“Avatar: Fire and Ash” mainly walks on water

Do you have all this? GOOD. “Avatar: Fire and Ash” is many things: a lengthy demo for the latest sophistications in performance capture technology, for which we can credit the ever-more realistic quality of the Na’vi characters, and the third chapter of a blockbuster mega-franchise that, if Cameron had his way, an unlimited budget and perhaps a bundle of memories and a Na’vi body himself, would stretch into infinity. But the film is also, perhaps above all, a ridiculously complicated maelstrom of transmigrating souls, cross-species bloodlines, and unholy alliances. Gone are the simpler days of the first “Avatar,” an anti-imperialist war movie whose moral lines were as sharp as Jake’s Marines do.

Today, human conquest seems to be a more insidious and complex thing. This goes beyond the hostile presence of occupying military forces, commanded by General Ardmore (Edie Falco), who are easily eliminated, in the film’s ocean battle sequences, with a powerful wave of Cameron’s digital wand. “Fire and Ash” is a largely unnerving experience, but, like its predecessors, it knows how to make us scream for the blood of our own species. On the director’s orders, deadly squid-like monsters attack Ardmore’s ships out of nowhere, and darkly eloquent sea creatures known as Tulkun abruptly shift into killer whale mode. However, it is much more difficult to let go of the deep emotional, spiritual, and cellular connections that have developed between the human and Na’vi worlds. Witness the scene in which Kiri, trying to save Spider from toxic asphyxiation, ties his fate to Pandora’s in a way that foreshadows further human encroachments to come. In short, the series has become one long parable of intragalactic interbreeding – a concept that Cameron pushes, in one initially deranged sequence, to Old Testament levels of calculation.

More than once, during a deadly confrontation, Jake tells Quaritch to open his yellow Na’vi eyes, look beyond their petty squabbles, and see how vast and beautiful the world around him is. But “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” for all its heady complications, is a far less transporting experience than its two predecessors, although, at three hours and fifteen minutes, it is certainly more expansive. What it lacks is a feeling of passage, of progression from one world to another, which even the cinema of non-stop sensations needs. Cameron (usually) knows this as well as anyone. That’s why the first “Avatar” introduced us, with a daringly immersive application of 3D, to what seemed like a startling new plane of existence: Our first glimpse of the Pandoran wilderness, with Jake wandering awkwardly on his new Na’vi legs, evoked nothing more than Dorothy’s first Technicolor glimpse of Munchkinland in “The Wizard of Oz” (1939), famously the director’s favorite film. “The Way of Water,” while unable to match the impact of the first “Avatar,” cleverly took us scuba diving, in the great Cameronian tradition of “The Abyss” (1989) and “Titanic” (1997). Talk about reef madness: the depths were beautifully enveloping and the fish were a trippy hoot.

“Fire and Ash,” on the other hand, has no new worlds to conquer. There are, of course, some eye candy, like a fleet of Na’vi hot air balloons, each equipped with a bulbous, translucent envelope and a mass of trailing jellyfish tentacles. There’s also Varang (Oona Chaplin), the cold-blooded leader of the Mangkwan, an ebullient and seductive spectacle in its own right. The rest walks and retreads the water. An interminable sequence of detention, escape and pursuit takes place within the humans’ heavily fortified compound, and while the artificial ugliness is part of the problem – what a depressing contrast to the beautifully verdant visions of the jungle, luminescent flora and fauna of the Na’vi world! – it is also, in this case, a trigger and perhaps a manifestation of boredom.

Presumably Cameron has a long-term destination in mind, but here, falling back on the usual platitude of his characterizations and the self-admiring misery of his dialogue (“Smile, bitches!” is what passes for a reprimand), he almost seems to be stalling for time. Will the next films planned in the cycle offer a chance for redemption? With each release, it becomes more and more clear that Jake is, in fact, an avatar of Cameron himself, who went fully Na’vi long ago and may never return – and, stuck as he is, can only hope to convert the willing public to the cause. He devoted years of his life to the “Avatar” project and, at seventy-one, he continues his journey, like a filmmaker possessed or simply trapped. Pandora locked him up. ♦