I suppose I should start this by admitting that I didn’t experience Avatar: Fire and Ash the way James Cameron probably intended. I didn’t see it on the biggest screen imaginable. I waited until it arrived on Disney+, and then I watched it on my phone. Well, “watched” is a strong word for a blind film critic. I can’t see the screen anyway, so the size of it doesn’t really matter to me.
What did matter was finally getting to experience it with the absolutely tremendous audio description track produced by Deluxe and narrated by William Michael Redman. This is an audio description track for the ages, truly one of the very best of 2025. My only regret in waiting to see Fire and Ash is that I wasn’t able to praise the audio description while putting together my year-end awards because it absolutely deserves that recognition.
Pandora is an incredibly dense world. Every corner is packed with creatures, plants, landscapes, and details that James Cameron has spent decades bringing to life. He has invested enormous amounts of time, money, and technological innovation into creating an immersive experience unlike anything else in cinema. Whether you personally connect with these stories or not, there’s no denying Cameron’s commitment to his vision. He believes audiences want to live inside Pandora, and judging by the box office, plenty of people do. The strange thing is that, despite all of that, I’ve realized I just don’t care very much about Avatar in the way so many other people seem to.
I don’t think it’s as simple as saying, “Well, you’re blind now, so of course you don’t.” I enjoy plenty of effects-heavy blockbusters. If losing my sight automatically made movies built around visual spectacle less enjoyable, I’d have this problem with all of them. I don’t. That’s why audio description exists, and when it’s written and performed this well, it gives me access to an incredibly rich experience. Fire and Ash never felt tedious because I couldn’t see what was happening. The audio description made sure of that. Instead, I think my disconnect with the previous Avatar films has always been emotional. I admire the craftsmanship. I appreciate the world-building. I recognize the staggering amount of work that goes into every frame. But admiration isn’t the same thing as investment, and somewhere along the way, the Avatar films stopped giving me characters and stories that I genuinely cared about.
It’s funny because I’ve seen the original Avatar three times. Once in theaters when I still had my sight, again on home video before I lost my vision, and then once more before The Way of Water as a refresher. I still haven’t revisited The Way of Water, and honestly, I don’t feel especially motivated to. These movies are enormous commitments. Once you cross the three-hour mark, rewatching them starts to feel less like revisiting an old favorite and more like planning an entire afternoon around Pandora. That’s also why I didn’t feel any urgency to revisit the first two films before Fire and Ash. Maybe I should have, but asking audiences to spend three-plus hours catching up every time a new Avatar arrives is a pretty significant investment. By the time Avatar 5 rolls around, marathoning the whole series beforehand will practically be a full-time job.
I also think I’ve come to appreciate Fire and Ash more because it finally breaks away from the shadow of the original film. I enjoyed Avatar when it came out, but even back then it reminded me a little too much of stories like Ferngully and Pocahontas. The technical achievements were undeniable, but the story itself felt overly familiar. Fire and Ash benefits from being the third chapter. It has to find its own identity, and in doing so, it tells the most interesting story this franchise has offered yet. The more I’ve sat with it, the more I think this might actually be my favorite Avatar film.
I know one person who absolutely loves the Avatar franchise, and that’s Sam Worthington. Back when the original Avatar was released, he seemed destined to become one of Hollywood’s next great leading men. Instead, his career never really exploded the way many people expected. These days he largely thrives as Jake Sully, the face of one of the biggest franchises in movie history. To be fair, that’s worked out pretty well for him. Between Avatar and everything that comes with it, I’d imagine he’s done just fine financially. Zoe Saldaña has been equally fortunate. Between Avatar and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, she’s anchored two of the biggest franchises ever made. I don’t imagine anyone involved is eager to walk away from Pandora. Even Stephen Lang continues one of the more improbable franchise survivals in recent memory, somehow remaining a major presence despite where his character’s journey appeared to end in the very first film.
The cast has become so sprawling at this point that James Cameron occasionally struggles to balance everyone. Kate Winslet returns without a great deal to do, Giovanni Ribisi somehow finds yet another way to make his character completely insufferable, and Stephen Lang remains a formidable antagonist. At its core, though, Fire and Ash is still about Jake Sully and his family trying to move forward after the devastating loss they suffered in The Way of Water. That’s where the emotional weight is supposed to come from, and it’s also where Spider quietly becomes the film’s most important character.
Spider has always existed between two worlds. He’s human, but he desperately wants to belong with the Na’vi. No matter how accepted he feels, though, he’s constantly reminded that he doesn’t truly fit because he can’t even breathe Pandora’s air without relying on a rebreather. That conflict has always defined him, and Fire and Ash finally decides to do something really interesting with it. Without giving away every detail, Spider experiences something that fundamentally changes his relationship with Pandora itself. Suddenly he isn’t just the outsider tagging along with Jake Sully’s family. He becomes the center of an entirely new mystery. If a human can somehow breathe the air of Pandora naturally, what does that mean? More importantly, what happens if humanity figures out how it was done? Spider goes from being the kid everyone has to look after to becoming someone worth fighting over.
