“Avatar Fire and Ash” (2025) is probably the best technical effort in vfx done up to date.
I’ve been all my life fan of James Cameron. “Terminator 1” fried my mind in 1984 and still is one of my favourite films. Being a little kid I saw it on VHS at my parents’ friends’ house during a visit. I don’t remember anything else, but the images from the film stayed in my head forever. The name James Cameron became as familiar to me as Steven Spielberg use to be in the eighties.
A few years later, as a teenager, I went to the premiere of “T2” (1991). It was incredible. It took up two theaters in multiple-screen cinema in my local mall, which was totally unusual on that time. I remember that there were even people sitting on the floor to watch it. I didn’t like T2 as much as the first one, but it certainly marked a turning point and, to a certain extent, surpassed Spielberg. For me, Cameron took over in the 90s from the VFX-based cinema created by Spielberg, a cinema where you could see incredible things, but always backed up by an interesting story. These were the days of the “optical effects”, you didn´t have any idea about how was done all that stuff and the tv making off clips were like magic to me.
Cameron returned to full capacity with “Titanic” (1997). I thought this one surpassed the previous ones. It also broke box office records and created something that had never been done before. Blue lighting, underwater sequences and vfx was his landmark.
When I went to see “Avatar 1” (2009), I realized that I had spent half my life going to the movies to see James Cameron films. What a sucesfull career! Decade after decade.
I thought “Avatar 1” was a very good film, although I was skeptical of realistic CG films. The polarized glasses 3d was superb.
When “Avatar 2” (2022)came out, I thought it went even further. 100% James Cameron in every way, unbeatable.
I have found today “Avatar 3” technically top noch. So much so that I felt overwhelmed. But, this time, I don’t think the story is up to par. The dialogue is terrible silly, and the characters have been flattened by a steamroller. Oona Chaplin has a very strong presence in the film and stands out above everyone else, who seem a little tired already. Maybe I’ve gotten older and it doesn’t appeal to me anymore. At this point I feel a little like “too much cofee man”. I won’t revisit the previous Avatar films to preserve the good memories I have. And I don’t think I’ll see the fourth, fifth, or subsequent films, because I think the subject matter has been exhausted. At times, the film feels like a TV movie, especially in some “live action” parts that take place inside the base.
On the tech and artistical: my congratulations to all the artists who worked on the film.
