AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH
Jake and Neytiri's family grapples with grief, encountering a new, aggressive Na'vi tribe, the Ash People, who are led by the fiery Varang, as the conflict on Pandora escalates and a new moral focus emerges.
Avatar: Fire and Ash, James Cameron
“Is that the one about the blue people?” is a question that the famous Avatar science fiction franchise still provokes. But its latest instalment, Fire and Ash (2025), proves how reductive this framing can really be. From its inception, the franchise has functioned as an allegory for the histories of Indigenous survival under colonial violence, as it has focused on the removal of peoples from their indigenous lands and the ramifications of geopolitical conflict and the resource exploitation that often comes intertwined with it. But this latest instalment even further deepens this vision through the fresh plotline of the Ash People, led by the formidable Varang, whose authority and rage complicate any singular idea of resistance. It deepens the idea of colonial conflict by making it unequivocally clear that the complexities of such violence and geopolitical conflict manifest through a diverse range of reactions. Specifically, by staging conflict not only between the Na’vi and Sky People, but also within the Indigenous communities of the Na’vi and the Ash people themselves, Fire and Ash resists flattening the Indigenous experience overall by diversifying their reactions to the Sky people. It thus captures colonisation as layered, internal, and enduring, rendered through striking depictions of clashes between the nomadic peoples of the ocean, ash, and earth.
Release Date December 19th 2025
Director(s) James Cameron
Written James Cameron, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver
Producer James Cameron, Jon Landau
Starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver Cinematography Russell Carpenter
Distributor Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures UK
Runtime 197 minutes