For the first time in over thirty years, the release of a new James Cameron film has been met with a decidedly mixed reception. While his three prior films—1997’s Titanic, 2009’s Avatar, and 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water—each experienced their own respective backlashes and pushback in the years that followed, they were all greeted with overwhelmingly positive reviews upon release and were each nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. In stark contrast, Cameron’s new film, Avatar: Fire and Ash, has been met with far less praise, with many prognosticators even predicting it will be Cameron’s first film since True Lies in 1994 to not receive a Best Picture nomination.
I tried to ignore all of this ahead of my screening last week, but it proved nearly impossible and raised a fascinating question in my mind: had I ever even considered the possibility that Avatar: Fire and Ash might be a disappointment before this moment? The answer was a definitive no. As someone who saw Avatar in a preview screening back in 2009 and genuinely enjoyed it, then flat-out loved The Way of Water in 2022, the idea that this third installment could be a letdown felt unfathomable. And yet, as I walked into the IMAX 3D theater the other night, it was a thought I couldn’t completely shake.
To my absurd delight, all of that concern turned out to be for nothing. It is genuinely beyond my comprehension what the mixed early reception was about, because Avatar: Fire and Ash is not only my favorite Avatar film to date, but also one of the most distinct, idiosyncratic, and absolutely batshit gonzo blockbusters of the past decade.
TOP 5 THINGS ABOUT “AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH”
5. Training Wheels Off
One of the biggest hurdles any new high-concept original film faces is getting audiences fully onboard with its story, world, and characters. That hurdle was especially daunting for the first Avatar, which had the unenviable task of convincing audiences whose last experience with James Cameron was Titanic to show up and care about giant blue, cat-eared aliens known as the Na’vi. Cameron handled this challenge with remarkable grace, grounding viewers through a surrogate protagonist in Jake Sully (played by Sam Worthington) and allowing audiences to experience this bold new world alongside him for the very first time.
For the second film, arriving more than a decade later, Cameron and company made the smart decision to take their time reintroducing viewers to Pandora. The Way of Water eases audiences back in, patiently rebuilding familiarity with the world and characters before fully ramping things up again.
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With Avatar: Fire and Ash, however, Cameron rips the training wheels clean off the metaphorical bike, throwing audiences directly into the thick of the action from the opening moments. This third installment is, by far, the most inside-baseball the franchise has ever been, but crucially, it’s all in service of the story. The first film established the world, the second deepened the characters—Jake, Neytiri (played by Zoe Saldaña), and the entire Sully family—and Fire and Ash uses that foundation as a launching pad. The result is a film that confidently builds on what came before and rises to remarkable new heights.
4. The Existential Themes
For many filmmakers, aging brings with it a shift toward more reflective themes, with existentialism often moving to the center of their work. You can see clear modern examples of this in filmmakers like Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Ridley Scott, all of whom have delivered phenomenal late-career films that foreground ideas of time, humanity, and the finite nature of both. Interestingly, though, James Cameron had never truly seemed to engage with these ideas in his work. For so long, he was singularly focused on getting the Avatar saga off the ground, relentlessly pushing forward, that it felt as though there was little room for introspection or reflection.
Amazingly and unexpectedly, Avatar: Fire and Ash completely upends that assumption. Cameron essentially delivers a Disney-produced, multi-billion-dollar blockbuster centered on a family grappling with faith, loss, and the question of God in the aftermath of tragedy. Narratively, one of the film’s driving questions is whether Eywa still exists and, if so, why she allows terrible things to happen.
On a metatextual level, Cameron pushes this even further, using the sheer scale of the film to wrestle with enormous philosophical and thematic questions. Despite years of criticism aimed at the franchise’s sometimes on-the-nose messaging around conservation, Fire and Ash reframes those ideas into something far more nuanced. The result is a beautiful, poignant meditation on faith, humanity, and responsibility that feels remarkably prescient in today’s world.
3. Obscenely Human Performances
Inevitably, when people talk about the Avatar films, the conversation turns to visual effects. Cameron and his collaborators have spent literal decades reinventing the wheel in this area, resulting in gobsmackingly tactile digital creations and groundbreaking performance-capture techniques. But what risks getting lost in that discussion, despite Cameron’s best efforts to prevent it, is the genuine humanity at the core of the franchise. The performances in Avatar: Fire and Ash are nothing short of spectacular, with each of the series’ mainstays rising to new heights and delivering their best work to date.
