Avatar: Fire and Ash
What’s it rated? PG-13
When? 2025
Where’s it showing? Regal Edwards RPX Santa Maria,
Movies Lompoc, Regal Arroyo Grande
Director and co-writer James Cameron returns with this third installment in his Avatar franchise, and I’ll start by saying it’s absolutely visually stunning but absolutely derivative in its storytelling. All three Avatar films—Avatar (2009), Avatar: The Way of Water (2022), and this new one—have the same plot. Humans have destroyed their planet and are now trying to colonize Pandora, an inhabited moon orbiting a gas giant. Pandora is populated by the Na’vi, 10-foot-tall, blue-skinned humanoids who live in harmony with nature. Think Manifest Destiny and white Europeans wiping out indigenous people and you’ll understand the basic story. Yes, we’re the bad guys.
At the center of each film is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic former Marine who in the first film is placed inside a Na’vi-human hybrid avatar to help colonize the planet. Instead, he meets and falls for Na’vi princess Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), and Jake learns to appreciate the Na’vi way of life and switches alligences. Dances with Wolves, anyone?
If you’re expecting something new in Fire and Ash, you’ll be disappointed. But if you’re here for the incredible visuals these films create and simply want to immerse yourself in the sumptuousness, it delivers. (3-hours and 17-min.)
—Glen Starkey
This article appears in January 1 – January 8, 2026.