Reviews for the latest outing of James Cameron’s blockbusting franchise have been unkind – and perhaps say more about the critics than the film itself. If you liked parts one, and two, part three will still leave you longing for Pandora – and judging by the box office figures, that’s still a huge number of people.
The Avatar franchise now accounts for three films, spanning 18 years, and raking in more than $7 billion in global box office receipts along the way – which is impressive, if you are into that sort of thing. Avatar: Fire and Ash has ‘only’ grossed $1.3 billion at the global box office, at time of writing, though – which has seen a number of critics call time on the money-printing saga of Jake Sully.
After an age of waiting, critics seem finally to smell blood, and they’ve sharpened their pens for the occasion. Many have suggested this third outing was unnecessary, bland and lacking the narrative complexity they clearly value so highly when they sing the praises of movies like Top Gun: Maverick or the embarrassing Neil Diamond weepy-by-numbers Song Sung Blue. And of course, some ageing male columnists in Britain have used the opportunity to make things unnecessarily creepy talking about the film’s “witchy sex interest”.
The thing is, though, it doesn’t really matter what they think about the movie – or probably what I think about it. Avatar: Fire and Ash is filled with the same things that would have made you love or hate its predecessor. Stunning special effects used to imagine an entire planet and its ecosystem, and some enjoyably forthright anticolonialism, grate against some inescapably clunky dialogue, and corny moments of emotional earnestness. Usually, enjoying the one side requires learning to live with the other, and if you managed it with the others, this one is no different. Similarly, if you hated the idea of using ‘pointy-eared Smurf-cats etc etc’ to tell a story about love, loss, and unapologetically crushing US imperialism, things have not changed.
Do something
The first two episodes of James Cameron’s sci-fi epic followed Jake Sully – a marine sent to a planet humanity is initially invested in asset-stripping, but later simply determines it should colonise (and presumably wreck like the Earth the species is now desperate to leave).
Sully was, for the longest time, read as a conventional hero from the done-to-death hero’s journey formula. But as he transitions from being the focal protagonist in this third instalment, it becomes much clearer that he serves as a point of contrast. While the other humans stumbling around on the planet, baying for the blood of ‘savages’ whose land they will then seize seem one-dimensional in their villainy, Jake shows us it is still possible to come from our world, and the norms we take for granted, and to change. The full-throated support of people for genocide, or even just their meek silence on it, paints them in a much more damning light, for this.
At the same time, earlier films in the franchise could arguably have presented Jake as Messianic – a godsend, who through the destruction of his human form, transcends to deliver the Na’vi to salvation. But the sequels have established that he is not the Messiah – or at least, not the only one. His adopted daughter, Kiri, born of an immaculate conception, has abilities which connect her to the psychic core of the surrounding ecosystem. His adopted son, Spider, a human, is resurrected during this film, able to breathe the planet’s poisonous air, and communicate with that same ecosystem. And while Jake remains best adapted to life in the air, his other son masters life in the sea, alongside the whale-like tulkun – who become a powerful ally.
Jake is not even the narrator of the tale anymore. All this is to illustrate a move to distinguish this from a tale of a single saviour, to instead emphasise that successfully battling the overtly American brand of imperialism on display requires the abilities, commitment and sacrifice of a multitude of people. Create two, three, many Messiahs, that is the watchword. And that moves beyond the giant, blue warriors on the screen.
In one moment, when a character implores Kiri “If you can do something, do it”, that is not just addressed to those involved with apparently supernatural gifts. It is to us. In a reshaping world order, where supposedly iron-clad norms and conventions are being incinerated in the interest of power and profit, many people retain the idea that if they simply wait until the next electoral cycle, they can simply invest power in someone else to clean up this mess – with no personal risk.
Amid a continued genocide in Gaza (where a ‘peace committee’ is now expected to feature Jared Kushner, Tony Blair and Vladimir Putin); at a time when the US war machine has bombed and invaded Venezuela in order to abduct a leader it felt inconvenienced its access to the country’s resources, to absolutely no criticism (and now intends to take Greenland, among others); and with the fig-leaf institutions expected to prevent these things lying in tatters, this is no longer a state of affairs where we can afford the luxury of don’t act; think.