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Stephen Lang has never been better as the conflicted antagonist Quaritch, while newcomer Oona Chaplin’s manic charisma practically leaps off the screen as Varang. Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña, meanwhile, somehow continue to refine and deepen the volatile, palpable passion that defines the Sully family dynamic. Their chemistry feels more lived-in and emotionally charged than ever.
Throughout the film, there are numerous tightly focused, interpersonal scenes where the actors are given room to engage with genuinely meaty material, and they seize the opportunity every time. One standout moment centers on Jake and Neytiri feeling cornered and forced to make an excruciating decision involving a member of their extended family. The authenticity and emotional weight they bring to the scene cuts straight through the layers of technology, transforming it into something purely human and eliciting a deeply human response in return.
2. Jaw-Dropping Spectacle
James Cameron is a legend of action cinema. This is the filmmaker behind Aliens, Terminator 2, True Lies, and so much more; he understands action set pieces on a level few can match. One of the great pleasures of the Avatar films thus far has been watching Cameron operate within such a vast creative sandbox, where cutting-edge technology allows him to bring virtually anything he can imagine to life. That freedom has already produced several standout sequences across the first two films, but Avatar: Fire and Ash finds Cameron pushing himself even further, delivering some of the most astounding, gripping, and white-knuckle action of his entire career.
These sequences are so imaginative, multi-layered, and meticulously constructed that entire masterclasses could be built around them individually. The film is packed with moments like this, each one executed with remarkable clarity and precision. Cameron structures the action so it remains endlessly legible and fluid, while still hitting with overwhelming visceral impact.
Watching Fire and Ash feels like seeing a filmmaker repeatedly go all in, bet everything on black, win, and then immediately double down again. He sustains this audacious momentum across the film’s three-hour-plus runtime, creating a delirious, adrenaline-fueled high that’s genuinely staggering to experience in real time.
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1. James Cameron’s Insane Vision
There are a million other things to say about this film, but I’ll leave you with this: for decades, James Cameron has been rightfully celebrated as the architect behind some of the greatest sequels in blockbuster history. With Aliens, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and Avatar: The Way of Water, he proved himself remarkably adept at expanding the scope of a story while simultaneously digging deeper into the emotional and psychological roots of its characters. Think of Ellen Ripley in Aliens, Sarah Connor in Terminator 2, or the Sully family in The Way of Water. Each of these films challenges its characters in unprecedented ways and, in doing so, uncovers greater truths about who they are.
Avatar: Fire and Ash sees Cameron and his collaborators taking this philosophy and pushing it even further, to almost staggering effect. This third installment is monumental by every metric: a larger ensemble, more locations, a denser narrative, and more ambitious large-scale action sequences than ever before.
And yet, despite all of that scale, the film is also the most intimately and emotionally grounded entry in the franchise. It is deeply rooted in the interpersonal lives, struggles, and inner conflicts of its characters. The relatively simple archetypes of the first film have given way to richly nuanced, complex, and fully realized individuals. What’s truly astonishing is how organic Cameron makes that evolution feel, as if this depth was always embedded in the story, simply waiting to be unlocked.
RGM GRADE
(A)
I suppose I can understand why some critics and audiences aren’t embracing Avatar: Fire and Ash as readily as its predecessors. It’s a stranger, funnier, bigger, more emotional, hornier, and altogether more bombastic film. If you’re not on board for the full spectrum of eccentricities and idiosyncrasies that come with that, Fire and Ash simply might not be for you.
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But for the freaks like me who’ve spent 2025 celebrating the wins of big, ambitious, auteur-driven cinematic swings—films like Sinners, 28 Years Later, or One Battle After Another—Avatar: Fire and Ash feels like the ultimate victory in a year full of them. It’s the batshit-insane, deeply personal, and unmistakably singular vision of James Cameron unleashed in the most glorious and uninhibited way possible.
New Avatar is the best Avatar.
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A family and friends gather for a naming-day ceremony at a Danish seaside hotel, but an unexpected appearance by one uninvited attendee (Trine Dyrholm) ruptures the veil of bland, happy-clappy familial unity in director Mads Mengel’s gutsy, well-wrought debut feature, The Guest.
