Dir: James Cameron, US, 2025, 197 mins,

Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Oona Chaplin, Stephen Lang

Review by Carol Allen

So we’re now on episode 3 of Avatar. It’s very spectacular, the colour is gorgeous – a lot of blue – but the 3D adds nothing very much except discomfort from the 3D glasses, if you wear specs anyway.

If you’ve forgotten what happened in the last one Avatar: The Way of Water, which was released three years ago, you may struggle a bit to work out who all these blue people with twitchy ears and tails are. Oh, and it’s long, long, long oh so long. Feels like weeks.

To try to fill you in, our heroes in the Na’vi tribe, human convert Jake (Sam Worthington) and his wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) are mourning the death of their eldest son. They have plenty of other children though, including their adopted son, white boy Spider (Jack Champion), who’s an old fashioned human boy and needs oxygen to breathe. And one of the children – I couldn’t sort out which – does spooky stuff with what looks like white ectoplasm.

The meat of the story though is the emergence of a rival Na’vi tribe, the Mangkwan people, who live in a volcano and are possessed by the spirit of fire and ash – hence the title. They’re a fiery lot and their raison d’etre is conquest. They are blue with red bits and their leader is a scary, snarly female called Varang, played by Oona Chaplin, who’s very impressive and indeed sexy in the role.

She’s managed to connect up with former human soldier, now hybrid Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who introduces her to the power trip of guns. Oh and the American military humans, who invaded Pandora in typical fashion hoping to exploit the planet’s natural resources are still there, led by the frozen faced General Ardmore (Edie Falco), making idiots of themselves as usual as they join forces with Varang and her mob.

So there’s a lot of action, culminating in a spectacular and long drawn out battle sequence – by which time we’re all wondering when it’s going to end and if the pubs will still be open.

It’s not all bad though. The early scenes with the children – all cute and blue apart from Spider – when they are being pursued by Varang’s mob, are actually pretty tense. There’s a powerful Abraham and Isaac moment between Jake and Spider. Quaritch has some strong scenes and a shock revelation – at least I think it’s a revelation but maybe we should know that from the last film and I have forgotten it.

It’s the fish and fauna of the planet however who rather overshadow the human actors. The gorgeous and fierce winged dragon like creatures who provide personal air transport for the N’avi and the whale like sea creatures who impart wisdom and, when required, muscle power in defence of their friends. Come the big battle scenes I wasn’t that concerned about the fate of the blue people, the blue and red people or the silly military people. Just don’t hurt the Tulkan or the Ikran.

James Cameron is threatening us with another two episodes of the saga. The first Avatar was 162 minutes long, the second 192, nearly as long as this one. It really is a bit self indulgent Mr. Cameron. In the olden days, epics such as Ghandi, Dr Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia all had intervals. Please either give us a break or put the scissors in next time.