There is plenty to look forward to in terms of big 2025 releases, with one of the biggest movies being Avatar: Fire and Ash. The third film in the series is set for release on December 19, 2025, only three years after Avatar: The Way of Water. While the first film in the series centered on Jake’s (Sam Worthington) growth and transition into a Na’vi, the second film featured a significant time jump (about as long as it took for the sequel to get made) that showcases Jake Sully’s family that he created with Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña).
The end of Avatar: The Way of Water featured a devastating loss for the Sully family when Jake and Neytiri’s oldest son, Neteyam, was shot and killed in the final battle of the film. In an interview with Empire Magazine, James Cameron
explained that grief— something that the director doesn’t believe Hollywood fully explores— will play a role in the Sully family’s development in Avatar: Fire and Ash, with the director even speaking about the opening voiceover of the film:
“The fire of hate gives way to the ash of grief. I think what commercial Hollywood doesn’t do well is deal with grief the way human beings really deal with it. You know, characters get killed off, and then in the next movie everybody’s happy again. I’ve lost a lot of people, friends and family members, over the last six or eight years, and it doesn’t work that way.”
‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ Will Have Both Sci-Fi Spectacle & Emotional Resonance
Cameron’s comments about the way some films gloss over grief and loss ring true for most of the bigger blockbuster films made today. While there are plenty of independent dramas and smaller-scale films that accurately portray realistic emotions due to loss, it’s refreshing and exciting to see an influential filmmaker like James Cameron convey real complex emotions through the lens of a three-hour sci-fi epic. Cameron would go on to dismiss other tropes associated with tragic deaths in movies while bringing it back to how Avatar: Fire and Ash and the rest of the film series would show the family dealing with their losses as naturally as possible:
“It also doesn’t make you so mad that you’re going to become an army of one and gun up and kill all those m***********s, which is another Hollywood trope. It makes you just kind of depressed and f****d up. I’m not saying our movie’s depressed and f****d up, I’m just saying that I think we deal with that part of life quite honestly. The [Sullys] journey continues in a very naturalistic, novelistic way. I’ve sort of thought of this next cycle, meaning 3, 4 and 5, as how they continue to process the things that happen to them. Now, of course, they’re not human, but this is a movie for us, by us, right? Science-fiction is always just a big mirror of the human condition.”
Related
James Cameron Reveals a Very Familiar Runtime for ‘Avatar 3’
The legendary director gave an exciting update about how long ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ will be.
Amidst all the incredible action and visual effects, Cameron’s brilliant characterization of Jake and his family is a significant reason why the Avatar film series has worked so well up to this point. The director’s incorporation of the Na’vi, known as the Ash people, with the themes of grief and loss, will hopefully make the third Avatar film as engaging and exciting as the previous two movies. It’s also reassuring to know that Cameron isn’t overlooking the profound loss the characters faced at the end of the second movie, with Avatar: Fire and Ash justifying its existence and giving fans more to look forward to thematically in future sequels.
- Release Date
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December 18, 2024
