Avatar: Fire and Ash

Directed by James Cameron, Avatar: Fire and Ash once again follows Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) as he and his fellow Na’vi are forced to battle various foes. Filmmaker Cameron, armed with a script written alongside Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, delivers a wildly overlong and padded-out disaster that gets off to a relatively decent start, as the movie kicks off with a refreshingly low-key opening stretch that benefits from its raft of eye-popping visuals and special effects. It’s clear, though, that the better-than-anticipated atmosphere is slowly-but-surely crushed beneath the weight of a meaningless narrative and assortment of one-dimensional, far-from-fleshed-out characters, and there’s little doubt, as a result, that it becomes more and more difficult to work up an ounce of interest in the picture’s increasingly larger-than-life digressions and scenarios – which, when coupled with a closing hour that contains an oppressive amount of action, ultimately cements Avatar: Fire and Ash‘s place as a mostly worthless sequel that contains few similarities to the comparatively masterful original film.

* out of ****