The Mystery of the Third Pandora: how Avatar: Flame and Ashes turned out
The worldwide release of the grandiose fantasy "Avatar: Flame and Ashes" has started, and among the first reviews, the idea that "Akela missed" is increasingly heard. The sluggish plot, the secondhandness in every frame, the same as in the second part, only five minutes longer — the critics are ruthless, and it's hard to argue with them. But millions of viewers went to the cinema anyway for the sake of a spectacle that still has nothing on the big screen. Izvestia evaluated the new Avatar in a modern cinema and explains what Cameron could have made a mistake about and what he is still out of competition for.
How "Avatar" began
When James Cameron conceived Avatar more than 30 years ago, he could hardly have imagined that it would result in films with budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars, which bring in billions at the box office. And that viewers will go to these cartoons for more than 15 years, similar to movies where humanoids resembling blue cats fly on dragons resembling geese. In 2025, we got a triquel, similar to the sequel. So how will you remember the third "Avatar", which was recently released worldwide under the title "Fire and Ashes"?
After all, the project is more than 30 years old. In 1994, Cameron made the first drafts of a script based on a dream he saw and recorded at the age of 19, as well as books by Burroughs ("Tarzan") and Haggard ("King Solomon's Mines"). Then he shot Titanic, and after its success, he was ready to make Avatar his next project, but the technology did not grow up to the grandiose plans of the director. Therefore, Cameron seemed to be standing still, and from the outside it might seem that he would not get out of the Titanic in any way: he filmed the depths of the ocean, descended to unprecedented depths in bathyscaphes, and produced documentaries.
But then everyone realized what exactly he was looking for there. So far, 2009's Avatar is the highest—grossing film of all time, grossing almost $3 billion. And in third place in this list, after the final "Avengers", "Avatar 2". However, the third part may not reach these heights: the pre-collections of the first weekend suggest that even in the absence of competitors (the film about SpongeBob does not count), Avatar 3 still does not quite reach the box office of the previous installments, while remaining the highest-budget film of the trilogy today: It cost more than $400 million. He is projected to receive $380 million over the weekend, although the second part raised $440 million.
The longest "Avatar"
You will have to stock up not only on popcorn, but also on diapers. This is the longest "Avatar" of the three: 5 minutes longer than the second and 35 minutes longer than the first. This is, of course, still a compromise, because, as they say, the director's script was designed for nine hours, and Cameron planned to shoot it in its entirety, in addition, to do all the effects at once, and then reduce this colossus during editing.
Real budgets and deadlines chilled the Hollywood genius, and "Fire and Ashes" was shot immediately in a three-hour format. In addition, it was done in parallel with the second and fourth parts, so that the child actors did not have time to grow up and their voices did not have time to break. And this is despite the fact that one of the "children", Kiri, is successfully "played" by Sigourney Weaver at the age of 76.
The plot (although it's not why people go to Avatars) is as follows: Jake Sully (gloomy Sam Worthington), a former Marine who died to become a cat-eyed alien from the Na'vi race, continues to explore all the elements of Pandora. He conquered the air in the first part, did not drown in the water in the second and is not going to burn in the fire in the third. After losing their son, he and his wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), to put it mildly, are not themselves and are trying their best to protect the remaining children from people and from the tribal war.
Colonel Quaritch, the main villain, really wants to find his son Spider, who lives with Jake as a foster child. Gradually, other people have a reason to look for Spider, and the hunt is becoming more widespread. Meanwhile, we are getting to know a new tribe, the Ash People. These creatures live at the bottom of a volcano and hate nature. They are ruled by the cruel (and loving) Warang. In the upcoming battle for Pandora's future, this tribe can play an important role.
Cameron seems to be deliberately neglecting the plot, and if we wanted to retell everything in detail, with spoilers, it's unlikely that anyone would be hooked. Either someone has been abducted, or they are going to kidnap. If they are kidnapped, other characters go to free the hostages.
These endless kidnappings and "rescue missions" at some point begin to tire. As well as endless resurrections of "dead" characters. What in the first part became the highlight, the main course of the film, in the third "Avatar" is just a snack, and this happens more than once. The director seems to be telling us: what difference does it make what's going on here, you just sit and watch. It will be beautiful.
In the third film, Jake Lo'ak's son becomes the offscreen narrator. And Kiri, the daughter of the deceased Dr. Grace, finds in herself rare superpowers and a special connection with Pandora's "mind", Ava. Actually, "avatars", that is, people who penetrate into the consciousness of humanoids, are almost invisible here (except for Sally and Quaritch, who uploaded their memory into the brain of the Na'vi. Now this is a story exclusively about the confrontation between people and natives, and there are many times more "blue ones" on the screen than before. And people look completely foreign and alien. That's how Avatar turned into a classic Western.
