Three years, almost to the day, may feel like the blink of an eye between visits to Pandora.

After the monumental thirteen-year wait between Avatar and The Way of Water, the arrival of James Cameron’s third instalment, Fire and Ash, feels positively brisk. That sense of immediacy is mirrored on screen too: while years have passed for us, only weeks separate this chapter from the devastating climax of the previous film for Jake Sully and his fractured family.

Grief hangs heavy over Pandora. The Sullys are broken in ways Cameron has rarely allowed his heroes to be. Jake (Sam Worthington) is no longer fighting for ideals, instead he’s obsessively stockpiling weapons in anticipation of inevitable retaliation from the humiliated RDA. Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) is consumed by guilt, convinced his recklessness led directly to tragedy. Most strikingly, Neytiri (Zoë Saldaña) is barely functional, her simmering fury toward the Sky People threatening to consume not just her enemies, but her own family. This is Avatar at its most emotionally raw, and for a while, its most compelling.

A decision to return Spider (Jack Champion) to the Omatikaya brings the Sullys into contact with a terrifying new force: the Mangkwan, a Na’vi pirate clan led by the hypnotic and brutally sadistic Varang (Oona Chaplin). And somewhere in the shadows, Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) watches patiently, waiting for his moment to strike once more…

Pandora itself remains exactly as we left it: achingly beautiful, overwhelmingly immersive, and rendered with such tactile density that Cameron doesn’t so much photograph the world as will it into genuine existence. This is not a film you simply watch; it is one you inhabit. Cameron’s camera glides, swoops and surges across land, sea and sky, never feeling like empty showboating but rather the work of a filmmaker still fully enamoured by the majesty of his own creation. Few directors can conjure an environment this persuasive, and fewer still can make it feel so emotionally lived-in. Pandora remains cinema’s most intoxicating playground.

Chaplin’s Varang is an inspired addition – part heroin chic, part undead sex appeal, she’s all predatory calm and casual cruelty. She brings a streak of darkness the franchise sorely needed, her presence hinting at genuinely unsettling places Avatar has never quite dared to go before. That Cameron doesn’t give her nearly enough screen time is one of the film’s most frustrating miscalculations.

Because for all its visual splendour, Fire and Ash begins to stumble where Cameron is usually most assured: structure. The action sequences are, predictably, colossal: thunderous set-pieces staged with the precision of a master technician. But there’s an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu here. Narrative beats, character turns and even the geography of the climactic spectacle feel recycled, most surprisingly from Avatar itself. The echoes of both previous films’ third acts are impossible to ignore, and for a series promising bold new elements with each entry, the overwhelming reliance on familiar water-based arenas feels oddly timid for a film titled Fire and Ash.

More troubling still is an uncharacteristic scruffiness to the script. Cameron has always relied on archetypes, but he usually assembles them into a tightly sealed narrative engine. Here, seams show. Entire story threads feel truncated or missing: a gathering of clans passes in moments; the Mangkwan’s history and ideology barely extend beyond what the trailers already revealed; and a key emotional beat collapses under the weight of a continuity stumble that robs it of its intended impact. The result is a film that feels patchworked rather than purposeful.

This unevenness is most apparent in the ongoing Jake – Quaritch dynamic, which now resembles a narrative yo-yo: endlessly resetting itself to keep the plot moving rather than evolving in any meaningful way. What once felt mythic now risks becoming mechanical. And what makes all of this feel probably worse than it actually is, is there are teases of much more nuanced and interesting story lines that seem to stop before they even start: the unswerving faith in Ewya starts to crumble and be exploded for several key cast members but it never gets out of the shallows; a new found evolutionary wrinkle for Spider opens many interesting doors about ‘the other’ that are never walked through…there was so much more that Cameron could have spent the time exploring if he’d just stopped the plot from its perpetual forward motion and let the film breathe.

And yet, for all these frustrations, Cameron still delivers moments of undeniable cinematic power. Simon Franglen’s score finally steps out from James Horner’s shadow, introducing strong new thematic material, while the sheer craft on display remains staggering. Pandora is still a world worth losing yourself in, and Cameron remains a peerless tour guide, the spectacle of the entire piece still enough to suck us into this world and keep us there for three hours and change.

But if we’re to keep returning, we’re now at the point where spectacle alone isn’t enough. Fire and Ash feels less like a bold third chapter and more like The Way of Water: Part Two: a bridge stretched thin across an extraordinary canvas. Pandora endures. Cameron endures. The question is whether the story can now catch up with the world it inhabits.

And just to show a streak of unlikely self-awareness, I wrote almost that exact same closing statement in my review of The Way of Water…seems like Cameron isn’t the only one repeating himself…

A note on the 3D presentation: catching the film in 3D WITHOUT high frame rate was another thrilling experience. Stunningly engaging, the depth of field remains as outstanding as the previous films, Cameron once again proving to be the only one who seems to truly understand the format. Colours didn’t seem too diminished by the glasses and even after three hours, no eye strain was noted at all. I can wholeheartedly recommend the 3D again for this third trip to Pandora but be wary – if you want to high frame rate showings, these appear to be reserved for the premium formats like IMAX and Dolby Cinema.

Avatar: Fire & Ash is in UK Cinemas and IMAX in 2D, 3D and 3D HFR.