Topline
“Avatar: Fire and Ash,” the forthcoming third movie in billionaire director James Cameron’s fantasy film series, is dividing critics, some of whom are calling it the weakest installment in the franchise yet, as it logs the lowest Rotten Tomatoes score of any “Avatar” movie.
“Avatar: Fire and Ash” opens in theaters this weekend. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for 20th Century Studios)
Getty Images for 20th Century Studios
Key Facts
Reviews for “Avatar: Fire And Ash,” which opens in theaters Friday, began to trickle in Tuesday, and the Rotten Tomatoes score currently stands at 69% while the Metacritic score is 61%, indicating critics are generally divided.
The first “Avatar” movie impressed critics the most, earning 81% and 83% scores on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, respectively, while second film “Avatar: The Way of Water” earned scores of 76% and 67% on the two review aggregators.
Like its predecessors, “Avatar: Fire And Ash” is still expected to make a big splash at the box office, with Deadline projecting it will make $110 million in its opening weekend, possibly as much as $130 million.
Chief Critics
BBC critic Nicholas Barber gave the film just one star out of five, calling it the “longest and worst” installment in the “Avatar” series. Barber said sixteen years after the first “Avatar” movie, the novelty of the fictional Pandora planet has worn off, stating the filmmaking style is “outdated” and “an experiment whose time has passed,” alleging the movie looks as “unrealistic and un-immersive as an old arcade game.” The Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw called the film a “gigantically dull hunk of nonsense,” stating aside from a few dramatic moments, the movie was “uninteresting.” IndieWire critic David Ehrlich said Cameron “finally falls flat,” stating it is the first Cameron movie that doesn’t feel like it breaks new ground, lamenting it is like watching “one of cinema’s greatest explorers walk in circles for three hours.” Though he praised the movie as “clean, massive, and staged at a level several cuts above Hollywood’s usual CGI slopfests,” Ehrlich said the movie lacks the “visceral excitement” of the first two. USA Today critic Brian Truitt said the movie suffers from “endless subplots, scattershot character development and borrowed story beats,” criticizing the three-hour runtime and the diminishing returns of the “Avatar” franchise.