Avatar: Fire and Ash review: The latest in the sci-fi adventure series is the longest and worst yet

The third instalment in James Cameron's mega-hit blockbuster franchise is "197 minutes of screensaver graphics, clunky dialogue, baggy plotting and hippy-dippy new-age spirituality".

Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water are two of the highest-grossing films ever made, so you can hardly blame James Cameron for keeping his sci-fi adventure series going. But its third episode, Avatar: Fire and Ash, strongly suggests that he should quit while he's still ahead. Each Avatar so far has been longer and worse than the one before, and this one – a full half-hour longer than the 2009 original – is 197 minutes of screensaver graphics, clunky dialogue, baggy plotting and hippy-dippy new-age spirituality. It's terrifying to think that Cameron still has two more sequels scheduled. How much longer and more self-indulgent can they possibly get?

The most insulting part is that even with that preposterous, bladder-testing running time, Avatar: Fire and Ash doesn't work as a standalone film with a beginning, middle and end. Making no concessions to any viewers who aren't superfans of the franchise, Cameron assumes that we're already deeply invested in the characters, their relationships and their surroundings, so that a complete, propulsive story is surplus to requirements.

It feels as if we're a zillion light years from the excitement of the first film. The idea of that one was that the human race had made such a mess of the planet Earth that they decided to exploit the mineral resources of an Edenic, unspoilt moon named Pandora. This plan wasn't popular with Pandora's blue-skinned humanoid inhabitants, the Na'vi, but a human Marine, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) had his mind zapped into the body of a Na'vi-human hybrid, so that he could cosy up to the locals. He then fell in love with a Na'vi princess, Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), and fought alongside her tribespeople against the invaders from Earth. In short, Avatar was Pocahontas meets the Smurfs in space – a scenario ripe with conflicts and environmental issues.

The situation now is that the Na'vi are still fighting against the human military, but it seems that Cameron has lost interest in Jake and Neytiri, and now prefers to hang out with their teenage children. It's a fatalmistake. Worthington may not be the world's most charismatic actor, but at least his character was distinctive, whereas it's sometimes hard to tell which of Jake and Neytiri's nearly-naked offspring is which – and they're all equally annoying. Every now and then there will be a big battle, or we'll see some human scientists who haven't been in the film for ages. Sometimes we'll have to sit through long, reverential discussions of the Na'vi's beliefs. And sometimes we'll have tantalising glimpses of the hard-edged empire-vs-rebels eco-thriller that the film could have been. But, essentially, Avatar: Fire and Ash is a Californian soap opera in which various forgettable dreadlocked surf dudes ride dragons and shout phrases like, "That was insane, bro," and, "This is sick, cuz!"

It's true that much of the franchise's record-breaking appeal is built on the sight of surf dudes riding dragons, but the extra-terrestrial setting doesn't seem as dazzling as it once did. That's partly because Pandora has lost its novelty value. We've now had nine hours of the same faux-tropical backdrop, and Star Wars would have whisked us around 10 different planets by this point. But the strange thing is that, while the first Avatar seemed exhilaratingly futuristic, the third film seems like a relic of an earlier era.

More like this:

• 12 of the best films to watch this December

• The 25 best films of 2025

• Marty Supreme is 'fresh, funny and exhilarating'

There was a period in the 2010s when instalments of Planet of the Apes and The Hobbit kept coming out, and audiences were expected to put on 3D glasses to watch computer-generated characters, played by actors in performance-capture suits, roaming around computer-generated worlds. Back then, Pandora felt immersive and it looked spookily realistic. Now it just seems outdated – an experiment whose time has passed. I'm not sure whether that's because the effects are actually worse than they used to be, or because that film-making style has been done to death, but Avatar: Fire and Ash feels as unrealistic and un-immersive as an old arcade game. Everything in it appears so artificial that when a Na'vi is knocked off their dragon mid-flight, there's no sense of danger: even if you can tell which one of them it is, you feel as if you could just press the "Keep Playing" button and they could carry on as they were.

Anyway, with two further Avatar sequels on the cards, what are the chances that any of the main characters is going to be seriously harmed? If Cameron gets his way, we've got another six hours to go before the saga ends – and it will likely seem like a lot longer than that.

★☆☆☆☆

--

If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week.

For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebookand Instagram.