Avatar: Fire and Ash, the immersive next chapter in James Cameron’s landmark sci-fi saga for 20th Century Studios, opened in theaters on December 19, returning audiences to the awe-inspiring world of Pandora.
Picking up shortly after the events of Avatar: The Way of Water (2022), the film finds the Sully family still living among the Metkayina Clan as they grapple with the devastating loss of Neteyam, killed during a brutal battle with the Sky People and the RDA.
For Jake and Neytiri, grief becomes a fault line in the new Avatar. “Both characters go back to their default,” Sam Worthington said. “Neytiri goes back to Eywa [the All Mother of Pandora] and Jake goes back to soldiering. They’re both just trying to find a path through.”
Jake, once unshakable, is now deeply aware of his own fragility. “He may not be able to protect his family or his chosen family, meaning all the Na’vi clans,” Worthington added. The weight of leadership feels heavier than ever.
Neytiri’s grief, meanwhile, pulls her into darkness. “She’s in such a dark place, and she can’t control herself,” Saldaña said. “Obviously, [her grief] is impacting her relationships with her family, because she doesn’t have a will to do anything. She’s losing purpose and she’s starting to question everything.”
Zoe Saldaña describes Neytiri as a reflection of real-world cycles of trauma and violence. “Neytiri is a mirror to so many stories that we hear in our lives and throughout history,” she said. “When someone experiences a great deal of loss at the hands of a community or an entity, that pain is calcified, and it turns into absolute hate and aberration.”
She continued, “It’s almost like violence begets violence, and so does pain. If you experience pain, you unconsciously want others to experience the same pain as you, because you feel so miserable and alone in it. Neytiri is at the precipice of really falling and becoming what will eventually be Varang. If not for the love that she has with Jake, and inherently her children, I think Neytiri would’ve joined someone like Varang with the Mangkwan people.” Watch what the cast has to say below:
That looming threat, in Avatar: Fire and Ash, arrives in Varang, a volatile shaman played by Oona Chaplin and leader of the Mangkwan Clan. After a volcanic eruption destroyed their Hometree, Varang’s people turned its charred remains into a new home, abandoning Eywa and the natural order entirely.
“Varang comes from a place that has been devastated by a natural disaster,” Chaplin said. “Her people have suffered this great trauma. She figured out a way to harness the power of that pain and grief and desperation and really turn it into her strength.”
Chaplin recalls Cameron’s early guidance on the character. “Very early on, Jim said to me, ‘Everything that makes her afraid anywhere she sees that there’s power she goes right for it, and she tries to destroy it.’”
Varang’s path intersects with Quaritch, once again played by Stephen Lang. Now reborn as a recombinant, Quaritch finds himself increasingly detached from the RDA. “His relationship with the parent company, the RDA, has soured,” Lang shared. “As a result, that opens him up to other possibilities. He needs a path.”
That path inevitably leads back to Jake. “The juxtaposition of admiration and contempt that the two feel for each other is a very dynamic, volatile combination,” Stephen Lang said. “It seems to be a recipe for all kinds of drama.”
Worthington sees Jake and Quaritch as distorted reflections. “They’re in perfect mirror reflections of each other,” he said. “Whether they’re conscious of it or not, they recognize themselves in the other.”
He added, “These guys, they’re immigrants. We’re seeing the power that Pandora has on these characters and how it can transform one from a dumb grunt in a wheelchair to a leader and the other from a steadfast, solid rock of a colonel to a mercurial man who’s unsure of where his destiny lies.”
Complicating matters further is Spider, Quaritch’s biological son, raised alongside the Sully children. “It’s confusing to him,” Lang also noted. “But at the same time, it presents possibilities for him to explore the avenue of being a father, which he’s never experienced.”
Spider’s own journey unfolds alongside Kiri, Lo’ak, and Tuk, as the children are forced to stand on their own. “The kids are separated from their parents,” Weaver said. “‘This time dad and mom aren’t gonna come in and rescue us. We’ve got to figure it out for ourselves.’ You see all the kids coming into their own in a way they haven’t before.”
As always, family remains the emotional core of Avatar: Fire and Ash. “This is about their growth,” Saldaña said. “This family is recovering from a great loss and reconnecting and individualizing themselves, but solidifying their bond as a family. Together, they’re unbreakable. They’re inseparable. They can do anything. They can survive anything.”
Avatar: Fire and Ash is currently in theaters.
The Geek is a working screenwriter, director and screenwriting instructor.
REELated:
IT: Welcome to Derry finale proves Pennywise was always doomed
