I Guess We’re Just Doing This Again

Originally written February 19, 2026.

I want to bask in the lushness of Pandora and do psychedelic drugs with Varang almost as much as I want these writers to come up with some new ideas.

I’ll likely always have a bit of a soft spot for Avatar and its beautiful visuals, but there’s only so many times I can write “well, at least it looks nice!” about one of these movies before it becomes a running joke. Fire and Ash is stumble for the series as it bizarrely retreads story beats from The Way of Water, playing out simultaneously like a part two and a remix of the preceding movie.

Everyone returns to do more or less what they did the last time around, and all the tricks used previously are deployed yet again with exactly the results you’d expect. Quaritch resumes his revenge quest to capture and/or kill Jake Sully while the humans continue to fly copters and airships that get handily destroyed by the same ambush tactics that annihilated them in the first movie. I guess lessons aren’t learned on Pandora any more readily than they are here on Earth.

Even more strange is how reliant these last two movies have been on their single predominant narrative device of our heroes getting captured and having to endure a whole host of shit-talking from Quaritch before inevitably escaping/being rescued… and getting captured again later. For as single-mindedly determined as Quaritch claims to be, he sure is bad at achieving his objectives even when he’s got all the cards in his hand.

I’m still not a fan of Quaritch coming back in the manner that he did, but as least the new addition of Varang spices things up. Her murderous cult of crazed ashy Na’vi is the one new addition Fire and Ash has to offer, and Varang carries an awesome viciousness that had me switching loyalties halfway through the film. If Clone Quaritch can’t let go of his mission, if he must have a son railroaded into the story to create some emotional stakes, then let’s at least have him team up with a total psychopath so he gets a fun partner to play off of. Fire and Ash delivers that, even if I wanted much more of it by the end.

Let Pandora fall to the Mangkwan clan, if only so we might get an actual new movie next time around.