The most audacious move here may be Mengel and co-screenwriter Christian Bengtson’s choice to write something that will inevitably invite comparisons with Festen (The Celebration), arguably the most notorious Danish-language film of the last 30 years, which similarly revolved around a bougie gathering disrupted by angry revelations. But there’s a savvy 2026 vibe about the way the film refuses to create florid melodrama out of quotidian crisis, and instead observes with generosity as the characters grope awkwardly toward emotional détente and mutual forgiveness.
The Guest
The Bottom Line
When wetting the baby’s head goes too far.
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Venue: Karlovy Vary Film Festival Cast: Simon Bennebjerg, Trine Dyrholm, Josephine Park, Peter Gantzler, Petrine Agger, Mette Klakstein Wiberg, Kristine Kujath Thorp, Buster Lund Luscher Director: Mads Mengel Screenwriter: Christian Bengtson, Mads Mengel
1 hour 40 minutes
Festen-alumnus Dyrholm, having a bit of a career moment with outstanding performances both here and in the recent The Girl With the Needle among others, leads a uniformly excellent cast in a work that deserves celebration on the festival circuit and beyond.
Dyrholm’s Vibeke is technically the first person we meet, although she’s seen only in shadow at first as she smokes and drives while her unattached seatbelt, caught outside by a closed door, clatters on the road. This is the kind of unsafe driving her son Karl (Simon Bennebjerg) so deplores, a point of contention later on in the story when he will steal her car keys in interest of her own safety and that of others.
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But well before we get to that flashpoint, the film introduces Karl, effectively the film’s protagonist, as he arrives at the swanky resort with his wife Emilie (Mette Klakstein Wiberg) and their infant son Elliot (Buster Lund Luscher). The young family, who’ve chosen this new, secular tradition instead of a christening to welcome their child to the world, are there a day before the ceremony to meet up with core family members.
As this advance party settles down for dinner, a table that includes Karl’s sister Rikke (Josephine Park) and Emilie’s parents Frank (Peter Gantzler) and Kirsten (Petrine Agger), there’s a surprise: Vibeke is coming, courtesy of Rikke’s invitation. Karl is quietly furious and seems determined to turn her away, even when she shows up minutes later. Poor Frank and Kirsten look on confused, determinedly polite in their insistence that all family members should be welcome.
Bengtson and Mengel’s economical script carefully dripfeeds backstory as the film unfolds to explain that Karl hasn’t spoken to his mother in years, that Rikke has taken over all the daily mom management and that she’s very worn out by it. Even so, she insists Vibeke is regularly taking her medication and isn’t a problem these days, although to Karl every weird anecdote and moment of emotional intensity is an augur of impending chaos. Rikke counters that their mother is just “big, that’s her personality not her condition.”
Interestingly, that specific condition is never named throughout, although armchair diagnosticians might spot many of the signs of bipolar disorder. But the film’s emotional focus on the person and her actions rather than the label is also very contemporary, reflecting a more holistic, inclusive mindset and approach to dealing with mental health issues.
Which is all fine and dandy, until Vibeke duly does skip a dosage and starts getting manic. One of the first signs of chemical imbalance arrives during the ceremony on the beach, when Vibeke carries little Elliot much further away from the shore than anyone wants, creating a panic. From there it just gets worse as Vibeke picks up on the censorious feeling emerging from the other party guests, who had found her so charming the night before when she’d led everyone to the casino to play roulette and diverted a bunch of partying teenagers from the room next to Karl and Emilie so they could get some sleep. When the toasts at the formal dinner begin, Vibeke’s mood darkens much further, and if we’ve all learned one thing from Festen, it’s be very afraid when a Dane gets up to make a toast.
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Cinematographer David Bauer’s nimble-footed lensing and use of natural light does indeed hark back considerably to the look of those Dogme 95 movies back in the day, as does the naturalistic editing style deployed by Louis Emil Ramm Seeberg. But there are plenty of sins against the rules of cinematic chastity that marked that movement, such as the ample space made for Lasse Aagaard’s affecting, low-key score that amps up the anxiety as Vibeke starts to spiral.
