Pop Culture Happy Hour - Avatar: Fire And Ash and What’s Making Us Happy

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

In Avatar: Fire and Ash, James Cameron’s saga continues in a visually stunning movie full of epic battles, uneasy alliances, human assimilation, and debates with whales. The film follows the Na’vi (aka blue guys) as they’re chased by a human military that seeks both resources and revenge. The cast includes Sigourney Weaver, Zoe Saldaña, and Sam Worthington. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

James Cameron's Avatar series has produced some of the most expensive and lucrative films ever made. Set on a faraway moon, trillions of miles from Earth, the movies tell ambitious stories about a clan who must fend off a human military invasion. In Avatar Fire and Ash, the story continues in a visually stunning, nearly three and a half hour movie full of epic battles, uneasy alliances, human assimilation, and debates with whales. I'm Stephen Thompson. Joining me today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour is freelance music and culture journalist Rihanna Cruz. Hi, Rihanna. Hey, Stephen. Also with us is writer Chris Klimmik.

Hey, Chris. Yes, Stephen. I've asked you repeatedly to introduce me by the title I have earned Taruk Maktou. Maybe next time. Have you been learning Navi just for this conversation? Papyrus subtitles beneath my face say yes. Yes, I have. All right.

It took more than a decade for director and co-writer James Cameron to make a sequel to his audacious special effects blockbuster avatar, but the weight paid off handsomely with Avatar the Way of Water a few years ago. The film grossed billions of dollars worldwide and was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. Now Cameron returns with another chapter called Avatar Fire and Ash, in which the Navi, they're the Blue Guys, are chased by a human military that seeks both resources and revenge on the Navi. They're especially interested in the one with the very non-navi named Jake Sully, played by Sam Worthington. He's a former human Marine who switched sides and bodies in the first film.

In Avatar, Fire and Ash, the human military is still largely personified by Colonel Miles Quorich, played by Stephen Lang. You want to spread your fire across the world? Yeah. I'll give you guns. I'll give you comms. RPGs. Well, that's strong magic.

Command from a distance, strike like lightning. The military teams up with a clan, led by the fearsome Varang, played by Una Chaplin. Suffice it to say that summing up the plot beyond that would take a very long time, and besides what really stands out here is the spectacle of it all. The visuals, the hyper-realistic alien realms, the stunning water effects, and the many, many, many, many battles. Avatar, Fire, and Ash is in theaters now, though I think I can speak for James Cameron, when I say that the experience would lose nothing if you wait and watch it later on your phone.

Rihanna Cruz, I'm going to start with you. What did you think of the latest installment? All right. I was very excited to plug into the tree of AWA for this one, Fire and Ash. You know the lore. You're already one step ahead. I'm locked in, baby. I'm an avatar head.

You know, I spoke on the episode that we did on Way of Water, the three of us, I think, exactly. That's right. We're reconvening the council. Absolutely for Pop Culture Happy Hour. and, you know, I said that I walked out of the way of water, and I was upset that I left Pandora. And since then, I've been kind of itching to visit my friends again, as I call them. My friend's Paiacon, my friends Lwak, et cetera, et cetera.

No, but here's the thing. I know these movies are flawed. I know these movies have their issues. I know that there are plot details that you could see from a mile away. I know the metaphors are clumsy. I know that certain characters, you don't really know what to do with them, namely Spider, right? But the thing is that I don't really care, frankly. I need theatrical experiences, especially in this day and age.

Stephen, you mentioned the word spectacle, and that's what I came away from Fire and Ash with, is that, you know, I know that the plot isn't the best. I know that the character motivations are one-dimensional. But I'm really there to see what James Cameron can do with the cinematic medium. I'm there to see the aforementioned battles. I'm there to see what he does with the space of Pandora. And in that, I really was satisfied. I mean, I left Fire and Ash thinking that it was a great addition to the franchise.

Wave Water has become one of my favorite movies over the past few years, frankly. And this did not reach those heights for me, but still, was a pretty solid entry into the franchise, and I will be going back and seeing it, hashtag, see it five times, as me and the avatar lovers have come up with. So I enjoyed it. So that's why those movies have made $8 billion. There is a campaign for Avatar, Fire, and Ash.