Returning in Fire and Ash to that end is Jemaine Clement as Doctor Ian Garvin, a marine biologist employed by commercial whalers, who are invested in the taking of Pandora, and the ‘harvesting’ of thousands of the planet’s most intelligent and peaceful beings. Notably he was present to talk us through some of the most harrowing moments of The Way of Water, but only as a frustrated observer. A scientist, whose role with the invading forces enabled him to see and learn incredible things – but with the knowledge those things would be destroyed before his eyes.
In Fire and Ash, he finally does something himself. Not in terms of taking up arms, and going into battle, but in using his knowledge, position (and effective anonymity) to assist Jake at a crucial moment. The fear of losing his job, probably his freedom, and (in a society which definitely has capital punishment) perhaps his life is finally cast aside, accepting that while there may be consequences, if he can do something, he should.
And while I am sure it was not deliberate, the fact that as he ages, Clement seems to be morphing into Slavoj Žižek (a critic of the first film, which he called ‘faux-Marxism’) – who has long pushed the ‘don’t act; think’ philosophy. As the premiere pop-philosopher of the world, he has been able to tour ruling class institutions of the world to allegedly speak about Marxism – but only in the sense that his arguments never necessitate action. Just how far the world might sink into fascism before Žižek redraws those boundaries – and loses the privileges of capital’s pet-Marxist – remains to be seen. But that does not mean picking up a gun. It just means, as reflected in the character of Doctor Garvin, that everyone can do something, and even if it costs us, we need to do it now.
Window of opportunity
I watched Avatar: Fire and Ash just three days after I saw 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple – and it has made for a strange contrast. Fire and Ash has seen what I would argue is a disproportionate critical panning, on the basis of something which is equal to the previous incarnations that were better received. The Bone Temple has meanwhile endured a love-in which I felt verged on going over the top, as a significant climb-down from its predecessor.
What might connect the two, seems to be both films have provided an opportunity for some writers to stick it to artists whose views they don’t appreciate. On the one hand, James Cameron’s career has relentlessly centred on the skewering of US capitalism and its social and political norms – from the snivelling profiteer villain of Aliens, to the shotgun-wielding murderer in a police uniform, bent on murdering a child in Terminator 2, to the wonderous evisceration of marines in the Avatar series. On the other, Danny Boyle – who chose not to direct The Bone Temple – has also striven to take nationalism and inequality to task; from the desperation and redemption of Trainspotting, to the dying imperial ideology of 28 Days Later’s diseased island.
It is conspicuous that, when the US is bent on abandoning its old rhetoric, and establishing itself as a robber-baron on the international stage, it has become so fashionable to hate James Cameron – who is doing things as well as he ever has. And similarly, when the mobs of St George-cross-daubed stormtroopers maraud their way across the UK, the moment someone else takes over 28 Years Later and delivers a film far less interested in the ideological trappings of Britain’s isolation, in a far less imaginative and evocative way, that film wins almost universal acclaim.
Of course, there is no secret conspiracy at play here. There is no overt plan among film critics to trash two of the most consistently progressive mainstream filmmakers of their generation. But there is an ideological reinforcement, which many of them are buying into – a feedback loop where norms treated as ‘acceptable’ by those with power and wealth are translated into the ‘desirable’, by the cultural gatekeepers of our age. Somewhere, subconsciously, there is a conclusion some of them may be reaching; ‘Hey, these people with all the bombs in the world say peace is weak, and anti-nationalist thought is treason. Maybe they have a point, or they wouldn’t be powerful, right?’ We are seeing the process of ideological hegemony shift in real time – and it is something we must be aware of – because as it continues, the opportunities to do something will shrink by the minute.
What we can or can’t do in the meantime is for each of us to figure out. But the first, incredibly small thing I can do is to go to bat for this movie. Because, Fire and Ash’s most potent takeaway is not that we need to wait on some supercharged Messianic saviour to deliver us from evil. It’s that change can only come from mass participation; and while you might not have the gifts needed for guerrilla resistance yourself, if you find yourself with the chance to help in your own way – a possibility to help make life better in some way, however small – whatever the cost, you should. And while filmmakers are still willing and able to make a point like that in the world’s most visible film, they should be celebrated for it.