James Cameron has been a petulant whiner on the promotional tour for his latest monstrosity, Avatar: Fire and Ash. He’s warning that if the third Na’vi adventure doesn’t make big bank, well, then no more Avatar for you, you ungrateful pieces of shit!
The law of diminishing returns is in full effect for his overblown, tedious franchise, both financially and artistically. Fire and Ass is down somewhere around 35% in domestic box-office receipts compared to the opening of the prior film in the trilogy, The Way of Water Is the Equivalent of 50 MGs of Melatonin. I hope Christmas has been ruined for James Cameron, and, oh god, I hope his latest cinematic digital dump is the last of the storyline.
Actually, calling the Cameron-penned plot of Fire and Blue Assholes a “storyline” is a stretch. It’s basically the same movie as the last one, with a bunch of slim, blue Rastafari-knock-off distant relatives of Jar Jar Binks and John Travolta’s character in Battlefield Earth running around with their asses hanging out, occasionally hissing like cats, and saying “bro” a lot. The mundane dialogue is an attempt to propel the same endless story of humans trying to screw with the environmentally sound Na’vi, with countless, repetitive battle scenes thrown into the mess.
These battle scenes are laughably staged. The buzz on this film was that even though it’s dumber than your densest relative after huffing Magic Markers and butane, it had some majestic battle-scene set pieces to compensate. I declare a big, fat “bullshit” to that notion. Take, for example, an endless air battle in which marauding “evil” Na’vi attack the “happy” Na’vi while they are flying around in some big, fluffy ships in some sort of Avatar Thanksgiving Day Parade. The ships are bamboo and tissue-paper contraptions that the great happy Navi warriors must defend from the great decidedly pissed Navi variant.
I am no great warrior. In fact, I will categorize myself as a not-so-great, decidedly substandard warrior. But I’m pretty sure I could take down one of those goofy paper/bamboo Na’vi spaceships with a single blast from the lighter I use to ignite my Pirates of the Caribbean scented candle.
It’s thoughts like this that race through my head when I’m watching this nonsense as it rambles on for, get this, 197 minutes. Let’s get out the calculator … OK, that’s three hours and 17 minutes of blue cat people occasionally skirmishing and droning on and on about the Great Mother or whatever the fuck it is they worship.
There are so many things I hate about this movie. I’m going to go well over my standard review length for this one, word count be damned.
The character of Spider: This is one of James Cameron’s most heinous character creations. He’s a human boy who wants to be a Na’vi, so he wears a mask to breathe in their atmosphere, sloppily paints himself blue, and sports some stinky dreadlocks to blend in. He’s an eyesore. He looks goofy, and I just plain hate him. I couldn’t hate him more. Every second he spends onscreen, I would rather be watching something—ANYTHING—else.
The continuing presence of franchise bad guy Col. Miles Quaritich: This character (played by Stephen Lang) has died at least one more time than Jesus on Easter weekend. He just won’t go away. He’s one of the Na’vi now, and his presence consists mostly of trying to take back his son (he’s stupid Spider’s dad) from franchise central character and supreme dullard Jake Sully (Sam Worthington). The best character in this film is actually a new Na’vi villain, Varang (Oona Chaplin), leader of the belligerent Ash People clan. She’s almost compelling, and provides enough villainy for the movie. Let Lang find employment elsewhere!
The presence of Sigourney Weaver in two weird roles: The great Weaver continues to voice the teenage character Kiri, in one of the franchise’s greater freakouts. Why, why do this? It’s the epitome of weird to hear her aged vocals coming out of this youthful character. It goes beyond bizarre during a scene in which a full-grown Sigourney character is standing next to her “spiritual daughter” Kiri character. (Spoiler alert: Cameron rips himself off with this film’s mawkish ending.)
If you want to see Sigourney kicking ass, see her in Dust Bunny when it’s available to stream. She is phenomenally funny in that one, and she didn’t even have to put on one of those ping-pong-ball motion-capture suits. In contrast to Fire and Ashtray Shit Pile, the far more artistically successful and enjoyable Dust Bunny was made for less than $20 million, while Fire and Ass Play cost upwards of $400 million. Let that marinate.
I could go on, and on, and on—just like this terrible, wasteful movie. I understand that my drubbing the film mercilessly might lack a certain, analytical nuance, but I submit to you that we’re talking about a film so mundane, it doesn’t deserve a proper analytical breakdown. I couldn’t make this film sound important or meaningful or expertly constructed on my best day. It’s an incredibly expensive dime-store joke.
It has now been 28 years since Cameron directed a non-Avatar narrative film, Titanic—which one of the greatest films ever made. That’s a mind-boggling statistic. This guy was one of my heroes, and I just can’t stand him anymore. He has permanently damaged his legacy while lining his pockets, and fans of his great pre-Avatar run (including the first two Terminator films, Aliens, The Abyss) have every right to be annoyed.
There are, at least, another two Avatars planned, with Avatar 4 tentatively scheduled for 2029 and Avatar 5 for 2031. Judging by the nearly empty theater I sat in on opening weekend, and some of the chatter I heard in the lobby afterward (“That Sucked!”), this one may end Cameron’s run as an Avatar director. If this continues, he could possibly write the script and pass the directing baton. Have fun navigating that dreck, oh future director of Avatar movies!
I’d take a Cameron-directed remake of his own Titanic over another Cameron-directed Avatar. Hell, I’d take a Cameron-directed ode to soft pretzels over another Cameron-directed Avatar.
Please, James Cameron: It’s time to stop this madness.
