Avatar Fire and Ash review: Looks good, but achingly dull story with characters you don’t care to remember

James Cameron’s least favourite piece of criticism would probably be if someone pointed out that the Avatar movies are too long.

He would call that boring, and he has expressed exasperation at such judgements.

He wouldn’t be wrong. It is boring to wag your finger at a lengthy movie and go, “but it’s too long”. It’s hardly constructive.

And yet. The construction is the problem. Avatar: Fire and Ash, the third instalment in Cameron’s extravagant franchise, comes in at three hours and 15 minutes, and it is so tediously protracted.

You’ll feel every dragged-out minute, as if the clock has stopped and you’re trapped in this block of time that will never end, your own personal Groundhog Day of repetitive action set-pieces and non-consequential story beats pretending to have emotional resonance.

The Avatar films occupy an interesting space in our culture. Because they are financial colossuses with a combined box office of $US5.2 billion, they make for easy ridicule, examples of mass appeal, pedestrian blockbuster taste that discerning cinephiles poo-poo.

But they’re also movies you want to like because, if nothing else, they are so impeccably made with the utmost commitment to cinematic craft. You don’t even need to watch the 90-minute behind-the-scenes docuseries to fully appreciate the ingenuity and innovation it takes to create the world of Pandora.

Or the motion-capture performances from real-life actors which are then rendered by computers into this epic film.

You just know the Avatar movies are effortful, and you want to like them because we all respect a work ethic.

Taken on their own, these separate elements – the actors learning to hold their breath underwater for seven minutes, Sigourney Weaver portraying a teenager, the painstaking computer wizardry by the team at Weta – are highly impressive.

The problem is when you put it together, because the real question is: to what end?

At this point, you either are or you aren’t an Avatar person. You either find yourself immersed in its world-building of majestic creatures and luminous environments, or you start shifting in your seat about 20 minutes in, cringing at the clunky dialogue and wondering if it’s too soon to go for a pee break.

If you’re a defender, you’ll go see Fire and Ash no matter what anyone else says, because you’re pot-committed, although in the past 16 years, not too many people openly declare themselves a fervent Avatar stan.

Despite the first two films’ undeniable financial prowess, Avatar has had a relatively light touch in enduring cultural influence. Other than those terrible years following the first movie when all the studios tried to get in on the 3D action, usually by retroactively converting a 2D film, before everyone realised that watching movies in 3D sucks.

“Sucks” is not the most elegant criticism, but it perfectly captures the odious experience of shoving onto your face an ill-fitting, flimsy piece of plastic that does little beyond creating another barrier between you and the story, and induces a literal headache.

After the first halfer, the novelty wears off and you’ll wish you didn’t pay for the upgrade to 3D.

So, here’s the thing about Avatar: Fire and Ash. It’s not offensive. It’s not the worst thing you’ll see all year. What it is, is boring. Mind-numbingly boring. Dozed off in the chair boring. Thinking about your supermarket shopping list boring.

There is a direct correlation between how boring it is and how long it is. There are a few reasons why it’s tiresome but knowing that you’re locked in for more than three hours compounds the boredom because it makes it seem like it will never end.

If you knew the movie was a brisk 90 or 100 minutes, you’d be more generous towards your own experience of it. Plus, the story would move along faster instead of expending all that extra time trying to impress you with CGI water and fire. Yes, it looks good, but so does an Apple TV screensaver.

The problem with the Avatar movies has always been the story and the writing, which seems secondary to Cameron and the production’s need to flex their technical and visual muscles.

It’s as if the script is merely a vessel for the effects, rather than the effects servicing the story.

The Na’vi just aren’t interesting, and the Sullys in particular are dull. Their romance is dull, their children are dull and their mission is dull.

A decade and a half in the culture and most people can’t recall the names of any of the characters without consulting Wikipedia – that’s because you don’t care about, ironically, two-dimensional archetypes you can barely tell apart.

The story for this third film is a slight step up from the first two, but not enough to render it worth emotionally investing in.

Perennial villain Quartrich (Stephen Lang) teams up with the Na’vi leader of a volcano clan, the seething Varang (Oona Chaplin), whose only defining characteristic is she’s really angry at everything.

Meanwhile, the human kid the Sullys have adopted, Spider (Jack Champion), find it increasingly hard with his failing mask set-up, which he needs to breathe in Pandora’s atmosphere.

Kiri (Weaver), the cloned Na’vi daughter of a dead human, keeps trying to connect with the great mother goddess that she thinks has abandoned her, and we get to hear about it 67 times.

There’s simultaneously a lot going on and nothing going on, because everything seems like time-wasting nonsense when you don’t care about the fates of the characters.

It’s probably not the intention that the most relatable and engaging character is Jemaine Clement’s regretful marine biologist. Maybe there’s something in that he’s human, and not a caricature. Let’s face it, one of the issues with the Na’vi is that the character design was never appealing enough.

It’s not enough that Avatar is technically impressive and has created new frontiers in visual effects. It’s harsh but that’s worth about 30 minutes of attention, and that time lapsed in 2009.

If you’re going to keep people engaged beyond that, you need characters whose names you care to remember.

That would be worth hours — but not still not three hours.

Rating: 2.5/5

Avatar: Fire and Ash is in cinemas on December 18