Avatar: Fire & Ash
AVATAR: FIRE & ASH
James Cameron can always be counted on to deliver visual wonders the likes of which we've never seen before. No, wait: I take that back. I meant to say that James Cameron could always be counted on to deliver visual wonders the likes of which we've never seen before. In the director/co-writer's Avatar: Fire & Ash, though, the wonders are disappointingly familiar, and not just because we only had to wait three years for a new Pandora adventure, as opposed to the 13 that passed between 2009's original Avatar and 2022's The Way of Water.
There are, to be sure, valid explanations for the comparative lack of astonishment this time around. Fire & Ash and Way of Water – their human and practical-effect components, at least – were shot concurrently from 2017 to 2020, so it makes sense that the films would look largely indistinguishable. (It's the same reason that, CGI armies and Gollum aside, the visuals in Peter Jackson's final Lord of the Rings installment aren't noticeably different from those in the first.) The new movie's storyline also contributes to the relative lack of awe, as events pick up mere weeks after the colossal spectacle that climaxed 2022's adventure, and the Fire & Ash narrative, from what I could tell, only covers a period of a few days. By design, this isn't a third Avatar so much as the second half of the second one, and if that doesn't leave much room for fresh miracle-making, we can at least be grateful that Cameron didn't foist on us a Ways of Water, Fire, & Ash that lasted six-and-a-half hours.
Yet even the few novel visual inspirations we're treated to feel somewhat old hat. There's a previously unintroduced race of volcano-dwelling Na'vi called the Mangkwan, as well as a debuting villain in the tribe's vicious leader Varang. (For those wondering: Yes, I unconditionally rely on the Internet for all Avatar clan and character names, which tend to exit my brain three seconds after hearing them on-screen. Without Wikipedia, you'd be stuck solely with references to “the ones that look like fish” and “the one played by Zoe Saldaña.”) But the Mangkwan don't appear noticeably distinct from any other Na'vi dweller – certainly not the Omatikaya, such as the one played by Zoe Saldaña. And while Charlie's granddaughter Oona Chaplin, as Varang, has a great, ferocious look and exudes a stellar hiss, even she seems weirdly blockbuster-recognizable. Is it just me, or with her feathery headpiece, does Varang look uncannily like the shrieking Dilophosaurus that scared the crap out of Wayne Knight in Jurassic Park?
It's not that Fire & Ash is devoid of wonder or legitimate majesty. Those astoundingly immense whale creates known as tulkun make return appearances, with Cameron doubling, then tripling, then quadrupling the amount of damage they do to those pesky humans' warships. There's also a zippy, thrilling sequence in which a mass of squid-like beings – sorry, I'm not looking up their real names … – take out countless troops with their squishy tentacles and leaping prowess. (It was strange, though, to watch one of them so brutally attack Jake Sully's and Naytiri's surviving son Lo'ak earlier in the film; I thought Na'vi's sea creatures got along with everyone on their planet!)
Aside from those bits, though, I found it hard to remember much of this latest Avatar's exactingly staged battle sequences even on the drive home, and such scenes are about all I still do remember from Way of Water. While Cameron's directorial energy is as evident as ever, there's a curious lack of variation and specificity in the endless melees here, and it was easier to recall the beats that made me wince than the ones I should've been cheering. Among those awkward touches was Sigourney Weaver, as the Na'vi teen Kiri, doing a very intentional reprise of her “Get away from her, you bitch!!!” command from Aliens. Meanwhile, earlier in Fire & Ash, Edie Falco is outfitted in the same metallic exoskeleton that Weaver's Ellen Ripley famously donned for her showdown against the Mama Alien. Is Cameron perhaps nostalgic for his simpler days of sci-fi sequels?
Anyhoo, that's pretty much the action. What about, you know, the story? Let's just say you'd be forgiven for having Talking Heads' “Once in a Lifetime” playing on a loop in your head: “Same as it ever was, same as it ever was … .” Led by the avatar of Stephen Lang's deceased Colonel Miles Quaritch, the human forces are still trying to conquer Pandora. Sam Worthington's Jake Sully and Saldaña's Neytiri are still trying to protect their children, and their entire species, from extinction. The kids, though slightly more downbeat in the wake of Neteyam's death, still fly through the sky and surf on the waters yelling “Bro!” and “Dude!” at each other.
Yet beyond the peace-loving community's unexpected, unwanted meetup with the Mangkwan, the only genuinely new element in Fire & Ash is Quaritch's dreadlocked son Miles (Jack Champion), a Baby Tarzan nicknamed “Spider,” being magically granted the ability to breathe Pandoran air, an event that makes the humans all the more antsy in their plans for massacring and colonizing. There are, however, additional stray bits of narrative progression. A child on the way for Kate Winslet's Ronal. Skin-deep soul-searching regarding whether Spider's death would be in Pandora's best interests. (For what it's worth, Quaritch's kid forgives his would-be murderer awfully quickly.) Burgeoning romance between Spider and Kiri – a development that makes you hope there was an intimacy coordinator, and maybe a child-welfare representative, on set when now-21-year-old Champion and now-76-year-old Weaver recorded their motion-capture portrayals.
