Avatar 3: Ashes to Ashes, blockbuster to bonfire – Cameron’s Pandora heats up (trailer).

So, it turns out the third Avatar film is not called The Seed Bearer (thank Eywa), but instead goes by the far more apocalyptic title of Avatar: Fire and Ash. Which, let’s be honest, sounds less like a family film and more like something you find scratched into a stone tablet during the third act of a Lovecraft story. And knowing James Cameron’s flair for over-engineered aquatic misery, that’s probably not too far off.

Arriving in cinemas on December 19th, 2025, after what can only be described as a geological period of delays (this film has had more missed deadlines than a university student with a Netflix account), Fire and Ash picks up one year after the death of Neteyam. Jake and Neytiri are still trying to blend in with their reef-dwelling in-laws—the Metkayina—when a fiery new Na’vi tribe bursts out of the volcanoes like they’ve been listening to too much early Metallica. Enter the Ash People, led by Oona Chaplin’s Varang, who appears to be the Na’vi answer to Darth Maul, only with fewer tattoos and probably more emotional trauma.

But wait! It gets juicier. Varang has teamed up with none other than Colonel Quaritch—yes, the still-breathing recombinant version of everyone’s favourite cigar-chomping space colonialist (Stephen Lang, looking even more furious in blue). Apparently, dying in the first film, returning as a cloned Na’vi in the second, and getting mildly trounced hasn’t cooled his jets. He’s back, angry, and this time has a tribe of lava-dwelling Na’vi on speed-dial.

If The Way of Water was all about soaking us in oceanic VFX and underwater bonding with alien whales, Fire and Ash promises to crank up the temperature—literally and metaphorically. Volcanoes! Grief! War! And yes, probably three more hours of high-frame-rate foliage so crisp it’ll make your local forest look like a sad pot plant.

Much of the original cast returns, including Sam Worthington as Jake “permanently blue” Sully, Zoe Saldaña as Neytiri (still angry, still brilliant), Sigourney Weaver as their adopted teenage daughter Kiri (still raising all the metaphysical questions), and Britain Dalton’s Lo’ak, now the narrator of this instalment. Jack Champion’s Spider is also back, continuing his awkward existence as the human adoptee in a family of 9ft-tall bioluminescent tree-huggers.

New additions include David Thewlis as a Na’vi Wind Trader named Peylak (think: space camel caravan merchant with a PhD), and Kate Winslet, reprising her role as the pregnant diver Ronal, reminding us all that even in space fantasy, maternity leave is apparently not a thing.

Here at SFcrowsnest, we have a soft spot for James Cameron’s obsessive filmmaking habits. He may be the only man alive who builds an entirely new camera system just to film an eel blinking underwater in slow motion, but by thunder, it looks good. Fire and Ash has been gestating longer than most elephants and cost more than a minor moon mission, but it promises to go deeper—not just visually, but thematically. Grief, cycles of violence, tribalism, and yes, more “not all humans are bad” rhetoric, now extended to “not all Na’vi are saintly either”. Character depth? You’ll need scuba gear.

With Avatar 4 and 5 already on the horizon—assuming Cameron doesn’t decide to insert an interstellar documentary detour in between—it’s clear this is no longer just a film franchise. It’s a full-blown Pandora-sized opera. And we’re only at the volcano overture.

So fire up your flying beast, adjust your 3D goggles, and prepare to return to a world of glowing flora, blue-on-blue punch-ups, and the most lovingly rendered lava since Mount Doom got its close-up. Avatar: Fire and Ash—because nothing says Christmas blockbuster quite like spiritual combustion.