That's, like, almost in jest. That's, like, hashtag see it five times. This is some Taylor Swift, Stan culture, buy 25 copies of The Life of a Showgirl to help it on the charts, energy. I know. I don't ride for any other franchise like this. Like, I'm not a franchise lover Avatar. I'm like, there's a hint of irony to it, and that's why I love it. Like, it's so sincere that I really dig it. Okay. How about you, Chris? Boy, I wish I could give this more of a full-throated endorsement than I'm going to. Certainly, I think my sort of failure to be as jazzed by this as I

have by prior installments of Avatar and prior James Cameron movies is maybe down to the release strategy because this is not a part three. This is like part two, part two, you know. There were 13 years that elapsed in the real world between Avatar and Avatar the way of water. Roughly the same amount of time has passed in the story, you know, discounting the fact that like what's a year on Pandora? It's a part of a different solar system. Who knows? But I mean, they don't have kids in the first movie. Jake and Natiri have four kids, I think, when the way of water opened. So I mean, the story has progressed literally a generation. There's enough expansion of the story. and just, you know, physical production value expansion of the world.

We get the whole undersea culture, the sentient talking whales, pyacan, and all that stuff. And the last one, that it was worth the weight, you know, in the same way that, like, the empire strikes back. So exponentially expanded the world of Star Wars and felt so rewarding and mysterious for that reason. Way of Water, you know, kind of paid off on that long delay. And I think, like, had this come out maybe a year after Way of Water, the way that Wicked just did, I might have been a little more responsive. to it, but I mean, after a three-year gap, that's just all post-production, I'm sure this is the most complicated, you know, post that any movie has ever had, you do expect more than just like, and here's the rest of what you were just watching. It doesn't expand, it doesn't, you know, iterate in the way

that the gap between one and two did it. It just feels a little bit like more of the same. And the quality of that more of the same is so high. You know, I feel a little ungrateful saying this, But, yeah, I mean, certainly if you care at all about the big screen experience, you got to go. You got to go. And I'll be going back a couple more times. I, you know, what's my life worth? I got another six and a half hours for Jim Cameron. Yeah, I wish I could be more enthused.

I think it's really important when you're watching a film like this. Like, there are very few movies that look this technically advanced, if any, right? Like, these are stunning to look at. There are, like, visual set pieces in this film that, are just absolutely remarkable. And it really is worth taking a moment to just kind of set aside the critical piece of your mind that's maybe not into the storytelling and just take a moment to kind of revel in how beautiful this spectacle looks, because it is gorgeous. Where I really struggled with this movie was in the pacing and in the length. And I know that's such a lazy

critique to be like, it's too long. You know, you spent $400 million in how many years. I was too entertained. I was too entertained. Give me less movie. But there are points in this movie. There's one point, kind of late in the film, where I admit, I kind of peeked at my phone to see what time it was. There was 45 minutes left. And I was like, all right, we're going to bring this baby in for a landing with the most lavish battle of the mall.

And it's going to set us up for the fourth film and all that. And then they stop for a debate with the whales. I just was like, this is too much movie. You know how some TV creators will be like, I don't think of my TV show as a TV show. I think of it as an eight-hour movie. This feels like five episodes of a very big budget Avatar TV show strung back to back to back to back to back. I felt like it felt significantly longer than three hours and 17 minutes, which really takes some doing. There's kind of lore piled on top of lore, piled on top of lore, kind of culminating in what I

I found to be a really actually very anticlimactic final battle. I think that the visual gifts of this team are unparalleled. The risk in that in the long term, and something that I kind of want to get to in our next kind of round of discussion here, particularly from Rihanna, is like when your movie is so focused on being the state of the art, technologically speaking, the passage of time tends to dull the effect of that, as everybody else catches up. When I watched the original avatar, you know, in the run-up to the way of water three years ago,

I was really taken aback by how much it looked like a video game. And I wonder if the effects of these films is going to get dulled as everybody catches up. Because as you kind of alluded to, Rihanna, there are faults and flaws in the storytelling, in the characterizations. The whole plot kind of centers on this white savior narrative. narrative that we've seen play out a million times. Like, the dialogue is a little video gamey. Are these going to age well?

