Avatar Fire and Ash: come for the lava, stay for the intergenerational trauma (trailer).

James Cameron has returned from the deep to set Pandora on fire. Having conquered water so thoroughly you half expected Aquaman to file a cease-and-desist, he’s now tipping a barrel of napalm into the Na’vi family barbecue. Avatar: Fire and Ash finds Jake and Neytiri doing that most relatable of sci-fi activities—trying to raise children while a resurrected nemesis, a furious new clan and several billion dollars’ worth of VFX chase them round a biosphere. The Metkayina have barely hosed the salt from their hair and here come the Ash People: volcano-dwelling, soot-streaked, and very much not bringing marshmallows.

Cameron says the title’s about cycles—fire as hatred, ash as aftermath—which is either profound or the mood board for a particularly intense Glastonbury set. Either way, it suits a trilogy mid-stride. Neteyam’s death has left scorch marks on the Sully clan, Lo’ak’s narration promises adolescent angst writ large across a sky full of floating mountains, and Kiri remains the franchise’s walking question mark, communing with Eywa while everyone else is communing with explosions. On the human side, Quaritch continues to outdo every boomer on Facebook by refusing to let the whole “being dead” thing end an argument. He’s back, blue, and apparently borrowing warpaint from his new lava mates. Somewhere, a corporate PowerPoint insists this is all vital to “shareholder value”.

The Ash People are Cameron’s latest cultural riff—hardy folk forged by hardship and sulphur, led by Varang, who radiates the sort of charisma that makes you nod along right up to the bit where she allies with the bloke who keeps trying to kill your protagonists. If The Way of Water asked, “Can we find peace in the reef?”, Fire and Ash counters with, “Not while the neighbour’s volcano is erupting and Dad’s old enemies keep popping round with gunships.” Expect the film to apply Cameron’s favourite wrench: take a found family, tighten until something snaps, then film the emotional shrapnel in glorious high frame rate.

Speaking of wrenching, the production itself has been the cinematic equivalent of rebuilding the HMS Victory while sailing it through a hurricane. Motion-capture underwater? Tick. Shooting two films at once? Tick. Post-production that requires as many render farms as New Zealand has sheep? Tick, tick, and bleat. The result, judging by the trailer, is more of that hallucinatory photorealism: bioluminescent embers drifting through night jungles, obsidian ridgelines glowing like forge coals, and Na’vi leaping across basalt ledges as if Legolas traded in his bow for a lava board. You don’t so much watch these films as undergo them.

Of course, Cameron’s true obsession isn’t water, fire, or even boats that won’t steer clear of icebergs; it’s scale. Emotional scale, ecological scale, and box-office scale. Every time a character whispers “We must protect our home,” you can almost hear a cash register hum in Dolby Vision. Yet here’s the trick: nestled among the spectacle is his perennial plea for empathy—between species, cultures, and the oddly endearing whale-cousins who keep adopting teenage boys. If Fire and Ash can make a volcano feel like a character the way Way of Water made the ocean feel like a cathedral, you’ll be shopping for heat-resistant 3D glasses.

There’s also the small matter of Cameron’s famous left turns. Cast members keep hinting that this one swerves like a Thanator on black ice. We’re apparently meeting Wind Traders, long-range nomads who sound like the Silk Road with better climate control, and we’re promised “greater character depth”, which, given the previous runtime, suggests we may need an interval to hydrate, stretch, and google “how to domesticate a lava lizard”. Rumours of nine-hour cuts have thankfully resolved into “only” very long films, which is fine by us—here at SFcrowsnest magazine, we consider a three-hour odyssey a brisk stroll if there are enough glowing mushrooms.

The returning players remain a delight. Zoe Saldaña can deliver maternal fury that could melt bedrock; Sam Worthington’s Jake is still the galaxy’s most earnest dad with a spear; Stephen Lang chews scenery like it’s military rations; and Sigourney Weaver’s Kiri is the franchise’s mystical centre of gravity, a living Rorschach test for whether faith is a superpower or a plot device. Add Winslet, Chaplin’s flinty Varang, and the Tulkun Payakan—who should frankly have a spin-off about ocean litigation after biting off a whaler’s arm—and you’ve got a cast that can hold focus even while a volcano does its best impression of a VFX showreel.

Will Fire and Ash convert the sceptics who still mutter that they can’t remember the characters’ names? Possibly not; these films are less about witty repartee and more about making your optic nerves ask for a cigarette. But for those who felt The Way of Water was Cameron back at full power—messy, maximal, majestically sincere—this looks like the next logical combustion. Water shapes stone, fire remakes it, and ash feeds the forest; the man’s making a planetary epic about grief, renewal and the cost of refusing to learn. Also: things go boom very prettily.

So polish your 3D lenses, practise your Na’vi vowels, and prepare to sweat in sympathy. Pandora is heating up, the families are fracturing, and the cycle of violence is about to meet a cycle of lava. If Cameron can thread his ecological sermon through the world’s hottest action diorama, we may all leave the cinema feeling a little singed—and a little more human—for it.