7 Avatar: Fire and Ash Moments That Prove James Cameron Has No Equal
James Cameron’s Avatar saga remains pure passion. Fire and Ash proves it’s no cash grab but a singular cinematic rush no one can replicate—and the reasons go far beyond those otherworldly visuals.
James Cameron keeps making these giant blue epics that could easily coast on tech alone, and then he sneaks in scenes that actually hit you in the gut. Avatar: Fire and Ash does that a lot. The visuals are stunning, sure, but what stuck with me were the moments where Cameron slows down and gets weirdly personal and mythic at the same time. Here are the beats that made the 3-hour-plus runtime feel worth it. Yes, spoilers.
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Spider and Jake's knife-to-the-throat moment
Jake and Spider barely connected in The Way of Water. Fire and Ash dives right into that mess after Kiri's ritual changes Spider in a huge way: he can breathe on Pandora without a mask. Jake immediately freaks out about the RDA learning from Spider's altered biology and turning Pandora into a human-friendly colony. His first plan was to ship Spider off to High Camp. Then he flips to the worst possible idea: Neytiri's idea, actually. Kill him.
After Spider literally saves Jake during a raid on RDA headquarters, Jake flies him out to the jungle with Neytiri. He takes Spider into the trees, tells him to kneel, and raises a blade to his throat. It's brutal, and you can see he's breaking as he does it. Spider asks the question that ends the scene:
"Do you love me?"
Jake answers:
"With all my heart."
He can't do it. He drops the act, and he and Neytiri pull Spider in. That embrace is the real turn: they choose him, fully, despite the risk.
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The Tulkuns finally strike back
The Way of Water introduced the Tulkuns as sentient whales with poetry and ritual, hunted for Amrita, the humans' brain-goo fountain of youth. They live by one hard rule: never kill. Payakan broke that code and got ostracized for it. In Fire and Ash, a survivor from Payakan's birth pod shows the council what the hunters did to her. That shifts everything.
In the finale, the Tulkuns join the fight. It is massive and cathartic, capped by the last surviving Tulkun avenging her family. You feel the Metkayina bond with them snap from grief into fury.
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Varang and Quaritch's twisted chemistry
Varang (Oona Chaplin) and Quaritch are the most unsettling duo in the movie. Think Jake and Neytiri's dynamic, but pointed straight into the dark. Their push-pull is sharp from the second he sets foot in her territory. When he enters her space, she pours him a mind-bending brew that strips away his posturing and makes his intentions plain.
From there, the two form a connection that makes sense only to them. Varang greets him with her own bent version of the Na'vi "I see you," and it lands like a dare. Cameron loved the scene on set, and apparently the editors tried to cut the tent sequence in half until he shut it down.
"Guys, you're about to become unemployed - put it back, every line."
He also called the sequence "mesmerizing." For what it's worth, Chaplin is a standout addition to the franchise. If she looks familiar, she played Talisa Maegyr on Game of Thrones.
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Neytiri vs Varang, belief vs fire
Zoe Saldana and Oona Chaplin go right at each other here. Neytiri clings to Eywa even after losing her firstborn; Varang, abandoned by the goddess in her view, turns to fire and rage. Varang is basically a dark reflection of what Neytiri could become if the grief curdled. Every face-off comes with that weight: revenge against protection, hate against mourning. You feel the blood feud in every look.
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Kiri, Eywa, and the line between miracle and danger
Kiri is beyond special now. We get confirmation that she has no father; her existence ties back to Grace's avatar and Eywa's own awareness. Her seizures make the connection deadly, so she's told not to sync with the spirit tree again. She does it anyway when it counts.
Over the course of the movie, she brings Spider back after his mask battery dies, she uses those spiked Pandoran plants to cut down Mangkwans while captured with Jake and her siblings, and in the end, with Spider and Tuk helping her link to Eywa, she calls in squid-like sea creatures that start flipping RDA boats one by one. That turn saves the Tulkuns' way of life from being wiped out.
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Lo'ak and Neteyam's dream-sky reunion
Fire and Ash opens with Lo'ak and Neteyam flying together on their banshees, laughing and spiraling through an Eywa dreamscape. It's gorgeous and it hurts. The Way of Water ended with that unforgettable ancestral tree farewell; this picks up that thread, focused on Lo'ak carrying the guilt of surviving his brother.
The whole family is still splintered by grief. You hear it in their clipped conversations, see it in the space between them. Cameron lets it sit there, especially with Lo'ak, Neytiri, and Jake trying to function without Neteyam.
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Toruk Makto rides again
With everything collapsing at once - Jake's family in danger, Tulkuns being butchered for Amrita, and the RDA circling Spider for study - Jake has to stop playing defense. He goes back to the Last Shadow. He returns as Toruk Makto, calls the clans, and remembers who he is.
The sequence is pure myth. At one point Jake falls, and the Toruk keeps fighting anyway. Expect Avatar 4 to maybe lean into that momentum, with more Toruk and a broader look at how Jake pulls the Na'vi together.
Quick rundown: Fire and Ash is directed by James Cameron and stars Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Kate Winslet, Cliff Curtis, and Joel David Moore, with Oona Chaplin making a strong debut as Varang. It runs 3 hours and 12 minutes, opened December 19, 2025, and is sitting at 67% on Rotten Tomatoes so far.
For me, the Spider-Jake scene is the one that lingers. It is tight, cruel, and then unexpectedly warm, and it says more about this family than any speech could. That is the Cameron touch: giant set pieces wrapped around an intimate shot that knocks you sideways.
Avatar: Fire and Ash is in theaters now in the U.S. Which moment wrecked you the most?