Avatar: Fire and Ash

This was not a separate film to begin with. James Cameron has described splitting the second script in two: too many good ideas in one first act, and a story moving too fast to drill into the characters. Amanda Silver, one of the writers, adds that they needed to breathe. Shooting began alongside the previous film in 2017. The threat this time is not the corporation but another Na’vi clan. Cameron says the Ash People are not the only ones on the planet with a grievance, or the only ones ignoring what the Na’vi call the Great Balance. Oona Chaplin, who plays Varang, puts her beside Neytiri rather than opposite: they are birds of a feather, and Varang’s arc is a cautionary tale. Cameron calls each film more complex, more novelistic and more interior. The Academy gave it the visual effects award, collected by Joe Letteri, Richard Baneham, Eric Saindon and Daniel Barrett; Deborah L. Scott was nominated for costume design, which went to Frankenstein. A good fit if you want the villainy to move from the humans to the Na’vi, and can wait for the fourth film in December 2029 instead of expecting an ending here. Not for viewers starting the series here: it was written as the continuation of the second film.