages” and “hostiles,” in much the same way indigenous Americans were considered by more “civilized” Euro-centric immigrants. It’s no wonder they shoot flaming arrows and make chilling war-whoops.

In addition to the “cowboys ‘n’ Indians” thread running throughout, there are hints of other pop-cultural touchstones, including some vine-swinging a la Tarzan, a fateful sea-battle moment that reminded me of captain Ahab and Moby Dick, and even a deadly serious climatic cliffhanger that made me think—bizarrely, I know—of the ‘80s sitcom My Two Dads. When you watch it, you’ll know what I mean. Pandora may be far, far, far away, and its air may be toxic for humans to breathe, but nothing exists in a vacuum.

It’s a golly-whopper of a thrill ride, a gob-smacking display of filmmaking tech, unbridled imagination and meticulously crafted world-building. To say “You’ve never seen anything like it” isn’t quite right, but mostly is. Cameron’s Avatar realm truly does exist in a world of its own, one that feels both futuristic and prehistoric, one he created—and one that gazillions of fans eagerly flock to visit.

And they’ll be flocking well into the future. The director has announced that the fourth and fifth Avatars are already on the launchpad. So, keep that dragon-bird saddle and stirrup handy.

—Neil Pond