loading . . . Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025) ZERO STARS/****
starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Kate Winslet
screenplay by James Cameron & Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver
directed by James Cameron
by Walter Chaw I think, for white Americans, the indigenous peoples they displaced to colonize what would become the United States aren’t real people. Instead, they are supplemental creatures in a myth of American exceptionalism: the wolf that eats grandma; the wind at the door. They are props for enlightenment, triggers of guilt. Once conquered through disease, genocide, broken treaties, and other nasty tricks born of avarice and cupidity, indigenous peoples became objects of pity and romanticization, transitioning from boogeyman to avatar of a gentle, mystical, maternal, natural world without once passing through “human being.” From marauding savage to mourner of litter and butter saleswoman in less than a generation. What would happen, do you suppose, if white men finally thought of indigenous peoples as men and women with the same complexity, desires, and fears as them? What if they suspected indigenous peoples loved their children and didn’t want them taken from them to be buried beneath strange “schools” in unmarked graves? How would it affect their sense of self, to suddenly understand the unimaginable suffering they have justified and continued to celebrate under the aegis of their undead cannibal god and this beautiful stolen country they’re destroying in His name? Would they have to experience shame? Would that shame force them to grow? Unacceptable. How dare the dead hope their passing had meaning for their murderers.
_Avatar_ is about Jake (Sam Worthington), a white soldier in a wheelchair who is ported into the body of an indigenous person so that he can help indigenous people fight against the _other_ white interlopers interested in colonizing their natural resources. The indigenous people, the Na’vi, are giant blue cats who literally meld with the natural elements on their planet, Pandora, through their naked mole-rat tails, and boast of a harmonious existence that nonetheless requires a warrior class because those are the two things indigenous people in white fantasies are allowed to be: ferocious warriors and children of the Earth. Director James Cameron, who writes like an eighth-grader but is a kinetic cinematic savant, has really cracked the code here. What the American people want is to relitigate the systemic literal, social, and cultural displacement of indigenous peoples from the United States by recasting the obvious villains of history as Sgt. Rock and his victims in various shades of “me checkum for bees” ‘blueface.’ Imagine how many billions more Cameron could have made doing _Roots_ with giant Black cats and a white hero who masquerades as one of them by putting on a Black body as a costume and helping them fight back at colonial powers seeking to enslave them. But he wouldn’t do that, because, for the most part, the white folks who defend this shit know enough to pretend to see Black people as people, though not without severe and immediate pushback. All Lives Matter, right?
In 2010, Cameron told THE GUARDIAN why he wanted to make these movies:
> _I felt like I was 130 years back in time watching what the Lakota Sioux might have been saying at a point when they were being pushed and they were being killed and they were being asked to displace and they were being given some form of compensation. This was a driving force for me in the writing of_ Avatar _–I couldn’t help but think that if they [the Lakota Sioux] had had a time-window and they could see the future… and they could see their kids committing suicide at the highest suicide rates in the nation… because they were hopeless and they were a dead-end society–which is what is happening now–they would have fought a lot harder._
In short, Cameron was frustrated by how the Lakota Sioux successfully survived a genocidal campaign against them that included the ravaging of their land and the engineered near-extinction of buffalo, a primary source of food and other necessities for them. He’s convinced they weren’t tough enough, and that what they needed was a Jake Sully: a white guy to help a brother out, since they were incapable of helping themselves. This outrage over what he sees as the Sioux’s cowardice has been his obsession for almost two decades now–a time during which his billions and visual skill could have been directed at the best action movies anyone has ever seen as opposed to these cartoons about a white saviour who first overcame disability, then overcame racism. Cameron is, in a sense, no different from J.K. Rowling. He found a weird fucking drum, and although he has the resources to do anything else, he’s going to beat it until he’s dead. He’s going to reclaim the “honour” of the Lakota Sioux, goddamnit, because if they won’t grow a spine… Anyway, we like to say it’s inexplicable that these movies are the highest-grossing of all time in the United States. Whenever we Americans recognize a horrible truth about ourselves, we say it’s not like us, and I have to say: I agree, it’s not _like_ us. It _is_ us. Not the fact of _Avatar_ , but that _Avatar_ rakes in a billion dollars every time a new one comes out. Imagine an unbelievably paternalistic rollercoaster that makes you feel less racist for a few hours. If you build it, they will come.
Get your 4DX tickets for _Avatar: Fire and Ash_ and buckle up, bra’! Gnarly! Um, hang ten!
If you haven’t revisited the first two _Avatar_ films lately, you may not recall that Jake has mated with a Na’vi warrior lady, Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña). They had a litter, and their firstborn was killed last time around. They’ve also adopted Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), the mysterious offspring of another human in a Na’vi body, who has a special connection with the sentient mycelium network that animates the planet. There’s a heroic, “rogue” talking whale–who, in this film, nobly exiles himself for the good of the many in the funniest moment of 2025–as well as a white kid with dreadlocks, Spider (Jack Champion), the unwanted but inescapable Brian Bonsall/Cousin Oliver/Scrappy-Doo of Jake’s family. Spider is also, and take a minute to marinate in this, the narrative and emotional hub of _Avatar: Fire and Ash_ (hereafter _Avatar 3_). That’s right. Because Jake being white and in Na’vi-face isn’t on the nose enough, _Avatar 3_ is centred around the life and times of Poochie. I did enjoy Neytiri threatening to murder Spider, advancing on him menacingly, knife drawn, at least three times in the early going, whether or not there’s a solid narrative reason for it. Her problem is twofold: she’s grieving her child and needs to hate this surrogate son so there can be a tearful “I’m your mommy!” moment at the end; and she hates the “pinkskins”–even her husband, who says, “ _I’m_ a pinkskin…on the _inside_.” When he says this, she winces. The audience winces. This is the natural response to both a James Cameron screenplay and Cameron’s attempt to teach white people that terms like “redskin” are, by their nature, dehumanizing. It doesn’t work, alas, because only white people believe in reverse racism. “Okay, okay, but _technically_ it’s dazzling.” Like the world’s most advanced plantation. I never thought of it like that: _Pocahontas_ with a $300 million budget. A shit sandwich where the bread is a Tiffany mosaic. Thanks for getting my mind right.
