Summary
Avatar: Fire and Ashhas been subtly set up to upturn the status quo set by its two blockbuster predecessors, and the project’s latest sneak preview puts a visual stamp on that attitude with a side of Pandora that fans have never seen before.
James Cameron’sAvatarwas a visual spectacle beyond comparison when it was released in 2009, shattering records at the box office and award shows on par with Cameron’s previous magnum opus,Titanic.While it would take almost 14 years to accomplish, a second film,Avatar: The Way of Water,would manage to innovate once more with landmark underwater cinematography and performance capture, retaining the high bar set for the other planned sequels, including 2025’sAvatar: Fire And Ash. One highly publicized facet of the film has been its expected impact on the wider franchise, and it’s been heavily implied thatAvatar: Fire And Ashwould address some issues with the previous installments.
As the middle project of five planned films, it’s expected that the film series will have all its cards on the table by this juncture, andFire And Ashis certainly bringing some previously unseen parts of Pandora to light. While fans are excited aboutCameron’s promise of a lot more depth in a morally grayAvatar: Fire and Ash,the film’s visuals are set to be just as vast a departure from what’s come before. While the lush jungles of the first film seemed to naturally relate to the lush underwater world brimming with life inThe Way of Water,a new first-look image fromEmpireshows a side of Pandora that fans might not have ever imagined before. In the most recent issue of the magazine, some concept art for the home of the newly introduced Mangkwan Clan shows a landscape that lacks all the life and color of the rest of Pandora. Instead, it’s barren, gray and lifeless.
While the land of the Mangkwan (or Ash Tribe) represents a major departure from what fans have seen before, there’s a common thread to previous films and tribes, asAvatarfranchise production designer Dylan Cole explains. “[The Mangkwan] had a natural disaster befall them, and that sort of helped shape their culture,” Cole explains. “So much of the world of Pandora is rich and vibrant and full of life — this is just the exact opposite.” Cole also goes on to reiterate that the Ash Tribe lived much in the same way as the Na’vi fans saw in the first film, with a hometree at the center of a lush natural environment. “They used to live not too dissimilarly to the Omatikaya from Avatar 1,” he confirms. Cole’s comments help to highlight how the Ash Tribe isn’t so different from their brethren across the jungles and water.
In the same way other Na’vi live in harmony with their natural environment and share a mutually beneficial bond with it, the Ash Tribe shows what happens when that environment is devastated in ways that force radical change. Rather than abandoning it for greener (or really, any) grass elsewhere, the clan adapts to the new harsh reality of life there either by choice or by neccessity, leading to a very different, very motivated sort of clan and a similarly unique leader. With the Ash Clan set to be the major focus of the upcoming third film, it’s clear to see thatCameron’s positiveAvatar: Fire And Ashcommentsaren’t too far fetched. This sort of cataclysmic change in the way of life of a people so deeply connected to their home has fueled some of the most compelling and catastrophic conflicts in both fiction and the real world. Tapping into that sort of energy goes a long way to show the potential for great storytelling here. Better yet, all this new storytelling power actually closely ties into the visuals, which have been the film franchise’s bread and butter from the start.
Now that there’s all this promise of some real bite to the characters in the upcoming third film, fans will be even more happy than before to know that the current release date can be trusted. WithCameron’s recent promising updates onAvatar 3’s developmentpretty much indicating that the film is taking shape twice as fast as previous installments, fans can hold steady to the film’s late 2025 release date. When the threequel does hit theaters at the end of the year, fans can rest assured that it’ll radically change the look and perception of the franchise going forward.
Avatar: Fire and Ashis set for theatrical release onDecember 19, 2025.
