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Geek Culture
29-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Culture
'Avatar: Fire and Ash' Trailer Brings War To Fire-Ravaged Pandora
It was three years ago that James Cameron expanded his Avatar universe with the aquatic Metkayina clan of Pandora, as suggested by the title The Way of Water . In the same vein, Avatar: Fire and Ash will introduce the Ash People, with the first trailer offering an extended look at the new Na'vi clan in action… and at war. Previously shown exclusively in theatres ahead of The Fantastic Four: First Steps , the clip has been officially revealed by Disney following online leaks. In it, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington, Clash of the Titans ), his partner Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña, Guardians of the Galaxy ), and their family are reeling from the loss of eldest son and brother Neteyam, as they join forces with the Metkayina to fight against the Ash People, led by Varang, who have seemingly allied with Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang, Tombstone ), now sporting dramatic white, black, and red warpaint. Varang, as previously reported, is played by Game of Thrones star Oona Chaplin, representing a morally complex character who will do whatever it takes to protect her people, even if it means resorting to questionable actions. Also reprising their roles are Sigourney Weaver ( Alien ) as Kiri, the adopted daughter of Jake and Neytiri, and Jack Champion ( Scream VI ) as Spider. The film's official synopsis reads, 'Jake and Neytiri's family grapples with grief after Neteyam's death, encountering a new, aggressive Na'vi tribe, the Ash People, who are led by the fiery Varang, as the conflict on Pandora escalates and a new moral focus emerges.' While a runtime hasn't been announced, Cameron shared that Avatar: Fire and Ash 'will be a bit longer' than its predecessor, which clocked three hours and 12 minutes. Both the forthcoming threequel and The Way of Water were originally conceived as one film, but the director split them into separate movies once the story started to flesh out. 'We had too many great ideas packed into act one of movie two,' said Cameron. 'The [film] was moving like a bullet train, and we weren't drilling down enough on character. So I said, 'Guys, we've got to split it.'' Doing so allowed for a deeper exploration of the Sully family dynamics, with Lo'ak taking a more central role in the Fire and Ash . The villains, too, will get their time to shine, bringing a nuanced touch to the simplistic dichotomy of 'good versus evil' rhetoric, as Cameron explained: One thing we wanted to do in this film is not be black-and-white simplistic. We're trying to evolve beyond the 'all humans are bad, all Na'vi are good' paradigm. [Oona Chaplin] is so good that I didn't quite appreciate how good her performance is until we got the Wētā animation back. She's an enemy, an adversarial character but [Chaplin] makes her feel so real and alive. Avatar: Fire and Ash is the third instalment out of a planned five films, set to bow on 19 December 2025. Much of the footage has already been shot, with the fourth and fifth movies slated for 21 December 2029 and 19 December 2031, respectively. Si Jia is a casual geek at heart – or as casual as someone with Sephiroth's theme on her Spotify playlist can get. A fan of movies, games, and Japanese culture, Si Jia's greatest weakness is the Steam Summer Sale. Or any Steam sale, really. Avatar Avatar: Fire and Ash James Cameron
Telegraph
28-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
The new Avatar trailer fills me with despair
I'm trying to think of the nicest thing I can say about the new Avatar trailer and I suspect this is probably it: it definitely looks like more Avatar. Subtitled Fire and Ash, the third of five instalments of James Cameron's shimmery late-career opus will slosh into cinemas worldwide this coming Christmas – when Disney presumably expects it to join its predecessors in the ranks of the highest-grossing films ever made. (The original and the first sequel, The Way of Water, currently occupy the first and third places on that chart respectively.) However much organic excitement for another Avatar sequel any of us actually encounter in the wild, it's highly likely it will be the year's most successful film – even if the trailer, which has already generated countless reaction videos, left me cold. What was most striking (and depressing) about the two minutes and 25 seconds of new material in the clip – which cinema-goers can currently experience in front of screenings of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, and the rest of us can watch on YouTube – was how little any of it seemed to add to the existing Avatar deal. So with apologies to the various TikTokers and influencers claiming otherwise, what we saw could not be described in good conscience as 'freaking insane'. Front and centre are the cosmetic updates which have been installed since Avatar 2.0 – and perhaps it's this immersive travel-brochure material, rather than the meandering plot about tribal squabbles, the repelling of Earthling invaders, and a religion centred on a sort of purple Wi-Fi tree, that has made the series such a global phenomenon. This instalment apparently concerns a war between two previously unseen Na'vi tribes: the peaceable Wind Traders, who drift about in flying airships, and the red-skinned Fire People, who live in a Mordor-like ashy landscape and ride around on flying beasts. The money is on them to be baddies – at least until the remnants of the invading Earth forces show up again, at which point an uneasy Pandoran alliance will presumably be struck. Controversially-slash-foolishly, I suspect the astonishing popularity of the two previous films sprung from different places. In every respect bar technologically, the 2009 original was a blockbuster blowout as Hollywood used to make them in the 1980s and 90s: it was essentially Dances with Wolves transposed to space, and gave audiences their final chance to experience neoclassical Cameron craftsmanship – in the brand new 3D format he'd developed specifically for the occasion, no less – at the very moment the franchise era took