I mean, that's a great question. And I don't really think so. I think I'm going to come down and say that I'm not sure. Because the flaws with these movies have always been the scripts. You know, I remember, like, first one, the classic, you know, meme of unobtainium being the thing that they can't obtain. Like, these things permeate over the course of the franchise. I don't know if they'll age well.

I could say because I watch Way of Water once every like three months at this point, I've spent a lot of hours of my life in Pandora and I'm very happy to. Way of Water is aged perfectly, frankly. I don't think the industry is caught up yet. I agree. I think one day we'll look back on these movies and the spectacle won't be there and then we can evaluate them perhaps more effectively, perhaps more effectively, perhaps more appropriately, but I think we don't really get epic capital E movies a lot these days. And I think

that's really what floors me. There's a lot of narrative threads that like I kind of just throw out the window. You know, they kind of go to the back of my mind. Every time Spider is on screen, I know I keep bringing him up. Like, Spider is the human son of Colonel Quorich. Yes. Who has sort of become assimilated into the Navi, like, requires the help of like, requires the help of like a breathing apparatus to even survive on this planet. And his given name is Miles and his nickname is Spider. And then they give him another nickname, which is Monkey Boy, which if your name is already Spider, just seems like rude.

You know, that's a hat on a hat on a hat. Just his mere character kind of gives me the ick, so to speak. It's not the performance too, though, a little. Yeah. I mean, dramatically expanding his screen time from the way of water was not an asset to this film, in my opinion. Well, that's like the one flaw that I have with this movie is that, like, I think it spends a little bit too much time on the places that it, doesn't need to spend time.

I'm totally for the Tulcun Tribal Council, Stephen. I thought that was one of my favorite scenes. I don't know what you're talking about. They're arguing with whales. It's two and a half hours into the movie. You know, I remember that like when they introduced the idea that the whales are going to talk in the last one and Pia Khan's first line, subtitled in papyruses, it's too painful. I was like, yes, we're doing this.

We're subtitling the whales, baby. I will say in defense of the whales, there is at least a full-blown action payoff to the whales in this film that I did enjoy. Like the whaling guy who we all cheered when he got his arm severed by a vengeful Moby Dick in the last movie. Like he's back with just a little prosthetic arm. Like, you know, that's maybe a metaphor for some of my issues with this movie. It does kind of feel like we're just playing all the hits from the last one. Yeah.

On the playing the hits part, I think that's why I come down so positively about this movie is because it's essentially. way of water too, right? Like, it's way of water 1.5 or whatever you want to call it. Like, it fills the same needs as the last one. And there's even some scenes in fire and ash that are kind of bar for bar exact scenes from way of water. Like, there's a scene where, like, spider is taken by the humans. He's held in like a cell in the lab or whatever you want to call it. And Quorich comes in in Navi form has basically the same conversation with him that they have in the last movie. He gives him his dog tag again.

Again. Like, you did that, dad? Right. He's like, I'm your father. Spiders, like, you're not my dad. They have a dog tag exchange. Like, same exact conversation. It felt like something that maybe wasn't essential to this movie being three hours and

17 minutes long. See, you keep bringing up the runtime, Stephen. But, like, I am all for the runtime personally. I am too. I think Avatar movies kind of like serves a balm of like the age we live in, you know, because like we live in an era of like attention grabbing slop between like TikTok, Netflix originals, whatever. I love the Avatar movies because they're so devoted to the craft of filmmaking and that's

like not something you really see anymore. It's a movie that's designed to immerse you in a world. And that could probably equate to the video game equalities, but that's what I love about it. It feels very immersive and it feels like I'm making an active choice to go to Pandora and participate in a film, which I do often. You know, I've seen over a hundred movies in theaters this year, but it really compels me and it really draws me in a way that other movies don't because it's so full-throatedly for the art of filmmaking and the art of plant and payoff, even though it might not seem like it, there's threads in fire and ash that I noticed

being planted in way of water that are picked up here and expanded on. I kind of just see them as a whole saga. It reminds me of the Planet of the Apes movies, the Matt Reeves' Planet of the Apes franchise. Which does share a set of screenwriters, I think. Oh, it does it? Yeah. They were in the writer's room that Cameron assembled for this, which kind of speaks to some of my issues here. Cameron had a writer's room.

