Three years after Avatar: The Way of Water, James Cameron has successfully brought attention back to the beloved series with another heartwrenching film. Like both of the previous Avatar movies, the beauty of Pandora comes to life through stunning lighting, sound and special effects, giving the film a magical quality that is often lost in modern media.

Avatar: Fire and Ash continues to follow Jake Sully and his family as they fight through the challenges of life on Pandora, including a vicious Navi clan and continued assaults from humans looking to colonize and extort the world’s resources. While the film’s main issues don’t differ much from Avatar: The Way of Water, there are many new takes and side stories, making the film feel only slightly redundant. As can be expected from over a three hour runtime, many of these side stories don’t feel deeply connected to a central plot. While I did enjoy them, a shorter, more concise story would likely have grabbed attention better.

Looking at the characters, each one was intricately written with their own thoughts, goals, beliefs and hopes for the future. Relationship dynamics, whether romantic, platonic, or familial were each unique and fully fleshed out—making you feel invested in both individual characters, as well as that character’s effect on the story. Without such well-written characters holding up the story, it would have surely crumpled.

However, the status of each character by the time the movie finished turned out to be disappointingly minimal. While no one roots for a beloved character to die, that tragedy is what gives such an action-packed story life. Unlike previous Avatar films, when all of the main characters walk away unscathed in Avatar: Fire and Ash, it makes the viewer question if anything really changed.

The film also suffered from an exceedingly long final battle, taking away from the characters and effectively pausing the story to show an unnecessarily long sequence of mostly uninteresting gun and bow fire. While there were some unique moments, it gave viewers an overall repetitive scene.

The movie’s plot and ending sequence did leave some to be desired, but the beautiful cinematography and extremely well-written characters made the film enjoyable and brought the world of Pandora back to life. Overall, while it might not offer the ‘canon event’ a thought-provoking film would, you won’t regret the three hours spent watching it.