I liked Avatar: Fire and Ash a lot — and that has less to do with a newfound affection for the Avatar franchise and more with something increasingly rare: the unmistakable feeling of a film conceived for theaters. In 3D and IMAX, Fire and Ash doesn’t merely work — it asserts itself. There’s physical impact, scale, and a sense of event that stands in sharp contrast to the visual flattening that has overtaken the industry over the past five years. Cameron still believes in the dark room as language, and it shows.

Unsurprisingly, the film topped the US and Canadian box office on opening weekend with $88 million and has already reached around $345 million worldwide. That’s below The Way of Water’s debut, but Avatar has never been about explosive openings. It’s about longevity. Both previous films held the top spot for weeks, and Fire and Ash is likely to follow the same slow-burn trajectory.

That said, I’ve never been — and remain — a fan of the Avatar franchise or the world of Pandora. Its environmental message is important, even urgent, but it’s neither new nor especially imaginative. Cameron returns to the same moral framework: human greed, planetary destruction, and children as the future. All valid — all familiar.

There’s also a structural issue Cameron seems unwilling to fix: these films are too long. At over three hours, Fire and Ash strains patience and focus, especially as it over-explains a world we already know. The harsher critics are right in noting that, as the runtime stretches on, the film never lets you forget you’re watching a screen. The promise of total immersion gives way to fatigue.

Still, it would be unfair to ignore what works. The thematic focus on grief is stronger here. Loss, silence, and mourning shape Neytiri, Jake, and their family, lending the film a heavier emotional weight. The issue is narrative overload: political conflicts, internal disputes, new clans, old enemies, new villains — not all of it has room to breathe.

Yes, it’s formulaic. But we’re talking about giant blue avatars. This isn’t a universe built for radical reinvention without breaking its internal logic. Predictability is part of the contract.

Even so, I disagree with claims that nothing new is happening. There’s a more intriguing gray zone emerging: unstable alliances, antagonists temporarily aligning with heroes, and less binary moral choices. There’s also a major shift in the game — the real possibility of humans inhabiting Pandora without oxygen masks, turning a hostile planet into a viable home. That changes everything.

Cameron also leaves villains at large (no, the general doesn’t die — that’s my bet), reinforcing the sense that Fire and Ash is less a conclusion than a transitional chapter. Cameron himself has hinted at uncertainty about continuing, while acknowledging that audience interest — and box office returns — may decide Pandora’s future.

In the end, Avatar: Fire and Ash may confirm what part of the criticism suggests — that the franchise has lost the revolutionary spark of 2009. But it also proves something equally important: cinema can still be spectacle, scale, sensory impact, and collective experience. Even when narrative imagination repeats itself, Cameron keeps reminding us why some films simply don’t belong on the couch.