That question fascinated me far more than the conflict promised by the title. Yes, there’s a formidable new enemy led by Oona Chaplin, whose performance gives the film a genuinely intimidating new presence. Her uneasy alliance with Stephen Lang raises the stakes considerably. But I kept finding myself more invested in Spider than in the larger war unfolding around him. In a lot of ways, Fire and Ash feels less like the story of a battle between rival tribes and more like the story of Spider discovering where he belongs. Had Cameron ignored that thread, this might have felt like another variation of Avatar’s familiar “humans invade to exploit natural resources” storyline. Instead, Spider gives the film a fresh identity by asking what happens when Pandora itself appears to choose a human.
I also appreciated what the film continues to do with Kiri, whose growing understanding of her own unusual origins adds another layer to the Sully family dynamic. Jake and Neytiri’s family has evolved into something much more complicated than simply parents and children. Between Kiri, Spider, and their biological children, they’re increasingly a family built as much through choice and circumstance as through blood. That’s ultimately why I found Fire and Ash more engaging than The Way of Water. Jack Champion ends up being the standout performer because Spider becomes the emotional center of the film. James Cameron has always known how to build spectacular worlds. This time, he finally gave me a character I genuinely cared about living inside one.
I would absolutely rewatch Fire and Ash before I’d revisit The Way of Water, which feels strange considering it’s the third film instead of the second. Then again, not every film in a franchise gets watched equally. I’m sure there are Star Wars fans who’ve seen The Empire Strikes Back far more often than A New Hope or Return of the Jedi. I know people who revisit Return of the King more than the other Lord of the Rings films. I’ve watched the original Matrix countless times compared to its sequels. That’s just how franchises work. Sometimes one entry simply connects with you more than the others. Fire and Ash connected with me because it finally gave Avatar something I’d been searching for since the beginning. Heart.
Ironically, while the characters are searching Pandora for its life force and spiritual center, I was searching for the emotional center of the Avatar franchise. I finally found it in Spider. His story isn’t about dazzling the audience with another technological breakthrough or another breathtaking landscape. It’s about belonging, identity, sacrifice, and ultimately what it means to be chosen. Jack Champion carries all of that beautifully, and for me he becomes the soul of the movie.
That makes me circle all the way back to the audio description.
I’ve often talked about the imbalance that exists in Hollywood. Studios will spend hundreds of millions of dollars developing new cameras, new visual effects techniques, and new theatrical experiences to make films like Avatar as visually overwhelming as possible. Meanwhile, accessibility for blind and low vision audiences is still treated as optional. Budgets get cut. Audio description is sometimes replaced by synthetic voices. Entire films and television series arrive without meaningful accessibility at all. We are too often left picking up whatever scraps remain. That’s why the audio description for Avatar: Fire and Ash deserves to be celebrated.
William Michael Redman delivers one of the finest narration performances I’ve ever heard, but the praise doesn’t stop with him. Whoever wrote this track deserves recognition too. Deluxe doesn’t publicly credit its audio description writers, which is unfortunate, because this script is extraordinary. Think about what they’re being asked to describe. Multiple storylines unfolding simultaneously. New creatures. New landscapes. Underwater sequences. Flight sequences. Battles. Spiritual visions. Quiet character moments. The constantly evolving ecology of Pandora itself. The film almost never slows down, yet the audio description somehow keeps pace without ever feeling rushed or overwhelming.
When people ask me what great audio description sounds like, Avatar: Fire and Ash is going to be one of the first examples I point to. It’s among the very best I’ve ever experienced. More than that, it proves exactly why audio description matters. I was able to engage with a film whose entire reputation rests on its visual spectacle because talented writers and performers made sure I wasn’t left behind. That’s remarkable.
Ironically, the thing I’ll remember most about a franchise famous for pushing visual technology forward isn’t the technology at all. It’ll be Spider’s journey, Jack Champion’s performance, and an audio description track that reminded me exactly what accessibility can be when studios decide it’s worth doing right.
No matter how you experience Avatar: Fire and Ash, I think it’s worth seeing. But if you’re blind or low vision, I think it’s essential. Not simply because it’s an entertaining film, but because it demonstrates the standard we should expect every single time. This is what accessibility should look like. This is the level of care we deserve. This is proof that when studios invest in us the same way they invest in spectacle, we don’t just keep up with everyone else. We get to experience the magic too. If Avatar: Fire and Ash ends up leaving a lasting legacy for me, it won’t be because James Cameron found another way to push filmmaking technology forward. It’ll be because Deluxe and William Michael Redman showed the rest of the industry what accessible filmmaking sounds like.Fresh: 8.0/10