That said, Mengel keeps things simple in sonic terms when it really counts, letting the musicality of Dyrholm’s deep, sonorous voice ring out on its own in the big monologue scenes. She is, as ever, utterly mesmerizing but the performance is made even more powerful by the muted, expressive reactions of the rest of the cast as they look on, frozen like deer in the headlights of the car crash of pseudo-christening. Moments of levity puncture the gloom, but the final feeling is one of numbed sorrow and pity for all these kind, fallible people, just trying to do their best.
In a roundabout way, the fact that I don’t have a strong attachment to The Wizard of Oz as a film (my late mother loved it, so that memory is deeply rooted in me, but the movie itself never did much for me) contributed directly to how amusing I found Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass to be. This comedy spoofs the plot of the classic fantasy movie, though the jokes are largely about Hollywood. The humor is big and broad, with some of the jokes really landing. Others? Not so much. Still, more than enough do to warrant a recommendation.
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass gets a lot of mileage out of sending up show business, even if the observations, while funny, are not particularly new. Besides the deluge of jokes, there’s also a lot of likably broad characters to spend time with, especially our lead. They make the 90 minutes and change spent together with them go down very easy.
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For Gail Daughtry (Zoey Deutch), her life as a small town hairdresser is perfect. Engaged to her high school sweetheart Tom (Michael Cassidy), she’s the picture of happiness, at least until a trip to a celebrity book signing. There, Tom meets and ends up sleeping with his “celebrity pass,” a term Gail wasn’t even really previously aware of. Feeling betrayed, Gail impulsively joins her co-worker and friend Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley) on a trip to Los Angeles. There, a psychic convinces her that the can save her marriage by sleeping with her own celebrity pass: Jon Hamm (Jon Hamm).
Journeying through Tinseltown in a manner that recalls Dorothy’s adventure in Oz, Gail and Otto won’t have to find Hamm alone. Joining forces with talent agency assistant Caleb (Ben Wang), down on his luck paparazzo Vincent (Ken Marino), and actor John Slattery (John Slattery). As they search for Hamm, some for their own purposes, they meet other celebrities, while also being hunted by a group of Italian assassins after a case of mistaken identity. Eventually, they come across Hamm, and the moment of truth is at hand.
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Zoey Deutch dives headfirst into a broad comedy like this, absolutely relishing the opportunity to get silly again. She’s able to make Gail a babe in the woods but also someone you laugh with, not at. It’s a wildly enjoyable turn. Deutch started out in comedies and was always a talented comedic actress, so it’s a pleasure to watch her back at it. Miles Gutierrez-Riley and Ben Wang get some very funny moments, while Ken Marino is a reliable comic presence. Jon Hamm and John Slattery are delighted to be sending up themselves, with amusing results. Supporting players here, in addition to Michael Cassidy, also include Kerri Kenney, Richard Kind, Thomas Lennon, Joe Lo Truglio, Fred Melamed, and more, plus some cameos.
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Filmmaker David Wain, again co-writing with Ken Marino, continues to make it look easy. Few can make a silly comedy like Marino and Wain, especially as they pack their flicks with extra bits that only subsequent viewings reveal. Is Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass on the same level as Wet Hot American Summer or They Came Together? No, not quite. At the same time, is this, scattershot approach and all, funnier than most other 2026 releases? You bet. Marino and Wain have a hit rate that allows some of the jokes to miss, as you only have seconds to wait before the next one, which probably will hit.
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is very amusing, and occasionally hilarious, even if not as many jokes land as you might expect. Zoey Deutch is great in the lead role, David Wain is in his comfort zone, and the laughs come hot and heavy. If you’re a Wain fan, this new movie should be a must see.
Supergirl Director: Craig Gillespie DC Studios, Troll Court Entertainment, The Sagan Company In theaters: 06.26.2026
I was a pretty big fan of James Gunn’s Superman. Building up to the release of the film, I relapsed into my comic book obsession, which I had laid to rest many years prior. I read whatever you get recommended when you look up “Superman comic recommendations:” For All Seasons, All Star, Birthright — whatever, you don’t care. David Corenswet’sportrayal of Big Blue was loving, thorough and unbelievably human, which is what Superman is (he’s not Jesus). He is the best of us. He is what we aspire to be.
