No one in Hollywood still makes old-school religious epics — that is, no one except James Cameron. Gigantic in scale and thematic scope, Avatar: Fire and Ash is equal parts sequel and conclusion, rounding out one of the great modern movie trilogies while leaving the door ajar for future stories, should Parts 4 and 5 come to fruition. Picking up where the last film, The Way of Water, left off, Cameron’s exuberant coda builds on everything both prior installments had to offer. The result is bigger, longer, more unwieldy, more sentimental, and more problematic with a capital “P.” But in its grandest moments, it’s more emotionally affecting than anything Cameron has made before.The Way of Water may have hit refresh with its 16-year time jump, but Fire and Ash unfolds in its emotional aftermath, opening with a spiritual communion between teenage hero Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) and his deceased older brother Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) in the ancestral dreamworld the Na’vi connect with via their ponytails. “How did I die?” Neteyam asks, catching up viewers in the process of placing the last film’s climactic tragedy front and center. For those who need a refresher: these are mischievous teen sons of Indigenous Na’vi princess Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) and former U.S. Marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a human who now lives permanently in his “avatar” body. They also have an impish young biological daughter, Tuk (Trinity Bliss); a moody adopted teen daughter, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), who was immaculately conceived within the avatar of a human scientist; and a teenage pseudo-son Spider (Jack Champion), a wily human who can’t breathe Pandora’s air and lives behind a series of rickety breathing masks.Avatar: Fire and Ash may repeat many of the beats of Way of Water, but it does it in even more spectacular fashion. | 20th Century StudiosSpider is also the son of returning scenery-chewing villain Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), a human colonel resurrected in Na’vi form. Vicious, and driven by corrupt ideology, he remains on the Sully family’s tail when they try to usher Spider to safety after multiple skirmishes with suffocation. However, chaos quickly ensues. The nomadic tribe of Wind Traders guiding the Sullys is attacked by a fire-worshipping cult of bandits, the Mangkwan Clan, or the Ash People, who reject the Na’vi goddess Eywa and embrace nihilism instead. Loyalties are tested, and an uncanny bond even forms between Quaritch and the Mangkwan’s matriarch, Varang (Oona Chaplin), a fearsome, flame-wielding villain who bastardizes the Na’vi’s sacred communion by using her ponytail to stun and disarm anyone she “bonds” with.Over three and a quarter hours, the film yanks these characters back and forth between locations, ambushes, and intimate dilemmas, each en route to enormous feats of cinematic spectacle. However, Cameron never loses sight of the story’s heart: a grieving family, each dealing with loss in their own unique manner. Neytiri clings to her faith, as is the Na’vi way, but her hatred for the human colonizers makes her bitter, especially toward Spider. Jake loses himself in his work — he’s human, after all — recovering ammunition from a sunken human warship. He wants to be prepared for future battles, but the other Na’vi, like Water Tribe leaders Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and Ronal (Kate Winslet), see firearms as tools that corrupt the soul. And, at various points, the Sully siblings confront the reality of losing even more loved ones through exile, while still reeling from their brother’s passing.Avatar: Fire and Ash sees the Sully family dealing with their grief and guilt over Neteyam’s demise. | 20th Century StudiosNeteyam’s demise from the last film casts a lengthy shadow over Fire and Ash. Not only do Jake and Neytiri’s respective stoicism and superstition yield palpable friction, but the late teenager’s presence is felt across every scene. Several action set pieces are driven by the sullen Lo’ak — to whom Cameron passes Jake’s narrator torch — trying to prove to Jake, and himself, that he wasn’t at fault for his brother’s fate. Simon Franglen’s impeccable orchestral score also keeps Neteyam alive through music: The lament Neytiri sings for him, in this film and the last one, is re-arranged in numerous compositions, from moments of triumph to defeat and agony. Few recent Hollywood blockbusters have so consistently immersed their characters in both emotional and physical anguish; bodily injuries last just as long as injuries to the soul.The film is at its most cogent when exploring these growing cracks in the family unit; loss and anger burrow their way into each dilemma and major decision. At other times, it moves too swiftly to let its subplots breathe. Jake speaks of the uneasy temptation to resume his