20th Century Studios via AP/dpa
Now stop with fire: Avatar III
Two hundred actual, six hundred perceived minutes – the ratio should actually be the other way around. Overwhelming visuals can be overwhelming, without a coherent plot it won’t be immersive. Even with brilliant effects, fatigue sets in long before the finale. James Cameron delivered exactly that with “Avatar: Fire and Ash”: style over substance. The narrative here is little more than an opportunity to create listening and viewing value. This is an aggregate of set pieces, merely effect elements, a visual counterpart to elevator music, a pleasing beauty about nothing that comes from nowhere and leads nowhere. Since Cameron plunged into the world bathed in blue, he hardly seems interested in storytelling anymore.
In 2009 he achieved what no one else had ever achieved. It held first and second place among the world’s most successful films in cinema history (not adjusted for inflation), with “Titanic” and the first “Avatar”. Cameron had golden hands: “Aliens,” “Terminator” 1 and 2, “Titanic,” “Avatar.” He always took a lot of time for planning and execution, the throws were always big, always autonomous in their approach, based on a peculiar idea and suitable for blockbusters. Then he missed the exit. Instead of “Alita: Battle Angel,” which he handed over to the stylistically unsure Robert Rodriguez, Cameron planned more avatars. The man is undoubtedly a genius – a tyrannical one on set, a virtuoso in post-production – and he seems especially talkative in promotion. He gives a detailed report on what he did, how he did it and why, and at least as detailed as to what he still wants to do. So in 2022 he let it be known that, if he was allowed to, seven Avatar films would be made. Why not ten, then we could at least talk about one De-Cameron.
However, the man was particularly good at making sequels because – with “Aliens” or “Terminator 2” – he didn’t just continue to process a material, but always approached the familiar with a new idea. He seems to have other concerns with the “Avatar” series. The idea of playing through the four elements on the moon Pandora, which is already poor because it remains schematic and external, is even more poorly implemented. The first “Avatar” (2009) reached lofty heights and still remained grounded, in the second (2022) the idea was watered down, the third now just seems to have burned out, what remains is ashes. Actually, Cameron has now played through the elements, the upcoming fourth part is supposed to take Jake and his Sullys into the mountains or the desert, presumably because Cameron still has CGI material on the hard drive, so nothing should get lost. The threatened fifth will then play partly on earth. Where you end up when ordinary ideas are abandoned because they don’t carry enough weight.
The mindset of the Avatar world was enough for exactly one film. It was long enough, but also solid and rightly successful. Unlike “Avengers: Endgame” (2.799 billion US dollars), “Avatar” (2.923 billion US dollars) did not owe its worldwide success to the force of a globally synchronized release. The film remained in cinemas as a slow burner for almost a year, people who had already seen it went to the cinema again or encouraged others to do so. The critics accused Cameron of having copied “Pocahontas”. “Dances with Wolves”, “Last Samurai”, “Dune” and “Little Big Man” were also mentioned. But that’s not the point of plagiarism, the story of the colonial invader who switches sides is a motif, not an individual story of a particular work, and the motif has its origins in “Lawrence of Arabia”, which in turn can be seen as a modification of the Moses motif. The inevitable consequence of the motif is a stereotypical character drawing: White Savior meets Magical Negro, in which the anti-colonial approach is undermined again by perpetuating colonial patterns. As a plot, the pattern works, and this functioning on the plot level made the success of the first “Avatar” possible. The fact that the second part of “The Way of Water” was also very successful is due to the expectation that the second part would do justice to the first, especially since after 13 years there was curiosity about what the visual aesthetics would be like with more advanced technology. Both have now been resolved with “Fire and Ash”. Only three years have passed since the second part, and it was fairly clear that Cameron would not be presenting anything new on the plot level in the third part after the merely repetitive second part. This is the third time you’ve seen the same film.
But more than that. It’s not just that “Fire and Ash” copies “The Way of Water”, which in turn had already stolen the audience’s life as a copy of “Avatar” – “Fire and Ash” is also inherently redundant. Cameron manages to tell the same story three times in the same film. Three times someone from the community is kidnapped, three times an unexpected alliance is formed, three times the hostages are freed. Whatever that is, it’s not dramaturgy. At the same time, the pacing turns out to be a failure. The first hour was too hectic, the second was too slow, the third was a painfully long showdown. Of course, disparately written characters cannot save this: For example, Jake collects firearms against the organic customs of nature because they alone can be used to defeat the occupiers, but three seconds later he refuses to ride the big dragon because whoever resorts to the monster becomes one himself. So what is this Jake, pragmatist or dogmatist? By the way, the contradiction could be written, but then you have to frame it as a contradiction. At the end the big battle unfolds, which could also be seen in the other parts. Natives fight against occupiers and win because tree, here: Eywa, the floral goddess from the machine. The fact that the trope of the winning underdog cannot be repeated too often is a fundamental problem of the series. Serial victories by an inferior people make inferiority a mere assertion; after the third film, there is hardly any height to fall within the dramatic collision.
In addition, “Fire and Ash” also fails visually aesthetically. Of course, as always with Cameron, the film is state of the art. But unlike the previous parts, the production design is overloaded with details, in the scenic background, in the foreground blocking, with creatures swarming through the scene, and because all of this isn’t restless enough, the setting is captured by a camera that moves more hectically than dynamically. At least in this way the film proves to be a work of one piece, because the visual hecticness reproduces the restless dramaturgical pacing, which stands in strange contrast to the esotericism of the Avatar world that is widely claimed. If Jake and the others at least kept their mouths shut, things wouldn’t be as bad.
