By Paul Salfen
This is Paul Salfen with your KLAK Movie Minute. In theaters this weekend is Avatar: Fire and Ash, the third film in the James Cameron-helmed mega blockbuster series and it comes as no surprise that this one is quite the big screen experience. Of course the technology has vastly improved since the 2009 original but it’s really amazing how much it’s even improved since 2022’s The Way of Water. The underwater sequences are beautiful and every bit of the scenery and character effects have improved. Here Jake and Neytiri (played by Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana) pick up after the death of their son and now have to face a brutal new Na’vi tribe called the Ash people and they have quite a new villain named Varang, which is fantastically played by Oona Chaplin (the granddaughter of Charlie Chaplin). In between there are so many battle sequences, so much inter-family strife, and, of course, the pesky aggressive humans. Overall it’s a great experience but it’s just a little too long. At close to 3 hours and 20 minutes with no intermission, it’s a lot to ask of a now shorter attention span audience but if you can put down the phone, put on the 3D glasses and truly immerse yourself, it is fun to go to Pandora for a little while and have some escapism from these strange times. That’s it for this week. Join me next week and every week for another Movie Minute right here on 97.5 KLAK, AMFM MAGAZINE, and RECRD.
