On Monday morning, I paid a visit to Disney’s shiny new New York City campus, the megalomaniacally named Robert A. Iger Building. The studio was showing members of the press the trailer for Avatar: Fire and Ash, formerly subtitled The Seed Bearer (never forget), the third installment in Jimmy Cameron’s multi-decade argument for motion-capture technology. “Guessing you’re here for the same reason I am?” one guy asked another in the lobby. “Yeah, but I’m not sure if I’m allowed to say what it is.” Then he turned to the front-desk guy and immediately said, “Here for the Avatar trailer?” Our handler ushered us through turnstiles and told us they would prefer if we didn’t actually write about the trailer, which made me confused as to why I had hauled ass to go see the thing physically in person, but she clarified we could “react on social media!” I think having a comments section technically makes Vulture a type of social media? So here is what I witnessed in the trailer for the third Avatar movie, in language as vague as possible, so I don’t get sent to the Robert A. Iger Penitentiary Building. Because as Kate Winslet says in the Avatar: Fire and Ash trailer, “If there’s something you can do, then you must do it.” Damn it, I’ve given away too much already!
Firstly, and this isn’t any kind of a spoiler, these movies continue to be the only thing since Coraline that justify the use of theatrical 3-D. Pandora’s CG landscapes look crisp and vibrant in the perfect-dark of the screening room. The first two movies tackled the trees and the seas of this bioluminescent planet, but Fire and Ash shows the Sully clan taking to the skies on big sky-boats pulled by large, flying, translucent creatures resembling fat-bellied manta rays. We also see the big volcano and burnt-out wastelands where the Fire Nation lives, which is concerning, because you can’t introduce the concept of elementally bound societies and make the antagonists firebenders and call your whole damn series Avatar and pretend like it’s no coincidence. But Jimmy did, I guess!
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The fire guys look awesomely scary; they’re ashen and gaunt and wear intimidating face paint and they know how to use military flamethrowers and they say things like “Your goddess has no dominion here,” something I will start quoting all the time. Based on the trailer, it looks like Quaritch has embedded himself in their society, which would explain the flamethrower, and which will surely cause drama with Spider, his biological son who has gone Tarzan with the Sullys. We also glimpse some Sully marital unrest, with Jake yelling at Neytiri, “You cannot live like this, baby! In hate!” I don’t know why it makes me laugh to see Na’vi call each other “baby,” but it does.
This movie is going to be full of huge battle set pieces, both inter-tribally and against the humans with all of their warships and tanks. But I know what you’re really wondering: Are there tulkun in this? And the answer is yes, there’s a close-up of a whalelike tulkun’s eye. You’ll most likely be able to legally watch the trailer yourself any day now. Kìyevame!
