With Fire and Ash, the latest installment in James Cameron's mega-blockbuster Avatar series, Cameron has made history as the first director to have four consecutive feature films gross over $1 billion, after already comfortably becoming the first to direct three movies that grossed $2 billion each. And as early as the first Avatar more than 15 years ago, the eye-popping box office returns of the series have always been an equal (if not greater) part of the conversation as the movies' artistic merit. The story of the trilogy (which might expand to five films depending on projections) is one of massive financial value first, filmic value second. 

But there's no question that the movies have always been entertaining. Of course, Cameron is a generational talent at making epics at scale, from the post-apocalyptic bone-crunching wastelands of The Terminator (1984) to the romantic tragedy of Titanic (1997). In Avatar (2008), strong anti-imperialist themes and a decidedly critical depiction of the military industrial complex together undergird phenomenal visuals and a charismatic cross-species romance. More than a decade later, Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) left Pandora's forests and introduced cool weapons (crab bots!), memorable creatures (razor fish!), and a new aquatic race of Na'vi in a more dynamic, immersive ocean setting. The Way of Water rehashed a lot of the central conflicts and themes from the original, but in a way that felt different and, especially with Colonel Quatrich and other military baddies taking avatar forms, fresh enough.

In Fire and Ash, though, those identical conflicts and themes reappear all over again, and without any creative new technologies or sufficiently compelling new villains, it's the weakest installment yet. 

Back on resource-rich alien planet Pandora, we pick up right where The Way of Water left off. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) mourn the death of their eldest son in the latest clash with the human military forces of General Ardmore (Edie Falco); Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) and his avatar troops search for Jake, now somewhat arbitrarily as he's no longer the commander of the allied Na'vi forces; and the rest of Jake's extended community (including Sigourney Weaver as Kiri, an adopted daughter with growing mystical powers, and Jack Champion as Spider, the human-born son of Quatrich who's been raised Na'vi) all settle back into their routines.

Not for long, though: deciding the island village they made home in The Way of Water is now too dangerous, and that Spider's human limitations pose a risk to himself and others, Jake moves his family back towards the forested mainland. During their journey they're intercepted first by the terrifying Na'vi anarchist Varang (Oona Chaplin) — whose smoke-gray war paint and obsession with firearms is one angle of this film's title — and next by Quatritch, with whom Jake is forced into an uneasy and fleeting truce to escape from Varang. In the scuffles that follow, Jake and his family are separated; he's captured by the human military, Spider and Kiri explore the lengths of Kiri's connection to goddess Eywa, son Lo'ak (Britain Dalton) resumes his friendship with outcast whale elder Payakan, and Pandora, like our protagonists, is thrust ever further into yet another planetary fight for survival. 

There's a lot to like in Fire and Ash, especially for Avatar fans like myself (my IMAX 3D viewing was the third movie of a day spent watching both predecessors back-to-back). Cameron's visionary direction continues to build a lush, distinctive, and inventive world across Pandora, with stunning floating-mountain vistas, stomach-dropping aerial combat sequences on blimps, dragons, and warships, and some solid new character design with earring-adorned whale elders, Kubrickian floating cosmic faces, Eldritch horror squid beasts, and Varang's bloodthirsty clan. Even if the latter's painted faces and kamikaze tendencies are a little too reminiscent of the War Boys in Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), they provide a welcome new perspective on what a gritty, godless Na'vi community could look like in a species that up until now has been overwhelmingly meditative and peaceful. Indeed, Varang herself is the single most interesting new personality of the sequels (and its first compelling antagonist since Quaritch); her affinity for braid-scalping, feathered headdresses, and blunt weapons evokes an uncontacted tribe, and when she's introduced to gunpowder and other modern weaponry we watch the bloody outcome that has replayed throughout human history. Her sensuality and complicated codependency with Quaritch, himself now effectively Na'vi, blurs the lines between species unity that we've come to recognize in the Avatar series. All these developments are all the more entertaining in vibrant 3D — so immersive that I at one point dodged a bola thrown at my legs — and with franchise veteran Simon Franglen competently scoring the film after previous composer James Horner's tragic death.

But for those same Avatar fans, who are familiar with Cameron's plot choices and narrative machinations by now, Fire and Ash will feel like an Avatar Mad Libs exercise. Father-son conflict? Check, as Jake and Lo'ak rehash the exact same dynamics as before. Human converted to appreciation for alien life after sleeping with a Na'vi woman? Check, as Quatrich matches Varang's freak in all too similar a way that Jake and Neytiri fell in love in the first film. Heavy-handed ecological themes? Check, as Cameron continues serving only vegan food on set and does surface-level environmentalism on screen with a literal "save the whales" subplot. Annoying sidekick character? Check, with Champion's Spider, who should've died in The Way of Water and instead saved his dad's life for no other reason but to give us a third movie. Calling the disparate Na'vi clans together for One Final Big Battle? Check, almost entirely indistinguishable from the other times it's happened. Cringeworthy credits song? Check, with Miley Cyrus belting generic nonsense much like The Weeknd's stinker in Avatar's last outing.

And unfortunately, in the few places where Fire and Ash pushes past its predecessors into new territory, it's full of missteps. A new vocal power is disappointingly familiar to the Voice in the Dune series; an interesting media treatment of Jake as a state terrorist and public traitor is cut too short; the growing importance of a particular character feels unearned and introduces easily-solvable dilemmas; and a longer backstory for the Tulkun hunters and the return of the corporate overseers both prolong an already-weighty 200-minute runtime.

By focusing on its titular components and the new villains espousing their power, Fire and Ash could have brought a whole new elemental feel after the first film's trees and the second's seas. Instead, the story retreads ground already more than covered in The Way of Water, and some cool characters and Cameron's characteristic big-world action sequences can't quite make up for that.