For a while, it’s so good to be back in the Avatar world, to surrender to the astonishing visual joys that James Cameron offers. Each moment, each shot feels so textured, so dense with detail, that it’s so easy to forget all of this isn’t real. Skin, flora, water… all of this feels so tangible. Early in Fire and Ash, there are shots of Neytiri and Jake framed against Pandora’s environment, and you could just lose yourself in the detail, in the beauty of Pandora’s sky and backdrop.

But with films, as with life, even the most rewarding pleasures get familiar. And once the awe and love settles into comfort, we begin to look for a more traditional, reliable kind of joy… of narrative momentum, of emotional surprises, of the reassurance that all of this world-building is moving somewhere. With the Avatarfilms, with all the generous runtimes, spectacle alone doesn’t quite cut it… not for me anyway.

Fire and Ash gets quite gray with both visuals and characters. Cameron also continues to trace the cyclical nature of violence. As the Tulkuns believe, violence begets more violence. And yet, this film also acknowledges that such unshakeable pacifism doesn’t protect against ruthless exploitation. Cameron, in fact, constantly echoes his own imagery and narrative beats… and there’s no way this isn’t deliberate. Lo’ak’s grief for Neteyam is introduced through an Ikran race that mirrors the first flight of Neytiri and Jake. Moments of affectionate teasing between Kiri and Spider remind you of, again, Neytiri and Jake from the first film. That Grace-saving ritual that failed, succeeds in this film, courtesy Grace’s own child. The film seems to constantly replicate itself.

Look, none of this is radical or narratively revolutionary. But what did get my complete attention is the beginning of Fire and Ash. The Sully family is broken, each member processing Neteyam’s death differently. Neytiri’s face, in particular, carries unbearable weight of lived-in sorrow. In fact, performances in the Avataruniverse, I think, remain underappreciated, perhaps because motion capture still isn’t taken seriously enough as acting. Zoe Saldaña is fantastic in these spaces.

Oona Chaplin, too, is terrific as Varang, the seductive Tsahik. There’s a cruelty to her, a swagger, a piercing gaze, a sadistic laugh… It’s why I felt let-down that the film once again gravitates toward an extended Jake Sully–Quaritch confrontation. After two films and nearly six hours of watching avatar-Quaritch wrestle with identity, memory, and now intimacy too with Varang, all of the action feels narratively stale, even if cinematically impressive.

There’s a feeling we’ve seen it all before: ships sinking, whales leaping in attack, Quaritch using Sully’s children as leverage, Jake rallying clans as Toruk Makto, Eywa unleashing Pandora’s creatures against the humans. We have seen it all, we have loved it all. But you see, repetition dulls. And when we see all of this happen in this film as well, it just leaves you wanting something more novel.

That’s why my most favourite set-piece is a bit of a new idea, as glorious Neytiri breaks into the human base in search of Jake Sully. Fire and Ash also explores the darkness in Neytiri, as she becomes openly racist, to the point where she once considers killing Spider. In fact, a moment later on, where she and Jake seem aligned in that terrible thought… that’s one of the film’s most honest, devastating stretches, even if Spider himself remains a complicated problem. Called a ‘feral human’ by Quaritch’s team in The Way of Water, he occupies a space that doesn’t necessarily result in gratifying moments. He’s rather central to this film, and I’m not sure even if his potential relationship with Kiri is doing much to this franchise so far.

The ultimate feeling I had was one of bleakness, and impatience about all the repetition, even if it’s intentional. For all its anti-colonial politics and moral complexity, Avatar has always thrived on a certain dreaminess, a belief, as The Way of Water puts it, that ‘happiness is simple’. This third film is the least dreamy of the trilogy, and the one that doesn’t expand Pandora too meaningfully/aesthetically either.

Of course, this is still a master filmmaker at work, and so, there are unforgettable moments here too. Varang’s chilling smile as a suicide bomber, in flames, flies at her enemy. The co-ordinated violence of the whales. Neytiri’s Ikran sneaking through ugly, narrow man-made structures. Quaritch’s psychedelic trip in Varang’s tent.

And yet, for the first time in this franchise, I felt impatience, a sense of stagnation. After six hours of avatar-Quaritch, we still don’t know what he truly is. Redeemed, doomed, transformed, dead? This confusion isn’t intriguing anymore; it’s bordering on infuriating. For a film about the complexity and inevitability of cycles, it feels like this franchise is trapped in its own… unless, hopefully, it’s able to make some daring narrative choices to break out of it.