by Nataliia Serebriakova
Worth: $11.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Jack Champion, Kate Winslet, Sigourney Weaver, Oona Chaplin, Stephen Lang
Intro:
… less like a vision of an alien world and more like a familiar Western fantasy, merely dressed in bioluminescent skin.
For true fans of the franchise, Avatar: Fire and Ash will be an unforgettable three-hour journey to the planet Pandora, while more critically minded viewers are likely to find far less enjoyment.
In the third part, we find the family of Jake (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) mourning the death of Neteyam. In a way, Spider (Jack Champion) could take the place of their lost son — a human boy who has to wear a special oxygen mask in order to breathe on Pandora. However, the Na’vi family is in no hurry to embrace the human child, a kind of undersized yet nimble Mowgli among towering blue people. They set off on a journey aboard a flying fish-like vessel with the aim of returning Spider to the humans, but end up captured by the Ash People, led by Varang (Oona Chaplin). At the same time, Spider’s actual father, Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), also wants his son back, but upon seeing that the Na’vi family has been seized by the Fire People, he temporarily allies himself with them against the Ash People.
When Spider escapes from captivity, he ends up connecting with the great source of Power — Mother Nature — and becomes half Na’vi, gaining the ability to breathe in this world without a mask. Without going into spoilers, it can be said that Spider’s fate becomes the narrative backbone of the third film. And this is where the great irony lies: James Cameron now seems less interested in the microcosm of the blue indigenous people than in the way a white man integrates into their world. Over the course of the three-hour runtime, plenty of adventures and outrageous moments take place — for instance, the leader of the Ash People lets Miles smell authentic cocaine in exchange for weapons. In general, the Ash People, who have renounced the worship of Mother Nature, resemble a real pagan tribe, with their dances and copulation in the bushes. Most likely, however, Cameron intended a much more political meaning in the Na’vi’s struggle with the Fire People — akin to the US war in Iraq.
Military iconography is present in full scale: the militarists’ locations look as if Cameron’s ex-wife, Kathryn Bigelow, had shared them straight from the set of House of Dynamite. The story bears some similarities as well. If in Bigelow’s latest Netflix project the White House is paralyzed by the threat of nuclear danger, then in the world of Pandora, it feels like the apocalypse is also just around the corner.
Ronal (Kate Winslet), pregnant throughout the film, is, as expected, destined to give birth in the end — and of course, under extreme conditions. But the most meme-worthy moment is Sigourney Weaver’s final appearance in the costume of a First Lady, reprising Doctor Grace Augustine. Against the backdrop of naked blue Na’vi, her public appearance feels like an outright cultural mockery and a triumph of the white (that is, “civilized”) people.
In the end, Avatar: Fire and Ash feels less like a vision of an alien world and more like a familiar Western fantasy, merely dressed in bioluminescent skin.