The mycelium network, you see, has elected to transform Spider into a “half-breed,” a human who maintains his pink skin but can breathe the air of Pandora. Spider, the biological son of Quaritch, chose mercy in a confrontation with the sumbitch and is now the Kwisatz Haderach with whom Jake plays out the Abraham/Isaac story in a _Ferngully_ screensaver. Should the roundeye–er, pinkskin–ever figure out the riddle of Spider’s biology, they could more easily colonize Pandora–except it’s not his biology–he’s infested with mushroom, but… Okay, listen, I’m not going to pretend to give a shit. You can if you want to. Mainly, I want to talk about how it’s not really progress to introduce a savage woman archetype whom everyone calls a witch to battle the feral warrior woman archetype. I want to talk about the scene where Ronal (Kate Winslet)–who is of course the _tsahik_ of the Metkayina clan and wife of Tonowari (Cliff Curtis, the rare Pacific Islander among the cast)–screams, “I’m gonna die! But not before I push out this baby!” to Neytiri before she does indeed push out her baby and die, which gave me a tantalizing peek into how good this movie could’ve been with a John Waters at the helm. I want to talk about the high-framerate enhancement of the fight sequences, a technique that still only succeeds at making a film look instantly like the porn knockoff of itself. I want to talk about how the dialogue is mostly composed of “hurry!” and “is that all you got?!” and other such exclamations and interjections as a bunch of expensive toons Shrek scenes from _Free Willy_ , _Revenge of the Sith_ , and Cameron’s own _The Abyss_.
The baddies this time around are the…twice? Thrice?…reanimated Quaritch (Stephen Lang) and the “Sahib” of the airborne ash people, Varang (Oona Chaplin), who favours queening around like Epiphany in _Angel Heart_ while speaking in the fashion of the Na’vi, i.e., slowly and without contractions. She blows hallucinogens into her loyal subjects’ faces during ritual dances–and into Quaritch’s, too, to which he responds, “That’s some _strong_ shit!” because underneath all this hoohah lies a Seth Rogan burner hangout flick–and demands someone show her how to work an assault rifle by shaking it and barking, “Make thunder!” That’s right, the Na’vi refer to firearms as thunder sticks, do fire dances, and collect scalps. Varang cuts Quaritch, and Quaritch says, “Ouch! That wasn’t cool!” You know what would be really interesting is if Cameron and George Lucas wrote a script together. We could take bets on how many pages it took before it was just a string of Republic serial Mad Libs spoken by characters named Admiral Badguy and Poopy Dookus. Quaritch and Varang form one of four romantic pairings in _Avatar 3_ , each of whom is given extended “campfire conversations” full of great emotion and lines like, “Yearling calves and reef babies, together, having their first bond with Ewa!” The contortions people go through, the knots they tie themselves in, to rationalize patronizing, unforgivable bullshit like this should be a red flag. Please check in on your minority buddies and ask them what it feels like to hear sentiments from friends and allies such as, “Well, sure it’s problematic, hurts vulnerable populations like yours at a moment where they’re being targeted by perpetuating obvious and archaic stereotypes, and is written by the guy in screenwriting class who doesn’t like movies, but BRIGHT COLOURS GO BOOM BOOM GOO GOO WOW WOW!”
When I first got all up in my feelings reviewing _Avatar_ sixteen years ago, much of the hate mail accused me of imagining that Cameron was retelling the Native American genocide with Lakota Sioux who “fought harder.” Then he confirmed it. Upon revisiting the original in preparation for this review, I found it to be at least true to a science-fiction premise slightly more than a _Dances with Wolves_ one, with a concluding battle that does, indeed, kick some ass. This third time out, Cameron only clarifies his intention to make America great again with terms like “pinkskin” and by having a rigid human, General Ardmore (Edie Falco), derisively refer to Quaritch as “Cochise.” She’s calling Quaritch Cochise in the same way certain tiny-dicked assholes refer to sitting American Senators as “Pocahontas.” I think Cameron means all this self-awareness as evidence of growth and sensitivity, but, as there is no other evidence of maturity, it kind of implies the opposite. He doesn’t get it. He doesn’t have to. There are no consequences. Ignore the offensive parts and what remains of _Avatar 3_ is a cacophonous mess of sentimental mumbo-jumbo with a worthy hero–Jake and Neytiri’s grieving teenage son, Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), who spent the last film hoping to be loved and accepted in the shadow of an impressive older brother–shuttled to the sidelines in favour of a trustafarian scumbag broligarch whose biological and adopted dads fight over for the right to give _him_ their paternal approval. Not all lives matter in the _Avatar_ movies, it seems. Even the planet-conscious Elwa spends a lot of time resurrecting the pinkskins while Her native sons and daughters drop like flies. Curiouser and curiouser. Anyway, time to suck it up, everybody. Here’s your meat, so eat it.
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https://filmfreakcentral.net/2025/12/avatar-fire-and-ash-2025/
