Director James Cameron is soon about to reveal his threequel of the Avatar franchise, titled Fire and Ash. Even though there is a lot of talk around the film for other reasons, namely Marvel, fans of the series are expecting another great flick. But it seems that things might not be going exactly the way Cameron wants them to, as the first reviews of the film aren’t all that positive.
The thing with spectacle films is that they can only rely on the grand scale and beautiful VFX for so long. The story needs to elevate with the visuals, and that is exactly the complaint most critics have with Fire and Ash. The film has received a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 70%, which is the lowest of the franchise. The first film got 81%, while the sequel, Way of Water, received a Tomatometer rating of 76%. The downward trend seems to be holding, at least for now.
Critic Wenlei Ma of The Nightly gave the film 2.5/5 and wrote, “It’s not offensive. It’s not the worst thing you’ll see all year. What it is, is boring. Mind-numbingly boring. Dozed off in the boring chair. Thinking about your supermarket shopping list is boring. Another film critic, Peter Howell of the Toronto Star, wrote, “A certain sameness has set in. The film, an extension of the previous chapter, “Avatar: The Way of Water”, feels like it’s hitting multiple speed bumps on a road it has already driven, twice, in an even bigger car.”
The rest of the reviews follow suit, as almost all of them laud the VFX and scale of the universe created by Cameron, but none of them can look past the similarities to previous films. The opinions on social media weren’t very different either. A user on X (formerly Twitter) wrote, “For the First Time in His Spectacular Career, James Cameron Delivers a Movie That Feels Like Something You’ve Seen Before.” A different user wrote, “A visual achievement unlike any other this year, Avatar: Fire and Ash is a reminder that spectacle can only carry a story so far.”
This does court trouble for Cameron, who seems determined to make more of these films. But maybe, like the first two films, the box office collection will be loud enough to drown out the bad reviews. According to Box Office Mojo, the first film, which came out in 2009, made over $2.9 billion (Rs 26200 cr). Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) earned $2.3 billion (Rs 20777 cr) worldwide.