You know, he wasn't writing all of these solo. So there was certainly ample time and talent on board to iron out some of these issues. I mean, some of this is just the insoluble problem that, like, nothing I experience in my middle-aged life will ever be as cool as, you know, seeing Terminator 2 was at the age I was when Terminator 2 came out. But Cameron was once, like, before he was the king of the world, you know, he was the king of economy, the king of stretching a buck. And art really does thrive on restriction, right? I mean, he came out of the Roger Corman workshop, right, where everything was dirt cheap. And if you weren't in this scene acting, you were moving lights or painting the set for the next scene where there was this real DIY aesthetic.

And I mean, that does carry through in the sense that Cameron is still famously the game. guy who can do every job on a movie set, which I'm sure is one of the qualities that makes him such a joy to work for. But, yeah, but I mean, I think a little restriction, you know, someone to tell him no could only help him at this point. Yeah, I think someone to pare down this script would have helped this movie. But while we're speaking in defense of James Cameron here, I also just want to point out how refreshing it is.

As many, like, kind of issues as I've had with these films over the years, we sometimes lament, you know how many blockbuster movies are built around old IP. I mean, you mentioned Planet of the apes. So many of these franchises are really remakes and rehashes, reboots, just kind of recycling old intellectual property. And this is an original story. As many echoes as it has of other stories, this is its own lore. It has its own visual stamp. I give him credit for filmmaking ambition. I give him credit for, frankly, this movie looks like it cost $400 million. Sure. Sometimes you see movies and you see that the budget is $200, $250 million, and you're like, where did that money go?

That is not the case here. It looks that expensive. And so I still find myself kind of stuck on these movies in admiring them, admiring the technical craft of them. You know, being able to get swept up in the visual spectacle, but some of the emotional beats and the film is really trying to hit a lot of emotional beats. For whatever reason, those emotional beats just don't hit me as hard as they might in a different franchise. That's interesting. I felt like a lot of the emotional beats landed for me personally, but I was seeing it as kind of this melodrama soap opera, but maybe isn't the intent, right? Like, I think maybe James Cameron

is seeing it as more of like a prestige drama, but I was watching the conversations that Jake was having with Naitiri about like the race of their children as like tea spilling right like I was like oh like you're having the mixed race conversation like I'm tapped in you know and I was doing that a lot in this movie where I was kind of taking the conversations that they were having stripping away the weight that the movie is giving to it and being like oh like you guys are having a link up here like and I'm listening to the link up like when Quorich is talking to the fire batty as I like to call her I was like oh like this is like El Toxico la Toxica.

Like, we're getting into it. And I think that's what makes the movies fun for me is that I'm watching these. And I'm sitting there with my popcorn being like, there's drama here. You know, I'm being like spoon-fed drama. And usually I don't really like when movies force feed me, me emotion. But the drama here works for me personally. All right. Well, I think it's safe to say that wherever we came down on the movie, we all hugely admire the

spectacle of it all. We want to know what you think about. Avatar, Fire, and Ash. Find us on Facebook at Facebook.com slash PCHH. And on Letterboxed at letterboxed.com slash NPR Pop Culture. We will have a link in our episode description. Up next, what is making us happy this week? Now it's time for our favorite segment of this week and every week.

What's making us happy this week? Rihanna Cruz, I'm going to start with you. What's making you happy this week, buddy? So we talked about a movie filled with spectacle and high budget antics. I'm pairing it back for my what's making me happy. I picked up a DVD the other week, just finally watched it. Where the Heart is from 2000, directed by Matt Williams. It's a Natalie Portman movie in which she is pregnant and lives in a Walmart and has to give birth in the Walmart in Oklahoma.

