Jan 2, 2026 10:45am PT

Directors on Their Favorite Films of 2025: From Janicza Bravo to Paul Thomas Anderson to Barry Jenkins and More

Bravo: Michael Buckner; Getty Images

Acclaimed filmmakers pen essays on the current movies that left them inspired — and sometimes envious.

• Avatar: Fire and Ash

  

  Image Credit: Art Streiber for Variety

  By Michael Mann

  Jim Cameron’s third “Avatar,” “Fire and Ash,” is a massive achievement. The towering originality of Jim’s visualization is a given; what makes “Fire and Ash” so potent is its believability.

  After the first two installments, the world knows the origin story of “Avatar.” Jake and Neytiri’s family — including Spider, Quaritch’s son — are refugees sheltering among the Metkayina Reef People with their Maori tattooing and anthropologically complete belief system and pacifist politics. For “Fire and Ash,” Jim added the apostate Ash Clan — Na’vi raiders led by the lethal and seductive Varang (Oona Chaplin). Resources Development Administration is pursuing its imperative of colonization and has Quaritch (Stephen Lang) on point, now reappearing in recombinant form. But there’s dissent within RDA, and Quaritch has a side agenda to regain his son.

  As with Pandora’s biodiversity, Jim has architected different cultures that resonate with authenticity. From the thesis that there are standard patterns within diverse human cultures, Cameron has applied structure principles in building Pandora’s people with the erudition of an anthropologist. Each has rituals, value systems and sympathetic magic with which they interconnect with nature to influence outcomes.

  Their tribal aesthetics of wardrobe, tattooing and habitation is so specific, you feel these people dress themselves. For the assault of RDA’s colonization, he may have mined patterns from the rape of the Congo by Belgium’s King Leopold or the plight of Brazilian rainforest peoples. These contexts that Jim has built envelop his characters’ rage, frustration, tragedy, aspirations, ambivalence, moments of rapture and vengeance with authenticity. That authenticity amplifies the visceral power of his storytelling.

  Throughout Jim’s propulsive narrative, we experience the Na’vi and humans as more complex people caught in a dire conflict zone in an alien future. And the authenticity of what he’s built makes it resonate with even more visceral power.

  Jim’s artistry, intellect and heavy lifting creates diverse alien biology, anthropology, mechanical engineering, politics, visualization and taut storytelling. It’s extraordinary. Jim began with a blank piece of paper. No writer-director I can think of has invented as large a three-dimensional world of his own imagining as has Jim. “Fire and Ash” on its own is an incredible achievement. There are two more installments to come. From some point in the future, when regarded historically, the whole of “Avatar” will be seen as the magnum opus it truly is.