ceremonial role as “Toruk Makto” — the rider of a giant beast — for the bloodthirst it instills in him, but this dialogue is seldom dramatized. Kiri’s mysterious connection to the planet yields a fascinating tale of transhumanism that, on one hand, feels like a natural extension of Cameron’s career-long ecological musings, raising questions of who actually deserves to transcend their physical form. But on the other hand, its answers are presented in simplistic fashion, and the concept is treated as a MacGuffin. Similarly, not enough time is spent with the volcano-dwelling Ash People, even when Quaritch bestows them with firearms. They are also, unfortunately, an uncomfortable fixture of the series’ already questionable racial optics, between their tribal ululating, the ceremonial bones through their noses, and their “scalping” of Na’vi ponytails — they’re a mishmash of African, Polynesian, and Native American stereotypes that bring the story’s refutation of white supremacist colonialism into further conflict with itself.Oona Chaplin’s Varang is a sci-fi villain for the ages. | 20th Century StudiosHowever, it must be said: Chaplin’s presence as Varang is lightning in a bottle. She transforms caution and curiosity into furious ambition with her gaze alone. While she and Neytiri barely interact, they’re fitting thematic foils: Varang is a reflection of what Neytiri might become should she fail to reconcile her grief. Where Neytiri is feline, Varang is serpentine, and she delights both in Quaritch’s masculine presence and in the power of the machine guns and flamethrowers placed in her hands, proving right the other Na’vi’s pacifist beliefs. In Fire and Ash, guns are means to access one’s darkest impulses.If it ever seemed like Cameron might run out ideas, rest assured: Avatar: Fire and Ash is filled to the brim with breathtaking images. Awe-inspiring giant stingrays lead the vast airships of the Wind Traders, led by David Thewlis’ lively Peylak. We see what Na’vi skin looks like when sunburned, and we even experience the hallucinogenic effects of Pandoran ayahuasca. If there was something that hooked you in a previous Avatar, chances are Cameron doubles down on it conceptually here. The ruthless whaling ships are bigger and more imposing. The sea creatures have an even more intriguing and complicated morality (leading to a Tulkun trial!), and the humans, by and large, suck even harder. Even the exhilarating finale combines the crescendos of both previous movies, thanks to a shimmering magnetic aurora that not only lifts characters from the sea into the air, but robs them of their ammunition, forcing them to fight without the modern weaponry they so desperately cling to. It’s a climax of not only character arcs, but central themes, and it rivals the mayhem of the last film’s Tulkun climax and then some. It’s hard not to get swept up in its melodrama.Cameron’s aesthetics have always fallen halfway between military meathead and hippie flower child, but Fire and Ash is perhaps the grandest collision between these impulses. The world of Avatar is so real to the touch — and so seamlessly blends its live-action and performance-captured characters — that its mere existence seems miraculous, even 16 years into the franchise. Soaring landscapes are as real as the texture of cerulean skin, whose beautiful imperfections and subtle expressions are revealed in unrelenting close-ups. But if Fire and Ash has one key visual flaw, it’s that Cameron, after getting us accustomed to the film’s hyper-smooth 3D at a higher frame rate (48 fps, used to enhance momentum), returns on occasion to the more traditional 24 fps for fleeting drama. The transition makes these more intimate scenes come off as jittery. Then again, the problem here, in essence, is that Cameron has flung us so far into the future of storytelling that anything resembling its present feels uncanny. Maybe we’re not meant to go back to the way things were.Avatar: Fire and Ash is filled to the brim with breakthtaking images. | 20th Century StudiosThis tension between old and new ways of seeing is similarly embodied by Jake and Quaritch. Across all three movies, both men exist in forms and cultures outside of their own. One of them has worked to accept this new identity, and the community it affords him. The other rejects it. But amid the bombast of Fire and Ash, quiet moments see Jake urging the villainous Quaritch to take full advantage of his new body and to open his eyes to a new world.It feels not unlike Cameron, the conservationist, urging us to embrace the wistful splendor of Pandora, its gorgeous bioluminescence, and its tangible connections between all people and living things, as though such a paradise were possible on Earth, if we only opened our eyes. There will probably be more Avatar movies down the line, but if this is where they end, there could not be a more suitable parting plea.Avatar: Fire and Ash opens in theaters December 19.