Supergirl was announced, and I picked up the comic it was based on: Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. The questionable morals and talent of author Tom King aside, the book is good! The fantastic art by Bilquis Evely makes King’s (sometimes preachy) prose this beautiful and somber story about trauma and war. It appears that I’m ahead of director Craig Gillespie, who reportedly didn’t read the book and, boy, does it show.
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During a bender, Superman’s cousin Kara (Milly Alcock, House of The Dragon)meets Ruthye (Eve Ridley), a child whose family is murdered by Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts, Amsterdam, The Old Guard), the leader of a raider group. She enlists Kara to hunt and kill him, and on their way, they confront their traumas.Kara faces Krem, the films antagonist, retold as an all-powerful kryptonite wielding brute. Photo courtesy: DC Studios.
Every change made from the original comic was for the worse. Most notably, this film simplifies the depth of the comic’s characters. Kara is reduced to a loud, charming alcoholic, which is fine, but in the comic, she’s somber and reflective, making an effort to teach Ruthye how the greater universe works. The antagonist, Krem, is sort of a loser in the comic. He’s a coward who spends his time running away, while in the film he’s a tattooed, pierced, menacing psychopath who appears in almost every major action sequence. He’s almost indistinguishable from The Joker — this all boils down to shame. While they’re becoming increasingly popular, comics are still for losers. Hinting at depth with characters who fly and shoot lasers from their eyes in brightly colored underpants isn’t something that a general audience will accept. They will accept a comic film so long as it constantly flogs itself for being comic-inspired.
Another bastardization is the look of this film. Everly’s amazing use of color in the comic makes the story so engaging. How is this translated? Brown. Just brown. When characters clash, it looks like someone’s wiping their finger across their dirt-covered lens, which is a total departure from Gunn’s fantastic color palette in Superman. The visual effects appear to be rushed and often look horrible — laughably horrible, as a matter of fact. How do you spot a bad action director? Look at the editing. If they have to hide poor action choreography and bad visual effects behind dizzying amounts of cuts, they’re bad. Gillespie is a bad action director. James Gunn promised that the DCU would prioritize artist voice over universal coherence, but if these are the artists he’s hiring, I’m not sure how long this could last.
Performances here are whatever. Alcock could have been good if the script and direction were right, but they’re not. I couldn’t get into Krem due to character assassination, but even if I wasn’t into the comic, I would find his performance as a crazy guy to be a standard for bad superhero movies. Ridley is good, especially for a debut in feature films, but the standout is Jason Momoa (Aquaman, A Minecraft Movie) as Lobo. He is loving the character, absolutely chewing up the scene with thick cigars. He’s a little cheesy-edgy, but that’s just what he is in the comics, so I won’t knock him for it.
While I was watching the film, I was suffering from a discrepancy. Supergirl is as powerful as Superman, but throughout this film, she doesn’t use her powers to their full potential. Something I actually loved about Superman is how much he got his ass kicked. Gunn was out to prove that Superman fights can have stakes — that he’s not just undefeatable and therefore boring as everyone says. Gunn’s ability to create ways to kill the Man of Steel without Kryptonite is amazing! Kara, in this film, is fighting space pirates and constantly forgets to finish the fight. It’s frustrating because the remedy to this in the comic is that they don’t see Krem until the last couple of issues, but in this film, Krem keeps showing up to menace Supergirl, and most of the time she has her powers.
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I could ramble about how bad the dialogue can be, how derivative and uninspired it is or whatever lame comic thing I can talk about, but I’ll spare you. Here’s the moral of all this: Comic books are a valid storytelling medium. I recall recommending Alan Moore’sWatchmen to someone and being told that they have more important things to read. Watchmen is one of my favorite works of fiction. I did end up falling out of love with comics because I was told they were childish and I had grown bored of having costumes thrust into my peripherals all the time, but I’m back now, and I love them so much more than ever. I loved Superman because, above all else, it was earnest. There wasn’t a self-deprecatory tone toward its own plot. It didn’t try to bog its drama down with one-liners. It was just proud to be a comic book movie, and I think more movies should.
If you want to see Supergirl, go ahead, but I’d advise you to just read the comic, which is more dramatic, more meaningful and more impactful. —B. Allan Johnson
Read more reviews from B. Allan Johnson below: Film Review: The Bride! Film Review: Backrooms
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