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.

My biggest gripe with Avatar: Fire and Ash, and there are many, is that for all the technical marvel of it, I’ve just never cared about any of the characters. There’s a remoteness to the characters because most scenes are shot from afar, that I spend an hour or so just trying to tell the difference and remember some of their names. I also think years of people having the wrong TV settings have numbed people to what good lighting and frame rate can do.

Picking up pretty close to where Avatar: The Way of Water left off (based solely on Kate Winslet’s character still being pregnant, I really don’t remember anything about that one either), Fire and Ash eases into its story, which at over three hours long, could’ve used a little shorthand. Jake (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (fresh Oscar-winner Zoe Saldana) are mourning the loss of their son (who died in Way of Water, I’m pretty sure), and holding the rest of their family together, including son Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), daughters Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) and Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), and foster Spider (Jack Champion), the human offspring of bad guy Quaritch (Stephen Lang). The movie really takes for granted you saw and remember everything from the last movie, but alas, I did not. I had to look up all of these names, save for Spider who is called Monkeyboy a lot too.

The family moves on from the water people they hung out with in the last movie and soon come under fire from a new tribe of Na’vi, called the Ash, led by Varang (Oona Chaplin), an intense, kinda pre-cog warrior with a chip on her shoulder. The military is still doing bad-guy stuff trying to take over the land, and I don’t know if they’re military or just scientists, but there’s a subset doing different bad-guy stuff attacking the sea creatures they’ve found for, I guess, reasons.

Director James Cameron is a technical savant pushing the boundaries of what filmmaking can be. He’s been doing it his whole career. But the mess of Avatar is that there’s little at the heart of it. Half the movie feels like you’re watching the coolest video game you’ve ever seen, half looks like the weirdest soap opera with flat sets and that weird lighting that throws off the image. The jumping around between different frame rates is jarring at best, overly frustrating at worst. I was surprised that Cameron only co-wrote (Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa share credit) because it has all the weakness of Cameron’s usual scripting – clunky dialogue, trite expressions (“well, this is awkward”), and a story that treads water until a final battle. There’s a good chunk of the movie that is Jake and Neytiri going back and forth rescuing each other. There is also so much that doesn’t make sense. Quaritch teams up with Jake to help rescue Spider, only to leave to return to his bad guy lair to gather up everyone to…go find Spider. Bitch, you were just with him.

I don’t mind overly long movies if the scenes feel justified and the whole is worth the wait. There are some cool scenes and moments in this movie, but usually right after you’re watching someone walk through a forest like a blue Tomb Raider and looking for a controller. I’m sure it will make a bajillion dollars, but Im also sure no one will be talking about any moment the way we still talk about Ripley’s “Get away from her your bitch,” from Aliens or even Jack’s “I’m king of the world,” from Titanic. Avatar: Fire and Ash is really just a sometimes cool looking cartoon that doesn’t even stand with the best animated movies.

Jonathan’s grade – C-