After a trilogy of three-hour long movies, James Cameron’s Avatar films have been under fire for unoriginal plot compared to the first film. The newly-released “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” released on Dec. 19, fails to continue the spectacle and impact of its two predecessors. 

In “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” the characters are hardly given any time to grow because there are so many things going on during this movie. There are too many subplots to be able to fully expand on and the most interesting one, the relationship between Spider and Quaritch, characters introduced after the first movie, didn’t get the spotlight or development it deserved; the two reconciled three times in just movie three alone, but go back to warring on opposite sides. As the movie starts, there are four sub-plots that need to be resolved based on the end of movie two. Even though he has been the narrator for the first two movies, Jake Sully was sidelined in favor of his son Lo’ak to narrate the film, a poor decision on Cameron’s part because the movie entirely follows Jake Sully and his actions and battles, while Lo’ak is only a small subplot.

 Another problem with the movie is that it’s too predictable. When the Na’vi, the native tribe in the movie, go to fight the humans, it is obvious they are going to win because even though there was three hours of buildup, it did not build suspense or questioning of their success. Not to mention the fact that the Na’vi have beaten the humans on impossible scales twice at the end of each movie, making the trilogy feel repetitive and lacking stakes.

James Cameron keeps trying to make bigger productions, which he does, but introduces an excessive amount of new characters and story lines to the point where it makes the movie as a whole hard to enjoy; it eventually begins to feel dull and tedious to watch, losing its appeal. The first Avatar movie was great, and “Avatar: The Way of Water” was interesting because the wait built up anticipation and it expanded the plot without making it feel overdone. However, “Avatar: Fire and Ash” introduces so much more subplot than what is necessary and the movie is excessively long, making it difficult to follow with nothing substantial in the plot to make up for it. I rate “Avatar: Fire and Ash” a 6/10.