As with Wicked: For Good, a continuation that was a good hour shorter than the 197 minutes of Cameron's most recent epic, there simply isn't enough going on to necessitate such a bloated length. The director and co-screenwriters Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver hit nearly all the beats they're going to hit within the movie's first 45 minutes, and over the two-and-a-half hours that follow, there's little to do but watch astounding technology in the service of an exhaustingly simpleminded saga, and listen, yet again, to some of the most painful dialogue ever conceived for a Hollywood blockbuster. (Admittedly, I did chuckle when Quaritch attempted to sweet-talk Varang by calling this fanged harpy “cupcake”; Lang, in this role, can get away with anything.) There are certainly viewers, no doubt millions of them, for whom this film's failings won't matter a lick, and the movie is gonna make a gazillion dollars regardless of quality. For others of us, though, Fire & Ash might prove one trip to Pandora too many – and reportedly, there are still two more to come. Buckle up, folks, and Feliz Na'vi-dad to us all.
THE HOUSEMAID
For close to its entire first hour, Paul Feig's psychological thriller The Housemaid is all kinds of fun. That's because, over the course of those 60ish minutes, Amanda Seyfried seems to embody 60ish types of crazy.
The film isn't a comedy – not exactly, at any rate – and some forms of Seyfried's psychosis, in her role as upper-class suburbanite Nina Winchester, are undeniably scary. Feig, though, is also the guy who helmed Bridesmaids, The Heat, and Spy – plus, as I love reminding the haters, the female-led Ghostbusters that may not be canon but (a) assuredly exists and (b) is immeasurably superior to Jason Reitman's renditions. This guy knows from funny, and clearly understands that the initial kick of his latest comes from watching Sydney Sweeney, as in-residence maid Millie Calloway, attempt to smile through, evade, or indirectly confront her new boss' unpredictable bursts passive-aggressive and genuinely aggressive wrath. In the wake of more challenging 2025 assignments in Eden, Americana, and Christy, Sweeney spends the first half of her new film not doing much of anything. She doesn't need to. It's strictly The Amanda Seyfried Show, and I could've watched it forever.
Down on her luck to the point that she's living in her car, Millie immediately accepts Nina's invitation to act as housemaid in her spacious, bespoke home in Great Neck, Long Island, where she'll be expected to do the cleaning and some “light cooking,” and meet whatever needs arise for Nina, her hunky husband Andrew (Brandon Sklenar), and their seven-year-old daughter Cecelia (Indiana Elle, a real find with a phenomenal deadpan). Homeless Millie, for understandable reason, jumps at the chance. But this poor young woman is clearly out of her depth even before 24 hours pass, when Nina, having misplaced some notes for a PTA meeting, accuses Millie of throwing them out and proceeds to tear her kitchen apart – a meltdown of screaming, destructive insanity that ends with her sobbing in her husband's arms. This is obviously the moment at which any rational soul would pack her bags and hightail it the hell out of there. For reasons we come to understand, though, Millie can't afford to be rational. She stays, she tidies the mess, and we eagerly await the answers to instantly looming questions. How psychotic is Nina gonna get? How much will Millie put up with? When will the beleaguered employee snap? And at what point, given all the unmistakable flirting, will Millie and Andrew sleep together – and what nightmare will ensue when Nina finds out?
Among the credits on Feig's résumé I didn't mention were 2018's A Simple Favor and its Another Simple Favor from this past May, and The Housemaid certainly has more in common with the twisty Anna Kendrick/Blake Lively entertainments than it does with Bridesmaids. Unfortunately, overall, his latest isn't quite as enticing as either of those guiltless guilty pleasures. At about the one-hour point, Nina essentially vanishes for an out-of-town commitment with Cecelia, and we're left, for an undue amount of time, with Millie and Andrew: bland on bland. In the right roles, Sweeney can be intensely charismatic, and the huggable Sklenar, who's like a low-wattage Glen Powell, was expertly cast as Meghann Fahy's confused date in the under-seen thriller Drop. (In a fun “Six degrees of …” happenstance, Sklenar was Blake Lively's romantic savior in It Ends with Us.) Here, though, the actors and their merely theoretical chemistry drop The Housemaid's temperature down from boiling to simmering to lukewarm at best, with not one but two gauzy lovemaking interludes scored to forgettable acoustic pop and the pacing dying a slow death. Eventually, blessedly, Nina returns. But that's the point at which this material first conceived by novelist Freida McFadden (and adapted by Rebecca Sonnenshire) abandons its early, joyous nastiness for something purportedly “real” yet, frankly, ludicrous. All of a sudden, enjoyable-crazy turns not-at-all-enjoyable crazy, and you're left – unfairly, I thought – with mild regret for the terrific time you had before.
Happily, Feig's movie rallies with a final 20-or-so minutes that deliver the cathartic, batshit-nutty experience you anticipated from the start – the sort of devious, soul-satisfying ridiculousness that makes you finish a potboiler and immediately recommend it to everyone in your book club. And if Sweeney and Sklenar remain rather unremarkable throughout, Feig, as his numerous comedies have proven, has a definite eye for scene-stealing minor figures, with Megan Ferguson a particular hoot as one of Nina's frenemies, Michele Morrone as a mysterious groundskeeper, and the priceless Elizabeth Perkins as Andrew's brittle, domineering mother whose stares could cut glass. None of them, though, match Seyfried as The Housemaid's raison d'être, the performer so hypnotic, instinctive, and gloriously committed that she makes even the seemingly unworkable elements work – and spectacularly well, at that. Nina Winchester presents herself as perfect. Seyfried's performance actually is.
