“Avatar: Fire and Ash” (2025) is the third in a projected five (dear, Lord) movies in the “Avatar” franchise. Starting three weeks after “Avatar: The Way of Water” (2022), the Sully family and Recom Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) and his team encounter the fearsome Mangkwan clan, which the fearsome Varang (Oona Chaplin) leads. This clash unleashes miracles and a reign of destruction on the Na’vi and the tulkun. Will Eywa save her people? Somewhere Ridley Scott is cursing out James Cameron for not only having a Space Jesus, but a Space Abraham and a sort of Space Isaac meanwhile Cameron is just making a protest informercial against Taji, Japan for their dolphin hunts.

Cameron is a creative man, but will someone ask him to figure out the nexus point between a limited television series in movie theaters and movies so he can chop the length down. Watching “Avatar: Fire and Ash” is like watching a teen CW series with no commercial breaks and better production values that still ends up looking like a video game. This installment is the longest with a run time of three hours fifteen minutes. The last two movies have natural breaks where the screen goes black, and the commercial could go, not that anyone wants ads. Break these bad boys up in more digestible bite sizes. People would go to the theaters more often, and the tropey storyline would be less of a problem. People would see a television series in a movie theater. Release an hour every month. Remember all the watch parties of “Game of Thrones.” Cameron could do it though the story quality is thin even for a television series. Honestly I’d rather watch most of “The 100” in theaters with no breaks than any “Avatar” movie, but at least I do not hate it anymore as I did with the first movie. For instance, if you enjoyed watching the kids get kidnapped repeatedly in the second movie, you’ll really enjoy it when it happens to fewer of them. The whole enterprise can be tedious.

Pyromaniac Varang, aka Darthette Maul, and the Mangkwan people are the best part of “Avatar: Fire and Ash.” God bless Chaplin for injecting a little mayhem and fun into the franchise without all the heavy-handed symbolism. Darthette Maul makes Quaritch interesting again. Without her, he is less defined and more comedic relief. Just when it seems that he is going to get redeemed, those two crazy kids cannot decide whether they want to fuck, marry or kill each other, and there are no wedding chapels nearby. With his new girlfriend giving him a makeover, they are more like a vampire couple than Na’vi (compliment). Darthette Maul just loves tech, and Quaritch shows how he got that first kid when he showers her with presents. It is not long before she invites him into her vagina dentata hut. It is such an unhinged pairing, and it is a shame that Cameron did not fully embrace the weirdness of it all. There was so much potential for Darthette Maul and the human beings to reveal the tenebrous sides of their personality. For all her devil may care attitude, when she finally meets human beings, it is the first time that she cares about image and what others think of her. Chaplin may be the only reason to see this “movie.” Despite that, is this part interesting because it borrows so heavily from the cinematic bad old days when the indigenous were the bad guys who scalped people, and it is in the collective lizard brain DNA to lap up these images?

Even while doing physical therapy, Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) is a complete bad ass. Fortunately, she gets more fight scenes in “Avatar: Fire and Ash.” What is all the fuss with Jake (Sam Worthington) when she is literally a one-woman army in this one. Cameron can imagine anything except two women getting along with each other as she and Ronal (Kate Winslet) often hiss at each other. Cat fight, anyone? Eyeroll. Someone does need to call Ikran DCF because the Na’vi are not broken up enough about their flying friends getting shot out of the sky, especially for poor Seze, who gets tore up. Toruk Makto looks a bit like a rubber chicken but needs similar support. There are unsurprising revelations about Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), including her preference for short kings in the form of Spider (Jack Champion), aka Tarzan. Any chance to do a remix of Weaver’s performance in “Aliens” (1986) would be fine with anyone.

Are we going to talk about Jake being an abusive father or are we not ready to have this conversation? In any other movie, a military man forcing his kids to act as if they are part of his troop would be code for dad needs a therapist, and soon these kids will too. Seriously his kids are child soldiers. Worthington is functional, and his best scenes are with Lang. My human son has two human Na’vi hybrid daddies. It is fun. Still not even a photo of that boy’s mama, but a story. Side note: Tarzan is briefly styled like a wangsta complete with talking crap to the cameras while wanted. Cringe! I cannot, but Champion certainly takes it like one considering that he is in blue face (well, blue stripe) for two movies and plays it straight without a hint of utter embarrassment. Also, Jake is kind of the reason that everything goes to hell for awhile in “Avatar: Fire and Ash” because he does not listen to the Na’vi’s practices to avoid metail. Cameron uses this film to bravely tackle an important problem in society, reverse racism, between Neytiri and Jake. Considering that Jake lost his twin brother, potentially his first soul mate, and never once shed a tear, it was a real missed opportunity for Cameron and his backup writers not to at least reference in this installment considering mourning is a major issue. Jake has zero interiority or emotional depth, which this franchise barely understands.

Besides borrowing heavily from the Bible, “Avatar: Fire and Ash” also lifts elements from the “Black Panther” franchise, the “Rambo” franchise, “Titanic” (1997), “Spartacus” (1960) “Mad Max: Fury Road” (2015). It is nice to see that Jean Jacket got a job after “Nope” (2022) working with the wind traders. An underexplored, neat note is the idea of propaganda among the tuluns and the human beings regarding who is a traitor and an outlaw, a thread explored more in depth in “The Running Man” (2025) and “Wicked: For Good” (2025). Ultimately Cameron punks out when it comes to the tuluns because he clings to his nature kumbaya moments, but if chimpanzees and ants can have wars, why not propaganda and media manipulation? Again, God forbid things get too weird. The tuluns felt as if they could go into a “Dune” franchise direction similar to the Bene Gesserit, especially with the “bad ideas among our young” fears, but no.

“Avatar: Fire and Ash” is fine and will make so much money that two more movies are guaranteed (nooooooooo), but are they going to keep growing in time? Seriously it is a television series, but no one has the heart to tell Cameron because the money is too good, and he is kind of amazing. It is just our rotten luck that the franchise that he fell in love with is the weakest one. Why could not it be “Terminator” or “Aliens!”