Why Avatar: Fire and Ash Faces a Death Star Dilemma

Consider an intriguing bit of cinematic lore: out of the eleven canonical Star Wars features, the Death Star—in its various iterations—serves as a narrative anchor in eight of them. We witnessed the original planet-killer in A New Hope and its reconstructed successor in Return of the Jedi. Its blueprints were a plot point in Attack of the Clones, while its skeletal assembly loomed over the end of Revenge of the Sith. Rogue One was entirely dedicated to the heist of those very plans. In the sequel era, The Force Awakens introduced the planetary Starkiller Base, The Last Jedi miniaturized the technology into a siege cannon, and The Rise of Skywalker staged its emotional peak amidst the second station’s oceanic ruins. (For those keeping score, only The Empire Strikes Back, Solo, and The Phantom Menace managed to avoid its gravitational pull.)

This recursive storytelling raises a pertinent question for Avatar: Fire and Ash. Just three chapters into James Cameron’s epic saga, it appears the franchise has already stumbled upon its own version of the Death Star trope.

[Editor’s Note: The following contains minor plot details regarding the conclusion of Avatar: Fire and Ash.]

In the world of Pandora, the “Death Star” equivalent takes the form of massive RDA military vessels destined to be dismantled by sentient whales. In 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water, these industrial leviathans were utilized by the Resources Development Administration to hunt the tulkun—highly intelligent extraterrestrial cetaceans. The objective? To harvest a biological reagent capable of halting human aging, a substance commanding exorbitant prices on Earth. This premise, both ruthlessly villainous and visually arresting, peaked during a spectacular final act on a foundering ship, merging Cameron’s mastery of sci-fi action with the maritime disaster scale of Titanic. It was, quite simply, a masterclass in blockbuster filmmaking.

The issue arises when Avatar: Fire and Ash concludes with a nearly identical beat. Once more, the RDA is engaged in the slaughter of the tulkun (though on a larger scale), and once more, the Na’vi must intervene to protect their aquatic kin. While the stakes are technically higher and the inclusion of a mysterious, ship-crushing magnetic vortex adds a touch of chaos, the finale feels less like a fresh evolution and more like The Way of Water on steroids. Cameron even revisits the trope of Pandora’s wildlife rising as a collective force, a beat we first saw in the 2009 original.

Experiencing this feels remarkably like witnessing Return of the Jedi or The Force Awakens for the first time. What is presented as a bold new chapter often feels like a refined remix of a familiar melody. The rhythm is undeniable, but the repetition is hard to ignore.

To be fair, Avatar isn’t as deeply entrenched in its own tropes as Star Wars yet. Subsequent entries have the potential to explore entirely new biomes and conflicts. Cameron has previously mentioned that the second and third films were born from a single, massive script that had to be bisected, which goes a long way in explaining the sense of cinematic déjà vu permeating Fire and Ash.

Nevertheless, the franchise currently finds itself at a crossroads. Fire and Ash hints at a future where the saga could become tethered to its own patterns—continually finding new ways to crash tulkun into RDA ships—much like the Star Wars universe remains eternally caught in the orbit of the Death Star.

Avatar: Fire and Ash is currently playing in theaters worldwide.

Source: Polygon