What's wrong with the third Avatar
The further you go, the more perfect Cameron's films look. But the viewers themselves have become stricter. It's one thing when you watch something completely unimaginable, new, in an unusual performance, with your mouth open, it's another when you've already seen it twice. When three-meter-tall talking cats don't surprise anyone.
The viewer began to follow the plot. He is already waiting for emotions and acting, but neither the plot nor emotions were the strong point of this attraction. As a result, people are somewhat reluctant to continue paying for vivid impressions, epic flights and famously staged battles of strange but familiar, almost native creatures.
And the impressions for the money spent, especially if it's IMAX, the audience seems to get to the fullest. The volcanic landscapes look amazing. The flights and action scenes are masterfully staged. Cameron knows how to shoot and edit in such a way that it doesn't look at all like a production or a set of disparate shots. But why does it feel like you're watching a movie you've already seen? Well, or at least they presented you with a slightly expanded version of it?
This feeling divided the audience and the critics who had already watched the film. Those who were waiting for something completely new were cruelly disappointed, and those who dreamed of returning to the familiar world of Pandora and seeing "something new" got their way. The BBC reviewer gave the film an unheard-of one star for "the rare nonsense in every frame and the lack of a coherent narrative," and there are 100-point reviews for "revealing an amazing world."
Yes, now we're paying attention to things that hadn't occurred to us before. Due to the growing degree of realism and the "familiarity" of the avatars' appearance, their barely concealed nudity catches the eye, while without any hint of sexuality or pronounced sexual characteristics.
The convention goes away, and suddenly you see that almost all the characters on the screen are without pants, and the blue "girls" are also almost bare—chested: the sparse rags covering their noses seem to have become even smaller. The love scene between the avatar and the native woman looks extremely awkward, like a strange "In the animal world". It's hard to imagine all this if the film was about people, especially today. And even with an abundance of biblical quotations and parallels here and there. As a result, Sally's family runs among forests, swamps and fire, flies and swims for three hours for the final battle, which nevertheless suspends a powerful "open ending", showing that everything we just saw was just a prelude to the next episode.
All this is strangely at odds with the perfectionism of the author of Avatar. The actors talk about Cameron's comical meticulousness, who tried his best to achieve realism in the details of an animated fantasy film about a fictional world. Jack Champion, who played Spider, recalled that a real rotting swamp was set up in the studio's pool, through which the characters wade through the plot. The young actors, overcoming the incredible stench, filmed for several days among the rotting algae. The same approach remained in the water scenes, of which there are many: everyone was really diving, swimming and holding their breath in motion capture costumes. Zoe Saldana got it too: in order to prepare for the role in the third part, she, along with choreographers, mastered the "martial dances" of different nations for years. It's a pity that this naturalism is not felt in the film anyway.: We know it's all fake anyway. And we will not appreciate the suffering of the artists.
Some technical "achievements" of the first and second "Avatar", which Cameron clings to by inertia, in 2025, like the actor Worthington, the star of the 2010s, look like an anachronism. The fashion for 3D has passed, and three-dimensional cinema is rather a rarity. And the main thing is that in the third "Avatar" this 3D is not dramatized in any way, it might well not be. HFR format (high frame rate) It also failed because of the feeling of a soap opera or a sports broadcast on the screen. But for some reason, Cameron is sure that this is important to the audience, and even added TrueCut technology, which combats the disadvantages of HFR by speeding up individual frames or objects. Instead of these efforts, he could have rewritten the dialogues once again.
But Cameron believes in his brainchild. The director calls "Fire and Ashes" the culmination of his saga, which, according to the idea, should have five parts. And the battle that awaits us in the third Avatar is still the final battle, which is the coolest thing planned. However, in this case, it is not entirely clear why wait and watch the remaining episodes in the coming years.
Speaking of element parts, after air, water, and fire, someone mentions wind as the central theme of the fourth Avatar. And it's not so surprising to speculate that the avatars in the next films will end up on Earth. But will the viewer want to get out of Pandora if he has already seen the Earth in the movies a million times? Then what will be the uniqueness of the quadriquel?
At the same time, there are still no fewer adherents of the series. Avatar can be compared to the large-scale and perfectly built "temple of cinema", which will remain James Cameron's greatest legacy. Now the main thing is to ensure that the parishioners do not skip.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