Her boyfriend abandons her roadside. And she's in this town in Oklahoma and she's meeting all of these quirky characters. Everybody has fun names. You know, Natalie's name in this movie is Novali Nation. Stalker Channing plays a character named Sister Husband and she kind of finds her way around the town there's a lot of drama, there's a tornado,

this, that, and the third happens. It kind of plays out like a stage play where it ended. The credits rolled, I started clapping because I felt like I lived a journey in my living room. But it's really great. Ashley Judd is in it.

She's amazing. Joan Cusack, like a very well-rounded cast all playing these really interesting Southern characters. I had not heard anything about this movie anywhere. My partner was like, I didn't even see this on cable at any point in time. But I recommend it.

Where the Heart is from 2000 starring Natalie Portman. If Natalie Portman giving birth in a Walmart sounds interesting to you, check it out. That is where the heart is. You can find it available to rent online. Oh, amazing. So I went through all that work for nothing. Amazing. Nothing wrong with owning physical media.

And I have a copy of it on Betamax right here. All right. Thank you, Rihanna Cruz. Chris Clemick, what's making you happy this week? Well, on the subject of bifurcated epic, Stephen, I made a trip last weekend up to your backyard, the AFI Silver Theater in Glorious Silver Spring, Maryland to see what I am calling Kill Bill, bigger, longer, and so, so many cuts. The film has actually been released under the title, Kill Bill, the Whole Bloody Affair. This is the restoration to a single five-hour endurathon of the two films initially released in 2003 and 2004.

directed by Quentin Tarantino, you know, and we spent a lot of time on whether there's enough story in these latter two Avatar movies to warrant the six and a half hour investment. Kill Bill is just a revenge story with Uma Thurman playing a former member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad who's out to... Talk about so many battles. Even Stephen with the man who killed her wedding party and so she thinks killed her unborn child and really seeing this as a single unbroken experience, although there is a 15-minute intermission included in the presentation just does make it richer, more thrilling, more everything.

I was particularly moved since we talked about the way the pacing slows down towards the end of fire and ash. It was like, again, as you said, after some of the most incredible martial arts fights you have ever seen in any movie, when we finally get to the confrontation with the villain David Caradine, it unfolds just as a conversation and then a very quick, pithy battle, Just when you feel like your endurance truly is as an end, I cannot handle another 20-minute melee. It just knows exactly how to put a powerful bit of punctuation on the end of this experience. This is in general release, but if you are lucky enough to live next to one of the venues that is showing it in 35 or 70-millimeter film, that is definitely the way to do it.

So it's Kill Bill, the whole bloody affair. It made me very happy. Thank you so much, Chris Klymick. So what is making me happy this week, an album that has me, absolutely obsessed. It's called The Boy Who Played the Harp. It's by the London rapper Dave. My brilliant colleague Sheldon Pierce

has been shouting from the rooftops about this record for months. I only recently got around to actually heeding his very, very smart advice. This record is stunning. It's lavishly produced. It's deftly performed, deeply introspective, reflective, insightful. You can get a sense

of that in just a few seconds from the album's title track. In 1960, at five to fight for the rights of my people, and laid out my life on the line so my grandkids could live a life that's peaceful. Would I be on that? Would I be front line? That's what I'm thinking. If I was alive in a 1912 and the Titanic and it was sinking, who am I saving?

Am I fighting women and children? Or am I waiting? I wonder, what would I do in the next generation? There are impeccably chosen guests kind of scattered throughout this record that speak to its overall aesthetic, people like James Blake, Thames, Jim Legacy. But the centerpiece is Dave and his perse. suit of something bigger and braver than himself. It's a gorgeous, haunted searching record that, for me anyway, is filling out 2025's remaining days with rich and rewarding musical discovery. That is Dave and his fantastic new album, The Boy Who Played the Harp. That is what is making

me happy this week. If you want links for what we recommended, plus some more recommendations, sign up for our newsletter at npr.org slash pop culture newsletter. That brings us to the end of our show, Rihanna Cruz, Chris Klymick. Thanks so much for being here. Happy to be here. I see you, Stephen. Blessings of AWAP be upon you, Steve. This episode was produced by Carly Rubin, Kayla Latimore, and Mike Katzif, and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello, Come In, provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

I'm Stephen Thompson, and we will see you all next week.