hold. But then Avatar disappeared for 13 years – and returned, still banging the 3D drum the industry had otherwise largely abandoned, having reinvented itself as a franchise movie. Unlike its predecessor, The Way of Water was simply a jumbo dose of truly borderless escapism but not actually about anything beyond itself. (I defy anyone who sat through it to describe anything of narrative interest that actually happened in it apart from the whale hunt near the end.) And that latter approach is what Fire and Ash appears to be replicating. Volcanoes, not oceans, are clearly the signature backdrop this time around, all rendered in mineral-water-crisp 3D computer graphics, and in frame rates that vacillate between a purring 24 and slippery 60 per second. A few new bizarre beasts of burden have also been added to the Avamenagerie, including a big airborne stingray with wiggly bits coming out of its mouth and a sort of jellyfish that the Sully clan flies around in, like a sentient hot air balloon. But three years on from The Way of Water, the modus operandi hasn't seemingly altered a jot. The trailer promises more teeth-baring tribal melodrama, wildly expensive virtual nature documentary sequences, some jump-and-shoot forest battles that look like the bestselling video-game of 2045, and digitally rendered characters whose faces' astounding visual intricacy is only surpassed by their supreme slappability. 'You cannot live like this, baby – in hate,' Sam Worthington's Jake Sully tells his bride, Zoe Saldana's Neytiri, in one contextless excerpt, enunciating the word 'baby' like Lena Lamont's elocution coach in Singin' in the Rain. 'Your goddess has no dominion here,' hisses a shaman (perhaps?) from Pandora's stern-looking, red-painted mountain tribe – presumably referring to Sigourney Weaver's Teenage Na'vi Jesus-like character (Kiri te Suli Kireysi'ite to you, or so says Wikipedia), who apparently spends the entire film gazing beatifically at CGI fronds. Amid the flurry came two moments of despair. One was the return of Stephen Lang's Colonel Miles Quaritch, the electrifyingly charismatic human villain from the first film, in the identikit Na'vi body, which I forgot he'd transferred into in the second. The other was the reappearance of Spider, Quaritch's rebellious and dreadlocked teenage son, family friend of the Sullys, and essentially the most annoying gap-year kid in the galaxy. He's glimpsed at death's door (good), and also jumping across a series of falling slabs, like Sonic the Hedgehog. Aside from the awful Spider, I counted a grand total of one shot that featured human beings, and which may or may not foreshadow the journey from Pandora to Earth that is supposed to take place in Avatar 4, coming in 2029. Of course there's no reason for either Cameron or Disney to change a single element of the Avatar recipe, since The Way of Water won an Oscar and made $2.3bn. Even so, this trailer's proud sameyness grates on a spiritual level. The original Avatar was so valuable in part because it barked a defiant last hurrah for original blockbusters. But the series it went on to spawn seems to have succumbed harder than any of its contemporaries to the deathless curse of more of the same.
Geek Tyrant
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
How the Shocking Death in AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER Will Be Addressed in AVATAR
Fans waited thirteen years for the second Avatar film to be released after the first movie debuted in 2009 to a major reception. Avatar: The Way of Water was warmly received, and it told another heartfelt story in the world created by James Cameron. In the film, characters Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Ney'tiri (Zoe Saldaña) have formed a family and are doing everything to stay together. However, they must leave their home and explore the regions of Pandora. When an ancient threat resurfaces, Jake must fight a difficult war against the humans. The film took a heartbreaking turn when Jake and Ney'tiri's son Neteyam died when he was shot by Lyle, a human soldier, during a conflict between humans and the Na'vi. In the upcoming edition of Empire Magazine, actor Britain Dalton, who plays Lo'ak in the franchise, opened up about the consequences of the loss and how it will be handled in the next film, saying, '[Lo'ak] was born to be a leader. But he's never been given the trust. When Neteyam dies . . . that's no way that he ever imagined being finally able to be seen. He blames himself.' Trinity Jo-Li Bliss, who plays Tuktirey in the movie, added, 'I don't think she'll ever be the same. It's the first time she's experienced a death in her life. She's still her small and mighty self, and maybe she'll move up the Sully ranks.' Avatar: Fire and Ash will be released in theatres on December 19, 2025.
Gizmodo
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
‘Avatar: The Way of Water' is Surfing Back to Theaters
Later this year, James Cameron is taking us all back to Pandora with Avatar: Fire & Ash. To prepare that, and also to make a lot more money, Disney's bringing The Way of Water back to theaters. The aquatic sequel will get a new theatrical run starting October 3 and wrapping on October 10. At time of writing, Disney hasn't revealed whether this 'limited engagement' will feature anything extra like extended or deleted scenes or a special look for Fire & Ash. Still, if you're a fan of the movie, just seeing it on the big screen again may be worth it, especially since it also includes 3D and IMAX. Avatar: The Way of Water returns to theatres October 3. — Avatar (@officialavatar) May 22, 2025 After a looooooooong 13-year wait, Avatar: The Way of Water released in 2022 to strong reviews and became a box office success. It's currently made $2.320 million and stands as the third highest-grossing movie of all time behind Avengers: Endgame and the original Avatar. Between the two movies' release, the first Avatar returned to theaters three times: in 2010 and 2022 before Water's release, and exclusively for China in 2021. This is Water's first time back in theaters, and with every studio bit by the re-release bug, this might not be the last time we see the Sully clan with the Metkayina clan. Avatar: Fire & Ash releases on December 19.
