By BRUCE DENNILL
Avatar: Fire And Ash / Directed by James Cameron / PGVL
At 197 minutes, it’s clear that one of director James Cameron’s goals in revealing the ongoing Avatar saga (there are apparently two more instalments after this film, which is part three) is maintaining an epic scale. In that regard, it’s a huge success, particularly as a showcase for the various technologies involved in motion capture of the live cast and creating the detailed surroundings in which they exist. That said, for the vast majority of the piece, there wouldn’t be too much difference if it was wholly an animated film, as people appearing as people – not avatars of various kinds – occur in only a small portion of the screen time.
The story sees Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) continuing to grieve the death of their son Neteyam (Jamie Flatters), which is made more complicated by the presence of their adopted son Spider (Jack Champion), the son of Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang), the military commander of the greedy, violent human forces who aimed to colonise Pandora and strip it of its resources.
Extra conflict is introduced in the arrival of the warlike Mangkwan clan (volcano-dwellers, hence at least part of the film’s title), led by the ruthless Varang (Oona Chaplin), who, while they have a similar lineage to the peace-loving Metkayina clan, the reef people who share a profound connection to the ocean and its creatures, are more focused on gaining resources and power for their own benefit.
All of the many, many scenes in which this chapter plays out – heroes struggle through new challenges; new and established villains create new obstacles and danger – are driven by well-established film tropes, sometimes to an amusing degree. The Mangkwan warriors sport face paint just like that of the Native American tribes in scores of westerns; the American military is a rapacious, destructive force; ships in the sky recall Peter Pan; dragon-like creatures echo everything from Lord of the Rings to How To Train Your Dragon; aboriginal tribes are treated as various levels of primitive and unable to care for themselves; various sea monsters make their way out of classic literature and Dian Fossey herself (or at least Sigourney Weaver, who played the conservationist in Gorillas In The Mist) plays a character who seeks to tap into Mother Nature (or the script’s equivalent) in order to win a seemingly unwinnable war.
As such, if you’re not a card-carrying fan of the franchise, how necessary several long passages are becomes debatable. Fortunately, the aforementioned scale balances things out to some degree. You know a battle scene is coming at one point, for instance, but how layered, detailed and just plain massive it’ll be – particularly if you’re watching the film in 3D on IMAX – is something you probably need to see to believe. And there is genuine artistic beauty on display, arguably never more so than in the design of the ships of the Wind Traders, which would probably inspire joy in everyone from Jonathan Swift to Jules Verne.
It’s tough not to appreciate the scope of the vision here – James Cameron has in many ways taken over where George Lucas left off in terms of dreaming up gargantuan myths – and, where technology allows, there is a certain richness to becoming immersed in his milieu. Trading that off for a story that feels this familiar, though, may not be to everyone’s taste. The film is big and sometimes beautiful, but you’ve been there before.